West Truly Meets East for the First Time

G* 2005 - <o:p></o:p>West Truly Meets East for the First Time

<o:p> </o:p>I am sitting here live at G* 2005 / KGC 2005, and I am hearing a panel debate being moderated by Andrew Cho the President of KGDA (the Korean equivalent of IGDA), the panelists include Raph Koster of SOE, Gordon Walton currently in ronin-mode, Jason Della Rocca of IGDA, Marty O'Donnell (Bungie's Sound guy), Ken Shim of Xbox KOrea, Ahn-il Chang of CCR.

<o:p> </o:p>It is surreal seeing all of these familiar faces here in Seoul again, it seems like it was just the week before that so many of us were at the Austin Game Conference.  Before that China Joy hosted many of the usual suspects.  Kiyoshi Shin of IGDA-Tokyo I see at all of these events and he made me smile when I saw him taking a nap against the wall of the espresso stand in the new beautiful Kintex convention center – inconveniently located well outside of the Seoul.

<o:p> </o:p>Let me turn to a live reporting mode for a bit before reflecting on what I have seen here at G-Star and KGC2005.

<o:p> </o:p>The Korean panelists are talking about the sobering side of making games.  Andrew is the first one to throw out a Blue Ocean reference saying that the Korean game market is crowded at that the Koreans need to head to South East Asia.  (In case you have yet to read Blue Ocean, let me give you the summary – Blue Ocean means creating business in open spaces, and Red Oceans mean stubbornly competing with everyone else in a crowded market.  The whole of the book says that the authors' research has concluded that the Blue Ocean products make a lot more money than Red Ocean products. Okay... right.  However, the authors could not find any reliable method for finding Blue Oceans.)  A note to the readers, the Koreans have not been slacking in the hunt of South East Asia, virtually all of the gaming in South East Asia is playing Korean online games with the only exceptions being Counterstrike and WoW.  I am not sure how much blue is left in the seas of South East Asia.

<o:p> </o:p>Mr. Chang is lamenting about small game company owners that are selling their homes to stave off bankruptcies.  He is imploring these small studio founders to understand their skill, talent and financial limitations and to respect the challenge of making games.  This is sage advice for every game company I know of...

<o:p> </o:p>Raph Koster echoes the main concern that games (especially online) are just too expensive to create.  Marty O'Donnell of Bungie shoots back with Raph and disagrees, he sees games costing $50 million to produce and $750 million in gross revenue as an example that there is plenty of money to be made in the big budget games.  While I liked everything else Marty had to say later, his viewpoint from the tower of Bungie and Halo land had me question his grip on the reality of the rest of the world game industry.

<o:p> </o:p>Blue Ocean and Red Ocean would have to be mentioned about a dozen more times.  Sigh, I guess it does sound more Castle-Rockish to say Red Ocean than to say an overcrowded marketplace.  Saves some syllables, maybe it is a useful meme after all.

<o:p> </o:p>Let switch back into reflective mode.  As I listened to the Korean speakers they were surprisingly dour and negative on the market of online games.  They felt that their local market was saturated, that the local industry was stuffed too full of competition both good and bad.  They also felt that their industry was likely to remain stagnant going forward.  This was shocking to me as nowhere in the planet has the business model of the games have gone from packaged, to online subscriptions, to advanced casual games, to the item based model so fast – indeed the rest of the world is slowly pondering along behind the pace of Korea.  Why could not these guys perceive their dynamic change?

<o:p> </o:p>Gordon, Raph and Marty are all very positive in their words many references to hell with the suits and the numbers and just build your dreams.  In fact Raph's whole keynote was a very eloquant monologue on the role of Destinty.  The Destiny talk sublimely acknowledged business, money, and the executive dilemnas behind the finance of games, but set aside those issues as simply the logistical overhead and a side issue from the real purpose of creation and connection.  I was moved by Raph's talk to scribble furious notes in my notebook about dozens of features we should get going on in GoPets. (This happens to me at any game conference when I hear a good speaker – I just start scribbling.)

<o:p> </o:p>The weird thing is that the Americans would talk about dreams, but the North American market is notoriously conservative with only the big movie-like licenses getting funded.  Games like Puzzle Pirates, Hardwood Spades, A Tale in the Desert are all self-funded bootstrapped oragnizations that the western publishers, retail publishers, gamers, and press as dismiss as quaint, interetsing hobbyists but not real games.

<o:p> </o:p>However, in the east, especially Korea we have online games about street basketball, go-kart racing, golf, sandwich making, boyfriend pet simulators, six-player Tetris, multiplayer bomber acrcade games, mini-home page sites, western MMOs, eastern MMOs, and dozens more wacky games.  But it is these same Koreans that were most dour verbally, but very willing to take risks commercially.

<o:p> </o:p>I will have to set these opposing thoughts aside until I understand them.  Pulling back even further on the whole of the event, I have to say that G* and KGC 2005 were impressively well run this year, well exceeding my expectations based on being here in Korea for the past couple of years and attending all the major Korean conferences going back four years.  The game show floor was spacious with all of the booths and mega displays enjoying great clear walking ways.  The sound was also under control which was very welcome compared to the truly injurious sound levels of China Joy.  Gravity I think had the nicest attraction of a four-women band playing a chello, drums and two violins.  There were scads of amazing booth babes that everyone enjoys.  There was no surprise game of the show and everything on display had already really been announced or played.  The main purpose of the show was for game buyers from portals in South East Asia, China, Europe and other markets to come and see what the Koreans are offering this year.

<o:p> </o:p>Way too many people were spending big money on an advanced casual game version in the same vein as Freestyle Basketball.  All of the other major sports were represented in this category as well.  The most talked about game from the other industry insiders I talked to was NeoBaseball from HanbitSoft.  However, like the Freestyle guys the HanbitSoft folks were not impressing anyone with their manners at the deal tables.

<o:p> </o:p>This conference was the first time the Westerners as a whole actually listened and thought before speaking.  I will not say who, but one of the speakers had already written up his speech based on what he assumed to be true about Korea before visiting for the first time.  To his credit this speaker went around and talked to people before his talk, and learned several new conflicting ideas as well as many of his assumptions were wrong, and then went back and re-wrote his talk.  Later that day this speaker came up to me to tell me how many of the audience of his talk came up and thanked him deeply for doing real research about Korea.  This is a great example of Westerners beginning to respect the East, especially Korea and to listen, then think, and then speak.  This is in great contrast to the last few years when the westerners would just come in and download to the Koreans whatever the sales pitch for their company was and then jet for Incheon to get on the plane back to the states.

<o:p> </o:p>Now, for the first time is dialog.

-Erik

Originally posted on LiveJournal