泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Looking back upon masterpieces of the past

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Looking back upon masterpieces of the past

 

Mobile-version games, which were originally superb online games be loved by many game users of the past, have been recently released. Looking back upon the experience of playing, I played some and they led me to play very big game hits released right after App Store's opening. I don't want to talk about my memory of enjoying mobile games. I'd like to mention what I felt while playing the great games and the iOS' hits.

Playing masterpieces of the past, I got frustrated. Even though I played them all night at that time, I've never enjoyed the games. Of course, my age or familiarity were not good reasons. The free-to-play business model in the mobile games put me under stress and I found it annoying. F2P, which was not found in the originals and not common in the games during the early days of App Store, is now taken for granted that gamers should purchase items or pay for access to new content after starting a game.

Free-to-start is applied to almost every mobile games nowadays. I've never played a game without F2P and received an investment proposal without the free-to-play lately. It became a standard business model for mobile games at some point and users don't seem reluctant to play them. It was only 10 years ago when players used to buy packaged games and pay by the hour for enjoying online games. But, at one point, I couldn't find a game with a flat rate or paid packages among newly released games. Furthermore, advanced F2P business model forces users to pay more in many ways. It also makes gamers necessarily stressful. The basic concept of the free-to-play model is to attract more customers entertaining them when they enter a game and give gamers stress by limiting playing when they are satisfied enough to continue to enjoy the game. And it brings in revenue by having customers pay for getting rid of their stress.

It gives players two chances. The first one is that users can decide whether they continue to play after playing a certain level of a game. And the other is that gamers can enjoy playing for free if they put up with stress. On the contrary, players are likely to be constantly asked to purchase content, which gives the users a lot of stress even though they started the game to relieve their stress.

It's definitely hard for developers to choose another revenue model because customers are already used to the free-to-play business model. Yet F2P has been developed just for profit; it leads the users to pay more not to entertain them. Spending a few million won for a game is not a piece of big news anymore. The free-to-play business model, which was started for game marketing and advanced and generalized, doesn't guarantee fun of games. The memory of players paying pay 40,000~50,000 won for a packaged game and enjoying it for hundreds of hours even a few years ago became a thing of the past. So we need to think about the games with free-to-play nowadays which easily lead users to spend a few hundred thousand won: no one can guarantee that they are much more fun than the masterpieces of the past.

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

   (http://www.khgames.co.kr)

    Translation by Kim Ki-hui

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Yuna Kim, silver medal, and territorial behavior

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Yuna Kim, silver medal, and territorial behavior

 

Yuna Kim has ended her competitive figure skating career with a superb performance. Instead of winning the gold medal, unfortunately, Kim relegated to the silver medal position: of course, I don't mean that the silver medal is not worth it. There is an obvious bias issue with the scoring because there were no judges from South Korea and Italy. From my perspective, Yuna Kim deserves it more even if I have little to no expert knowledge on the winter sport.

The reason why I unexpectedly mentioned skating is to talk about the territorial behavior of humans. By definition, territoriality is the behavior of a male animal that defines and defends its territory and humans have many similarities to animal's territorial behavior. There are a lot of people to lord over newcomers in each industry and it can be also a "barrier to entry" or an "economic barrier to entry".

Nowadays, many game companies are investing a lot of energy to extend their business abroad. Korean game companies' overseas market expansion has become essential as the competition is becoming fierce in the domestic gaming industry. Yet there is a small number of domestic experts in the field of global games market and new players are often prevented from entering the field. Various forms of territorial behaviors—language environment, users of different gaming cultures, market strategies, and finding related professional manpower, etc.—have been shown in the overseas market. Sadly, I cannot come up with a great solution to tide over the difficulties. Meticulous preparations and serious efforts are the only way to solve these problems. Local game companies should strenuously partner with foreign companies to train more overseas specialists and various attempts in international expansion have to be made to have the know-how. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But they need to go through the process of finding their own breakthrough.

I hope to see many game companies could be valued by more people like the South Korean ice skating queen who are recognized as world No.1 although she narrowly missed the gold. I believe that they will not be lorded over some day. And the very best of luck to Yuna Kim who inspired the South Korean public and every video game employee in Korea.

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

   (http://www.khgames.co.kr)

    Translation by Kim Ki-hui

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Imitation precedes creation but the two are not identical

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Imitation precedes creation but the two are not identical

 

Recently various rumors are abroad about trademark registration of a British video game developer King in the gaming industry. The U.K. giant King.com has "trademarked" the word "Candy" for Candy Crush Saga, the most successful social game. It seems that a wider range of discussion about whether it can obtain trademark registration for the particular word which is widely used. Plus, a recently released mobile game Anipang 2 by SundayToz is pretty hot in the Korean market these days. But adding on to the trademark issue, Candy Crush Saga has naturally become an issue again after the launch of the sequel because its basic structure is very similar to the puzzle video game of King.

I don't want to argue about whether it is plagiarism or not by law. We should respect the court's judgment if King files a suit against SundayToz. I'd like to mention about the company's leading position in the Korean market and its response to criticism about copying the structure. I fully understand management's stance with a lot of pressure on sales record of the first sequel since SundayToz listed on KOSDAQ. And Candy Crush Saga could be an attractive target to copy thanks to its enough game users and proven gameplay etc. Frankly speaking, I merely so upset at responses of the presses saying, "It's not a copyright violation." or "It's not piracy." Plus, I am quite appalled by a SNS post of the CEO of the venture capital firm, one of the two big shareholders, which directly invested in the company. To sum up, it boils down to one thing "There is no 100% creation in the world. One copied and pasted from something that already existed often shows good results. Don't criticize it before you do it." I have cleared level 400 in Candy Crush Saga and level 100 in Anipang 2. And aside from any legal judgments, I think that Anypang 2 plagiarized the one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps. A controversy about differences in terms of detail and structural elements seems to be an excuse to get out of its responsibility for plagiarism. Both games have the exact same characteristics of basic puzzle game, which are elements and obstacles that users have to consider to clear levels. The rest of the small details can be compared only to the same engine-installed vehicles with slightly different exterior and interior designs.

SundayToz is the first gaming company which went public on the domestic stock market since the mobile game services went for full-launch. It is also a symbol that represents domestic mobile game firms. I assume that Anypang 2 will be a big hit and obviously bring in the big bucks as well. But, as one of the biggest mobile game company, it should accept any criticism about the act of plagiarizing. I expect SundayToz to be honest at least if it examined and copied the game of King within the legal limits of copyright laws due to steady sales. There are many cases of piracy produced fine results, however, they accepted blame at the very least.

Before finishing the column, I'd like to quote a line from a story of Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda. "I hate to follow suit. So I struggled to find my own way. Although I spent a long time to catch up competitors, it finally became a technological difference."

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

   (http://www.khgames.co.kr)

    Translation by Kim Ki-hui