泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Maximilien Ringelmann or Synergy effect

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Maximilien Ringelmann or Synergy effect

 

We usually say that we expect the synergy effect when we do something together between groups or individual members. The term synergy is derived from the Greek word for synergos meaning "working together". Synergy—synergistic effect—, as defined in Cambridge dictionary, is "the combined power of a group of things when they are working together that is greater than the total power achieved by each working separately“.

But can we have all the good things from working together? Isn't there the worst possibility? You can easily see many loveless couples around you although they wanted to create a happy family with their partner before they were married. If the cooperation between the two produces good results all the time, there are no marriages ended in divorce.

Maximilien Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, conducted tug-of-war to measure the value of an individual's contribution to the group. Reportedly, the experiment was originally done to verify the numerical analysis of the synergy effect. However, the result of the experiment was surprising. You can think of the strength of an individual member as 100% and the results vary depending on the number of the player: the two-player team used 93% of strength; three-player team used 85%; 8-player team used just 64%. Ultimately it means that the strengths of the 8-player team are not much bigger than the strengths of 5-player team whose members each use their 100% strength. This is called the Ringelmann Effect named after Maximilien Ringelmann.

Gamevil acquired Com2uS, one of its main competitors, on October 4, 2013, which was pretty shocking news back then and remember that I also wrote about the big deal. Stock prices of the two video game companies drastically went up for the last one year. It's been one year and four months since the announcement of the equity acquisition. The current position of the companies, creating a synergy effect, totally different now compared to one year earlier. Just a year ago, the total amount of the two company's market capitalization didn't reach either of the two company's current total value of the share.

One of the hottest issues this week is probably a battle over management control between Nexon and NCSoft. Many people expected the two prominent firms to create synergy when they heard the news because both are South Korea's leading video game publisher and developer respectively. It made the video game world very excited about amazing synergy when the two top-notch companies with the different-style genre would work together. But, two and a few months later, the results fell far short of everybody's expectations. No one can predict the result of the feud over control of the group. I only expect them to reach an amicable agreement as soon as possible to produce a greater effect. I don't want to use this case as the example of Ringelmann Effect writing a column a few years later.

※ 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 _ 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