泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Every flood has its ebb

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Every flood has its ebb

 

A domestic animation which I invested in was released at the end of last year. Being received positive reactions from the preview, I had high hopes for the children's animation aimed at Christmas and year-end. But it disappeared with a poor score of 30,000 audiences. The animation, which major local film distributor invested in and distributed, was expected to attract 300,000 moviegoers. I think that the biggest reason for the miserable failure at the box office, of course, there could have been many different causes, is the distributing agency's insincere stance; The distributor might think otherwise. There were very little theaters for the film in less than a week and I could barely find it in cinemas in Christmas season against its original plan.

There were too many losses for some mobile games which came out last year due to a publisher's insincerity or incompetence in spite of their early impressions were very positive. I'm sure that a developer, who have believed in a publisher and yielded to its demand in earnest, should have felt betrayed more than a sense of loss. Distributors wield absolute power regarding contents distribution related to distribution channels and operational database. A game maker has nowhere to go if a publisher betrays its trust.

Along with a film and animation, to make a video game, it takes a long time and effort by numerous people and money from hundreds of million won up to billions of won. If the fruit of hard work is abandoned due to what goes on inside the distributor, it can't simply go back to the way it once was since trust has been damaged.

Recently the infamous "nut rage" incident brought the attention of world media. The event serves as a reminder of a bad practice prevailing in the country "gabjil"—abusing of power of the rich and powerful; it is not a problem for the individual and it happened because the powerful person with higher wealth treated the other party as a consumable in accordance with the selfish practice at the cost of survival. But this is not much different from the problems of the publishers and distributors mentioned above. Gabjil can happen between Gab, superior status, and Eul, inferior status. Gap will lose Eul, whom it reigns over, in long-term abuses of power.

I'm reminded of what a representative of a film distributor recently said that he tries to the best for a film studio not to harm its bottom line because that's his job. I expect the content distributors to reflect themselves whether they are qualified to condemn Gabji of Heather Cho. Any of game publishers can be directly involved in the second "nut rage" incident. They should remember that the beauty of a flower will not last ten days.

※ 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 _ What is the key factor of games success?

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

 

What is the key factor of games success?

 

 

An epic science fiction film Interstellar has surpassed the 10-million-audience mark getting huge popularity since another Hollywood blockbuster Avatar recorded over 10 million viewers in 2009, except animation Frozen in late 2014.

The Christopher Nolan movie shows many fundamental of modern physics to explain the abstract concept of the study and audiences can see signs of the director's effort in it. I'd like to talk about not modern physics itself but chaos theory which has popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. In the chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

This is another story. Recently I've ever had a conversation about key factors of games success with the CEO of a gaming company. What is the most important factor for games success? It's hard to find a unique thing in recent successful games why they are continuing to grow in popularity and making good money compared to other globally existing popular games. Are those successes only caused by external factors?

In conclusion, successful games are definitely fun and their success can be from one of the internal factors of the games or balancing from the element. Of course, making a good concept and tuning game rules are hard work and balancing is not inevitably needed. But we have seen a lot of cases where a game has been succeeded or ruined depending on its balancing. Even the most popular game over the years can let their users leave due to unsuitable patch and slightly wrong balancing and a newly released game can hugely hit around the world in just a few months with its proper variation, which means that balance is one of the most important factors of the game.

It is much easier said than done. The initial value of game design can have a decisive effect on the entire game and its success like the butterfly effect mentioned above. If the male leading role of Interstellar didn't tell his daughter to interpret a message from the ghost, the history of the world wouldn't have been changed. Likewise, a minor detail in balancing can have a huge influence on game success. Of course, there is no perfect formula for games success. If there is a formula for the successful game, nobody wants to invest in game development because it's not much different from saving up by installments. I'd like to tell game developers, who are still looking for the defined success formula, that game development may seem more attractive thanks to its uncertainties.

※ 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 _ A Unique and distinctive video game

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

A Unique and distinctive video game

 

Recently I participated in a video game-related event named investment market. In spite of the high-sounding title, through this event, investees introduce a game which is in the making and create a vision to raise money and investors listen to a presentation and see the displays to look for better investment destinations.

However, the question comes to mind whenever I attend this type of event is what the difference between a new game and existing ones is although every developer emphasizes distinction and uniqueness of the game. Some of them don't even talk about 'fun' which is the most important factor in the game.

 

"This product is small and light and easy to carry around. Also, it looks good with a pretty shape. Men and women of all ages can easily use it. Consumers can buy it throughout the country."

 

What do you think about the phrase in the advertising campaign for a headache pill above? It's meaningless if the tablet doesn't help you get better. The distinctions, which lack a fundamentally useful function of the product, are totally pointless.

We often hear that we should always keep to the basics. Nevertheless, there are many people whose words and deeds are in contradiction to each other as if some grown-ups who lack morals teach their kids to protect morality.

I still don't know what an amusement factor of auto-battle feature in an RPG game is. But everybody seems to regard it as an essential part of the game. Of course, it can be a suitable mode for mobile devices, but it doesn't suit my taste at least. Accepting the auto-battle system as a critical feature, developers talk about differences in it. There is nothing about the fun of the autoplay. Though I cited the auto-battle function as an instance, it's much more than about it.

There has been no discussion of the fun factor for some time and everybody are talking about a distinction. The distinction should be an element for fun of a game. Some well-made video games so-called a classic are still fun and exciting. In fact, it's not easy to differentiate between the classics and a lot of games released after when it comes to unique factors including graphics. Still, they are fun. Fun is the most fundamental element for a game. I expect to see many games that can appeal to players with their significant basic element, together with emphasizing on the distinction.

 

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

   (http://www.khgames.co.kr)

    Translation by Kim Ki-hui