"Games, the Contents and the Economy" written by Acean D Park]

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 3)   There are many strong points of Steam. First of all, it supports various operating systems. The digital distribution platform, which was originally based on Windows, now provides the best possible environment for not only Mac OS X and Linux, etc. but also console games on PlayStation and Xbox, etc. and it is finding a way to assist mobile games at present. Moreover, users can select a language among more than 20 ones including English, Japanese, and Korean and they can pay by credit cards, the payment system in smartphones, or various gift cards. The payment system includes many different currencies of the world such as dollars, euro, pounds, yen, and won, etc. so that Steam provides a convenient form of payment method for its consumers in numerous countries and various environments.   The other advantage of the platf...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 2)   As I noted the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the Part1, Steam can be a meaningful distribution platform for domestic game developers. If you know your enemies and yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles. So let's find out more about Steam first.   Steam is a video game distribution platform by Valve Corporation, an American video game developer and publisher, for more than 10 years from 2002 to the present. The large online distributor that is similar to a global open market has more than 200 million users worldwide and, so far, a lot of video games have been released on it.   Valve Software was originally famous for the leading game developer which made first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, etc. In particular, Half-Life, Valve's firs...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 1)   PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a video game made by Krafton (known as Bluehole Studio until April 2015), which is a South Korean video game developer, has recently come into focus. The company is best known for TERA, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) since it was established in 2007.   The reason PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is receiving the major spotlight is that not only because it is a PC platform-based Third-person shooter (TPS) paying full price for a version of the game but also because it has been high in the rank since it was released in Steam, a video game digital distribution platform.   Few national PC gaming developers target only the local market because its domestic market is relatively small in scale compared with other game platforms. The size of the PC gaming ma...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   Between something new and familiar   There is a constant struggle between something new and familiar. We are often at the crossroads as we are forced to choose between two things, for instance, today's style and my favorite costume, a new job and the present job, or a newly-built fancy apartment and cozy old house because of the gap between expectations for something fresh and sense of familiarity with something old.   Recently I had dinner with the CEO of a film studio. We talked a lot about a new cinema in the planning stage including a business model to make a connection between a movie storyline and webcomics or video game in particular. I concluded the biggest difference between the motion picture and the video game is that they take different forms to show something "novel" and "accustomed" while we were discussing the planning. I'd like t...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   What a game interest expects to the new government   The biggest recent issue in South Korea was that president-elect Moon was sworn in as President on Wednesday. Inauguration of the new president means that the leader of the country has been replaced at the micro-level, besides, not only cabinet ministers under the head of the administrative branch of the government but also many of the government policies would be changed in a broad perspective. The latest election was the nation's first presidential by-election. Therefore, it seems that there will be a radical change in government more than ever.   A new team leader in most companies often causes a lot of changes. Even a firm got a new CEO can be drastically transformed without any changes in the organization. I also was very confused by the new manager as if I was working for another corporate at one time in ...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   The Tooth and the Nail   Recently, I attended the preview of a film named The Tooth and the Nail which would be released the moment you are reading this. It's a suspense thriller film. The word "thriller" appears to be used interchangeably with the word "suspense", however, the two terms precisely have different meanings. "Suspense" is a feeling of tension or anxiety when an audience has more information than a character in the movie, on the other hand, the viewer has less information than the character in terms of "thriller". For instance, if a detective tries to find a murder suspect whom no one knows where he is hiding, it's a "thriller", whereas if the policeman is approaching the criminal when both the cop and the audience don't realize that the suspect is hiding behind a wall holding a knife, it's "suspen...

泥中蟠龍 's Game 愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]   A fried chicken restaurant-like game developer   The early presidential election, which was originally been scheduled at the end of the year, is probably the hottest issue in Korea these days. I don't think that political pledges of candidates seem an appropriate topic for a column. So I just want to mention youth unemployment such as founding and employment here.   One of the candidates has promised to help the young by raising conglomerates' corporate tax or high earners' income tax, on the other hand, another candidate has pledged to increase employment by supporting large enterprises. As I reckon - it's slightly off-topic, though - that latter isn't much different from the "trickle-down effect" of Lee Myung-Bak administration, which seems to be less effective.   Not too long ago, I talked about foreign game developers with a frien...