Game market shifting gears

NCsoft rising, while Blizzard declining

By Cho Mu-hyun

The online game market is changing fast as old Korean powerhouses tighten their grip while some major foreign firms are losing favor. Instead new foreign firms are rising to replace them.

Blizzard Entertainment recently announced that it will launch the commercial version of Word of Worldcraft’s (WoW) fourth expansion pack Mist of Pandaria on Sept. 25.

American game company’s massive

The multi-player, online role playing game (RPG) was a steady source of revenue for eight years but is now in a gradual decline with subscribers here and around the world. Global subscription declined to 10.2 million users as of March from 12 million in 2010, according to the firm.

A big portion of gamers play RPGs at home, so I estimate that there are more players playing WoW than “some data suggests. However, it is still difficult to be sure

that the upcoming expansion will extend the life span of this now rather old title,” said a cultural content professor based here.

Development teams for WoW have shifted their focus to a new game, tentatively titled Tribune, which casts doubt on whether much attention will be paid on the soon-to-be-released expansion pack.

Blizzard’s Diablo 3 released in May have seen its popularity plummet after rival games were released despite pre-release hype surrounding it. The game is currently third in Internet cafes, according to research firm Gametrics.

The standard barometer for measuring a title’s commercial popularity here is the amount of time that it is played in Internet cafes widely across Korea.

StarCraft 2, a real time strategy game released two years ago, has disappeared from the charts altogether, even though it has an E-sports league of its own. There are two planned expansions, which will “only boost recognition temporarily when they are released,” said the professor.

The earlier version of StarCraft, now over 10-years old, maintains popularity with a three percent ratio playing time thanks to its status as a “classic” game.

Riot Games, founded in 2006, has risen to become the American company most talked about here recently thanks to its League of Legends.

The game was launched in 2009 in the United States and eventually here in November last year and is now No.1 in playing time as of Thursday. It maintains its position at the top of the charts against major titles produced by much larger studios.

Based on the “Defense of the Ancients (DotA)” series with a customized map within Warcraft 3, users pick a hero and fight enemies from the opposing side while automated underlings fight each other.

“I was at first skeptical when a friend told me that a game based on DotA was released separately,” said Son Yong-han, a college student here. “But after I tried it out, I found the characters endearing and fun.”

Korean firms that emerged in the early 2000s when foreign firms were dominant are now higher up the food chain.

NCsoft’s is buoyant thanks to its recently launched Blade & Soul, a martial arts themed role playing game taking place in a fantasy world. The game has won out over Diablo 3, which requires a monthly fee to play.

The company led by Kim Taek-jin is one of the most famous game developers here, owing to titles that include Lineage and the Guild War series, and Aion, which are all online RPGs.

The nation’s biggest game developer Nexon, known for developing casual games rather than blockbuster releases, has hot titles that may just ensure its position in the future.

Nexon will showcase two new titles, a shooting game called Shadow Company and another one about which no information is available, at the world’s largest game trade fair Gamescom 2012 to be held in Cologne, Germany from August 15 to 19.

According to a statement released by the firm, Shadow Company, developed by the Nexon-owned game developer Doobic Studio, takes place in a world where corporate mercenaries fight over a new-energy source.

The company’s Maple Story, released in 2003, is still a relevant game, especially among children and teenagers. It still employs a task team working on patches that maintains the server.

Another well known title by the firm is Sudden Attack, a first person shooting game, which has always ranked within the top ten.

The firm marked revenue of 1.21 trillion won last year and is the biggest exporter among Korean rivals. As it now has a majority share over NCsoft, the alliance between the firms is expected to help them reach foreign markets, according to analysts.

The Korea game market was valued at 9.11 trillion won last year, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.