泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Korea's game industry in crisis
The United States and the Soviet Union had always been rivals in many areas since World War II and the two superpowers put securing German rocket technology, the best one of those days, on the top of the list. Of course, it was possible because of Nazi Germany's defeat. America recruited German scientists, engineers, and technicians before Germany was defeated and collapsed under a secret program named Operation Paperclip. Soviet Russia, which was fallen behind the competition, secured production facilities. As a result, the Soviet Union stayed ahead of the competition for aerospace industry based on its infrastructure, however, it was beaten by the United States which had the world's best space technology.
In recent years, the Korean gaming industry has developed in a difficult situation. Government has regularly imposed regulations to reduce the teenagers' playing time under the pretext of protecting the right to study and sleep of youths and recently there is a discussion of a Game Addiction Law to regulate video games such as drugs. Some people in the gaming industry call themselves as 'drug manufacturers' and other ones think about parental roles because their children might be ashamed of what their parents do.
Recently Chinese big companies have successively invested in domestic video game companies. Even some people say that huge capitals from China are taking over Korean game studios like shopping. The gaming industry is mostly based on gaming industry workers because there are very little manufacturing facilities. Eventually, there might be left local game firms and employees that are subordinate to Chinese capitalists.
It usually takes at least a few years up to more than a decade to bring qualified professionals after being aware of a shortage of workers. Now a lot of game developers prefer overseas companies to domestic ones and many of them regret being members of the gaming industry. Also, a large number of game studios are going broke daily. The recent Korean gaming industry, in spite of its poor industrial base, has maintained the growth relying on foreign capital. But the gaming market is becoming more dependent on overseas capital. There should be the drain of the domestic industrial base into foreign countries and the local companies would disappear due to a shortage of new workers when it will be incessant a few more years.
A flower in a flowerpot grows as much as the size of the pot. I don't mean that the gaming industry should be the beneficiary over the other field. But we should not stand in the way of the industry's advancement at least. The local gaming industry is mostly dominated by overseas firms and they might take full control of the whole industry in which more than 100,000 workers are engaged. The continuously tightened regulations, aside from support from the government, is not much different from confining the domestic gaming industry in a small flowerpot.
Many local game developers are seduced to shift their companies overseas with various benefits in a bad situation where there are higher marketing costs, excessive government restrictions, and increased competition, etc. It seems like an Operation Paperclip for Korean game companies somewhere. The local game industry hasn't collapsed yet. But I cannot help thinking of a cup of soju because of tens of thousands of employees who are called drug manufacturers. With due respect to a great number of workers in the gaming field, I deeply hope that the Korean gaming industry will not be German rocket technology.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
