泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 _ Have the courage to create uncontested market space

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Have the courage to create uncontested market space

 

I have ever heard such a funny story that Kang Ho Dong, a famous South Korean MC and comedian, is not known to many junior high and high school students as the top wrestler-turned TV star. The former wrestler began a career as a master of ceremonies and comedian as well in 1999 on MBC TV show. But 20 years later, his successful wrestling—Ssireum—career appears to have not existed anymore.

Recently video game users seem to take it for granted that a new mobile game is released through Kakao Talk almost like MC Kang Ho Dong, not the wrestler. Kakao Talk Game Center opened just 3 years ago, however, we already got used to it.

I've recently asked a representative of a video game developer about the type of game between online and mobile when I had a business meeting with him. "Is there still an online game developer which attracts investment?" He asked me in return. Unfortunately, it's not easy to see an investment proposal for online game companies nowadays. But I am a little bit perplexed by the current situation where most game developers are making their games just for a mobile platform such as Kakao Talk.

Since mobile games like Anipang, Dragon Flight made a great hit with Kakao Talk social network, numerous mobile game studios were started to found from the fall of 2012 like so many mushrooms grow after the rain. The mobile game world naturally attracted investors and the industry climatically flourished in 2013.

I was very passionate about looking for a promising online game company when Kakao Talk was more than a success in late 2012. My logic was simple and clear. Online games were ignored by investors including venture capitalists, which would lead online game developers to stop making games at some point. I thought that newly-released online game would sharply reduce within 2~3 years because online game makers should stop manufacturing due to lack of money. And I was sure that a few online game companies can provide a differentiated service creating uncontested market space and have the potential to succeed in 2~3 years.

We usually use words such as the red ocean or blue ocean. Most people generally don't notice that the blue ocean is a good choice for them unlike the red ocean because there is no competition. That's why people who choose blue ocean are brave and they finally win recognition.

Online games are once again rising recently thanks to Black Desert's good performance. In 2013, I invested in one online-game developer and I failed to invest in the other one due to opposition from the company insiders. The game studio I couldn't invest in is NPIC SOFT that developed ELOA. That is one of my lost opportunities, however, I am also excited at the same time. I will play the game this week with the greatest pleasure. Fashion comes full circle. we need to carefully consider to look back upon the trends of the past which we are not interested in anymore.

 

※ 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 _ FPS! FPS! I wanna play FPS!

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

FPS! FPS! I wanna play FPS!

 

Today I have a confession to make. I have a very serious Stereoblindness. As you probably know, it is the inability to see in 3D using stereo vision. Even though it is generally caused by differences between a signal received by the optic nerve and the body, people in the gaming industry usually make fun of them saying that it's too boorish.

The reason why I tell the truth is that I cannot play First-person shooter (FPS) video games despite a video game expert. After just 10-minutes playing, I feel sick and heavily dizzy.

There was an only one FPS that I had finished it. It is a legendary First-person shooter Xbox video game Halo: Combat Evolved which was released in 2001. In those days FPS-style console games had a very small market share compared to the PC platform. I believe that the biggest reason—of course, there would be other reasons—is that—unlike the combination of a keyboard and mouse on a personal computer—the Xbox controller, the input device, was not suitable for First-person shooter games which need fast controlling. This is why I could finish the game although it was still hard. Slow scene changes with analog sticks relatively didn't make me dizzy compared to use of the mouse. It could be good for a boorish person like me, on the flip-side, it's not good for gamers enjoying the uniqueness of FPS genre. If so, how could it be legendary FPS　with numerous series after overcoming difficulties of input devices? I probably couldn't have finished the Halo without the fun of the game even if I didn't get dizzy easily. It changed battlefields from very closed, small spaces to the broad, flat regions. Halo has—of course, there was this kind of battle scenes in other games—the overwhelming majority of battle scenes using a cover in wide-open ground. Besides, it made up for shooting difficulties to overcome the disadvantage of input devices by improving accuracy with a time delay when an enemy shows up. It showed a lot of effort for player: a quick-turn button to make a player character turn round much more quickly; the arrangement of a varying number of enemies, not top and bottom but right and left to have an avatar easily kill enemy characters; adding vehicles for better shooting game.

The reason why I have described Halo in detail is to talk about 全民突击 (Jeonmindolgyeok)—called Hide and Fire in Japan and Rival Fire in North America—, the most popular mobile game in China recently. It's hard to say that Rival Fire is a typical First-person shooter when it comes to viewpoint, mobility, and shooting, etc. But the mobile game darted straight to the top when it was released in China since it had solved the problems of FPS genre on mobile devices. It's not quite easy. Recently some of quality Chinese video games are surprising the world. Now we don't guarantee anymore that domestic games are better than Chinese ones. A paradigm shift in any field of industry is arisen based on deep contemplation and hard work. Am I too greedy to expect that the new paradigm in the gaming industry would be formed here 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 _ 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