泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Looking for Ijungballyong

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Looking for Ijungballyong

 

Not too long ago, I was asked about my pen name "泥中蟠龍(Ijungballyong)". To put it simply, it's a hidden dragon, a big snake called Imoogi, which tries to turn into a dragon. The full text of the poem is as follows:

 

八九年間始欲衰 (It began to decline in 8-9 years)

至十三年無孑遺 (There is nothing left in 13 years)

到頭天命有所歸 (You did your best and submitted to Heaven's will)

泥中蟠龍向天飛 (The dragon hidden in the mud will ascend)

 

You may find the details from The Records of the Three Kingdoms. It's been a half year since I started to regularly write the columns and I didn't take an opportunity to explain about the pen name. It's not the only reason I want to talk about it. I'd like to clarify the third line "到頭天命有所歸" of the poem. It means that the time has come at last. It expresses that Liu Bei, who survived in a dangerous and difficult time and situation, now get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be a great man. The only survivor can grab an opportunity. 

There is a famous line from a film, "It is not the strong that survive, but the survivor that is strong." Employees now have a hard time due to low performance in the second half of last year. A few companies with their strong performance assume the attitude of winner-takes-all and the majority of developers and publishers face dark time. Yet, a survivor can be stronger and it will ascend to heaven when it catches a golden opportunity. 

Many online game makers from 2012 to about 2013 did not survive because they wanted to make a big-budget game with from 20 to 30 billion won as they used to be. But some firms developed a tiny-budget game like Ganjang-gejang (crab marinated in soy sauce) full of crab roe now are highlighted among newly released online games. 

I believe that it's time for mobile game developers to prepare to be survived. Survivors only can wait for another chance. They should reduce their size and generate steady profits with a small but solidly-built game to survive and grab the chance. It'll sound corny, but it's a blessing in disguise. I hope to see a lot of ascending dragon like Ijungballyong at this time next year.

※ 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 _ 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