泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 2)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 2)

 

As I noted the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the Part1, Steam can be a meaningful distribution platform for domestic game developers. If you know your enemies and yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles. So let's find out more about Steam first.

 

Steam is a video game distribution platform by Valve Corporation, an American video game developer and publisher, for more than 10 years from 2002 to the present. The large online distributor that is similar to a global open market has more than 200 million users worldwide and, so far, a lot of video games have been released on it.

 

Valve Software was originally famous for the leading game developer which made first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, etc. In particular, Half-Life, Valve's first product, is highly acclaimed by laying the groundwork for the FPS genre at present. Both visual composition and the WASD-controls in the current first-person perspective video games are originated from the Valve's FPS game. The company is now better known as the Steam operator, however, it started the distribution service to support smooth operation and update of its another FPS Counter-Strike at the beginning.

 

As I mentioned earlier, Valve launched Steam to reduce server traffic, provide automatic updates, and improve the service quality of its 2002 smash hit Counter-Strike. It was closer to a streaming media and was used for Blizzard Battle.net-like purpose at that time.

 

It has been turned into a gaming open market, electronic software distribution (ESD), since a British indie game developer Introversion Software Limited introduced Darwinia, which was not made by Valve, through the new platform in 2005. Steam started to provide support for macOS in 2010 and Linux in 2012, respectively, which made it the largest video game digital distribution platform for PC gaming.

 

Steam has launched Big Picture mode for users with their TV and game controller to provide them comfortable gameplay and recently extended its service for DualShock 4 Wireless Controller for PlayStation 4. Now it's seeking a way to support console games on PlayStation and Xbox 360 and mobile games as well.

 

I took a look at the establishment of Steam and the history of the business briefly. I'd like to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the platform and its characteristics in Part 3.

 

 

※ 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 love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 1)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 1)

 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a video game made by Krafton (known as Bluehole Studio until April 2015), which is a South Korean video game developer, has recently come into focus. The company is best known for TERA, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) since it was established in 2007.

 

The reason PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is receiving the major spotlight is that not only because it is a PC platform-based Third-person shooter (TPS) paying full price for a version of the game but also because it has been high in the rank since it was released in Steam, a video game digital distribution platform.

 

Few national PC gaming developers target only the local market because its domestic market is relatively small in scale compared with other game platforms. The size of the PC gaming market is a lot smaller than the other ones even if it includes overseas markets. It lost its ground to stand on at home over the past several years in the face of competition with online and mobile games. Furthermore, users can hardly find full-paid PC games since in-app purchases (IAP) and selling virtual goods have been widely popularized throughout the online and mobile games. However, the biggest cause of the attention is that this is the first time the local PC game has brought big achievements on the global game platform Steam.

 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds totaled over 60 billion dollars in revenue selling over 2 million copies of 29.99 dollars a piece for less than two months since it launched in March 2017. Moreover, it used Steam's early access before the official release. And the result was the top-level record among numerous other released video games in the Steam gaming platform in both South Korea and abroad, which is raising users' expectations of the official version that is scheduled to go on sale in August this year. Alpha-access is a funding model in the video game platform by which players can purchase and enjoy a game in the making for user feedback and suggestions.

 

The reason I elaborate on the Krafton-made video game is that Battlegrounds showed its potential for the international expansion of domestic PC games through the distribution channel Steam. For this reason, I'd like to talk about past, present, and future of Steam which is unfamiliar to local game developers yet.

 

I'm not sure, but this article will be of help to small and medium-sized game companies considering release their game on Steam.

 

 

※ 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 love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Between something new and familiar

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

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

 

Between something new and familiar

 

There is a constant struggle between something new and familiar. We are often at the crossroads as we are forced to choose between two things, for instance, today's style and my favorite costume, a new job and the present job, or a newly-built fancy apartment and cozy old house because of the gap between expectations for something fresh and sense of familiarity with something old.

 

Recently I had dinner with the CEO of a film studio. We talked a lot about a new cinema in the planning stage including a business model to make a connection between a movie storyline and webcomics or video game in particular. I concluded the biggest difference between the motion picture and the video game is that they take different forms to show something "novel" and "accustomed" while we were discussing the planning. I'd like to deal with the difference between the two content - the narrative-based film and the interaction-oriented video game - in the planning stage.

 

Let me introduce a story which I heard before. A busy moviemaker asked a screenplay writer to summarize his scenario in a single sentence and the scriptwriter replied that it's a story about a terminally ill woman and a man who loves her. Readers may recall quite a few films or TV series which are associated with the summing-up. There are probably Love Story (1970 American film) or The letter (1997 South Korean film); the roles of the man and woman in the local movie are reversed unlike the first, etc. The basic attribute of storytelling-centered content is based on its familiarity. Nevertheless, no one would want to watch an unexceptionable motion picture or a predictable television series all the time. So something unconventional is needed in the processing of delivering despite its familiar structure. The narrative-focused content is equal to a house. A bedroom, living room, and restroom are considered necessary spaces on its solid foundations, however, the house can be designed differently for its flow of residents, outer wall or interior decoration, and furniture, etc. No one would like the house which is uniform in its interior and exterior structure and where there are no rooms for bathroom or kitchen, etc.

 

Meanwhile, communication-oriented content is equivalent to a car. Many Korean tourists to Japan may have been troubled when they drive on the left side of the road for the first time. It may be harder for drivers to control gear of a car with their feet and brake and accelerator with their hands. Let's put this into a newly released video game of totally different gameplay with other existing game rules. Users may want to stop playing the game if they can't become accustomed to the new specific way no matter what they do. On the other hand, users will get tired of enjoying the game with a predictable result.

 

A film needs to show a new form of familiarity, but a video game should guide players to the familiar-seeming new world. While you can easily guess the owner of a house where you visit once, it's hard to notice who owns the car with only an automobile-interior photo. Of course, it wouldn't be used in all content. But I reckon that a content product manager needs to think more carefully about this issue.

 

 

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

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui