Nine Months in Poeedong 보이동

Nine Months in Poeedong

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Just last November, I moved here to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Korea</st1:country-region> with my wife and son to setup a new studio to make games here in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>. I have spent nine months now learning Korean, eating Korean food, living in a Korean apartment building, and most importantly working with Korean game developers!

The first question Americans and Koreans both ask me is why did I come to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>? Was it because the price of Korean labor is lower than in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>? Yes, that is true, but so is <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Thailand</st1:place></st1:country-region> and many other places. In fact, my wife is Taiwanese and I scouted out <st1:country-region w:st="on">Taiwan</st1:country-region> on two business trips before <st1:country-region w:st="on">Korea</st1:country-region>, and I assumed that I was going to setup shop in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Taiwan</st1:place></st1:country-region> – until I met the Korean people.

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It is the Korean people that make <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region> special, not wood, or oil, or strategic canal. Just a 50 years ago <st1:country-region w:st="on">Korea</st1:country-region> was utterly destroyed by war, and a generation ago <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region> was struggling to scrape itself into a strong country. Now <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region> is the 11^th strongest country in the world by today’s true definition – economic strength.

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Everyday I meet Koreans whose families have been horrifically devastated by the Korean war and before that the Japanese occupation. I truly do not understand it, being an American we are born without fear – we are safe – and we are taught we will always be safe. Somehow the Korean people picked themselves up, dusted off the blood and soil and forged a great country out of shear will power.

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This determination carries itself into the current generation – even in a industry devoted to innocent pleasure – games. Koreans love games – Paduk, Golf, Starcraft, Lineage – and business. Koreans are deeply competitive in the time just since 1995 (only Makkoya and a few other companies can claim to be older than 1995) or so the Korean game industry has created itself from nothing into the 4^th and close to the 3^rd strongest territory in the game industry.

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Koreans have achieved this through online games. Not single-player games that run on fixed hardware (consoles) or single-player or simple LAN play for PC games – no Koreans just got off to a bang with client-server massively multiplayer games. These are the most difficult games in the entire industry to create – at least twice as hard as a modern console game and perhaps three times as difficult as a packaged PC game, and of course mobile and webgames are much easier. So why did Koreans do this? Why did they attack such a difficult problem? For several reasons – piracy is the biggest – online games for the most part avoid the problem of piracy (although the Chinese pirate servers are doing their best to fix that!). But I think the answer is more complex than that. Koreans have a strong entrepreneurial drive – I thought as an American that we were on top of the world when it came to starting up new businesses – but its not true. In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, we are succumbing to the franchises – everything is franchised – from the basics such as food, hardware, pharmacy, to the most intimate of services – doctors and barbers! Online games eliminate the publisher and retailer for the most part and instead are created and run by developer-publishers. This puts the Korean developer in control of his destiny for success or failure.

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I came to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region> to learn. I came to learn how to make games in a market where you must give away the client for free. I came to learn how to sell games into <st1:country-region w:st="on">Taiwan</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>. I came to learn how to work internationally and do business with the world.

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I have been very fortunate and I have had a ton of teachers and people to help me succeed here in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>. From all the folks at Game Infinity – especially John Song, KIPA, KGDA, and many more individuals – but most especially Sean Paik of KBK and DH Hong of Makkoya.

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I have also come to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region> to share what I have learned. At my company we use UML and XML to better design and plan our games. I am also the coordinator for IGDA-Korea and I have secured a special 65% off discount only for Koreans to be members (go to www.igda.org/join/ and use the special discount code of korea_d65). I urge all Koreans working in the local game industry to join IGDA, there are many personal benefits such as a subscription to Game Developer and many discounts – but the best reason to join is to give Korean a bigger voice. Join the IGDA and nominate your favorite Korean games for the IGDA Choice awards – the truest international award for game development. You all make great games – you deserve to be heard load and strong.

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Those are just my first two reasons; my real reason for coming to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Korea</st1:country-region> is that I believe the future is being created in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>. In 2007 to 2015 I predict we will see a massive surge in broadband users around the world and at the same time acceleration of the rate of piracy around the world – even in North America and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The future of commercial gaming I believe is an online service. Any single player content on a disk console or PC will be pirated and any simple multiplayer experience that does not offer a compelling reason to join the real servers will be pirated.

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Koreans are the world’s experts in creating and marketing online games into what I call hostile territories due to piracy and very high thresholds before game players feel motivated to pay for a game.

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I meet a lot of Korean game developers who want to create console games for the American market with American publishers. This, in my opinion, is completely the wrong direction. It is going away from the Korean developer’s strengths and going into an area that the Japanese and the North Americans are most strong in. Also the North American market is very difficult with scores of important cities that your marketing must succeed in – not just one city like <st1:city w:st="on">Seoul</st1:city>, <st1:city w:st="on">Taipei</st1:city>, or <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tokyo</st1:place></st1:city>.

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Instead, I suggest I suggest that Koreans focus on the their strengths – online games in hostile markets and create dominate new markets such as <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Argentina</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Turkey</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.

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This is the future.

Originally posted on LiveJournal