The much-anticipated release of NCsoft's role-playing game, ``Aion,'' is hoped to inject new energy into the sluggish gaming scene hungry for a breakthrough. / Korea Times File |
Stricken Game Industry in Collective Prayer for Aion’s Success
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
A decade after the launching of ``Lineage,'' the iconic role-playing series that redefined the industry of computer gaming, NCsoft is now pressured to deliver something just as big.
The company hopes it has an heir apparent in ``Aion,'' the much-anticipated online fantasy game that becomes available to the public on Nov. 11 through an open beta test.
The success of Aion is not only crucial for NCsoft, desperate for a rebound, with ``Tabula Rasa'' looking more and more like a massive flop, but also to the domestic gaming industry as a whole where the paucity of excitement has become alarmingly evident.
NCsoft unveiled the business strategies for Aion in a lavish news conference in Seoul Thursday, which even involved an appearance by company president Kim Taek-jin, someone usually as visible as the character from ``Where's Wally?''
`We hope that Aion can be the rain to the online game industry's lengthening drought,'' Kim told reporters.
``From the start, Aion was aiming at a global audience and we believe it is capable of becoming an international hit. Our goal is to generate 50 percent of Aion's revenue from foreign markets, and it would certainly help the global profile of the Korean game industry if it is able to hold an intellectual property (IP) that is an international hit,'' he said.
Following its domestic release, NCsoft will also publish Aion in China, the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia and Taiwan, company officials said.
Old Script, New Props
Aion, a multiplayer role-playing game that follows the formula of NCsoft's other popular franchises Lineage and ``Guild Wars,'' is the product of a four-year, 40 billion won (about $28 million) effort.
The game is set in a war-torn mythical world where players can choose from two playable factions for combat, questing and role-playing.
Although Aion clearly belongs to the same breed of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) such as Lineage and ``World of Warcraft,'' the global industry standard of the moment, NCsoft is trying to differentiate by using sophisticated action features, which now include flight and aerial combat.
It's hard to imagine rival game companies rooting for NCsoft, the industry's undisputed kingpin, but that is the reality of a domestic gaming scene that hasn't seen a mega-hit in the past few years.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to make a difference in the saturated local market where gamers have been growing cold to the cookie-cutter emulations of World of Warcraft and other previous hits.
Once the darlings of the KOSDAQ market, investors have been snubbing the stocks of online game publishers as well, with only NCsoft and Neowiz Games trading above 10,000 won per share.
NCsoft can ill-afford another expensive failure after Tabula Rasa, developed by famed game developer Richard Garriott, is proving to be a monumental bust.
It took the company seven years and an estimated 100 billion won to produce Tabula Rasa, which earned less than four billion won in the first-half of this year.
Garriott is estimated to have earned around 18 billion won by unloading his shares of NCsoft, which would have definitely helped him purchase the $30 million ticket for his recent journey to space abroad a Russian spacecraft. The multimillionaire game guru, who is returning to Earth Friday, isn't expected to have any role with NCsoft once he gets back on his feet.
``The success or failure of Aion will not only affect NCsoft but have a tremendous impact on the market as a whole, as it will be a key indicator of the industry's growth potential,'' said Park Jae-seok, an analyst from Samsung securities.
The company hopes Aion will generate about one-third of the revenue posted by Lineage II, its biggest hit product. Lineage II posted about 133 billion won in sales last year, so the annual revenue target for Aion is about 44 billion won.
Since about 30 percent of the open beta participants convert as paid-users after commercial launching, NCsoft needs to gather north of 330,000 users during its testing period to have a chance of making the revenue target, Park said.
Clash of Titans
Aion will have competition in its bid for supremacy as rival game publishers like Blizzard Entertainment and CJ Internet are releasing their ambitious new titles ahead of the winter high-demand season.
The World of Warcraft is the reigning king of the role-playing genre and Blizzard is expected to release a second expansion set, titled ``Wrath of the Lich King,'' on Nov. 18.
CJ Internet also began the open beta test for ``Prius Online,'' another role-playing hopeful, Thursday.
NCsoft has to feel fortunate for avoiding direct competition with ``Warhammer Online,'' a popular role-playing game by Britain's Games Workshop, which is slated for domestic release early next year.
And Blizzard's ``StarCraft II,'' expected to be the talk of the computer game industry for years, won't be stealing Aion's thunder as it is also expected to debut in 2009.
Perhaps the biggest enemy for NCsoft might be its own, past success. There are skeptics in the industry who predict that Aion, rather than bringing a significant number of new customers to NCsoft, will end up cannibalizing the audience of ``Lineage II.''
This wasn't a problem during the transition between Lineage and Lineage II a few years ago, as the online game market was still growing at a fast pace, and three-dimensional graphics and other advanced features separated the sequel from its predecessor.
``I don't think that the overlapping of customers will be as big an issue as some think, considering the users of Lineage II aren't likely to migrate massively considering the loyalty built by online communities,'' said Kim.
thkim@koreatimes.co.kr
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yistory@koreatimes.co.kr
