'Serious games' rising as new growth engine

Clockwise from top, Talklish, Lulu’s Monkey Land and EcoFriendz are among the emerging ‘serious games’ with educational or social purposes.

By Chung Ah-young

From healthcare, education and defense to public service, “serious games” are reaching out to a variety of sectors with a clear mission of education or training. The concept of the serious game which was invented to refer to the games with a primary goal of providing education and other social functions is still new in Korea. Its presence however is dramatically growing in the world scene.

Industry insiders say that for the next 10 years, non-entertainment games are presumed to be among the most potential sectors, expecting to uplift the negative image on conventional games.

The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) has decided to support the serious games from development and production to promotion with more than 1.5 billion won this year as part of the efforts to nurture it as the driving engine in the nation’s future growth.

The government’s support in non-entertainment games reflects the current dramatic market growth happening in the world stage, including Korea. According to recent data collated by iDate, a European market research agency, the global market of serious games which is valued at $3.1 billion grows by 70 percent every year on average and is expected to reach $8.8 billion by 2015.

The domestic content market is worth of 151.8 billion won ($134 million), representing 4.6 percent in the global market but has invaluable potential for the future growth along with the mobile games industry. The market size of the serious games in the United States in which they are originated reached $360 million in 2011.

The KOCCA supported the development of a serious game titled “EcoFriendz” in association with the National Committee for the Republic of Korea of the United Nations Environment Programme and NHN, the nation’s major portal service provider, for the first time in 2009. EcoFriendz is an education game to raise awareness for climate change and environment and develop how to cope with it.

Also, the state agency has aided other serious games for helping Alzheimer’s suffering patients improve their cognitive function, multicultural children learn Korean language, the handicapped improve their speaking ability and consumers save energy.

“In the case of the United States whose serious games industry takes up some 60 percent of the global market, the government’s support was essential in the early stage. So we are boosting the serious game industry to expand its horizon in various sectors such as defense and healthcare in cooperation with the relevant agencies,” Hong Sang-pyo, president of the KOCCA, said in a recent statement.

The agency also held “2013 Biz Sharing Day” in which game developers and business partners shared their needs in February, seeing the positive outlooks of the serious games.

As part of the government-driven support, “Hangeul Detective _ Hana and Duri” developed by T3 Entertainment, a sister company of Hanbitsoft, a game publishing and development company, in association with Seoul National University’s language institute is a case in point.

The game is designed to provide a mixture of Korean language education and entertainment. The online adventure detective game in which a user learns situational expressions in Korean in the process of finding a stolen national treasure based on historical information. Users can learn the Korean language while searching for stolen treasures. Given the diversity of the users’ backgrounds, the 34-stage game includes national treasures and historical sites from various nations such as the Philippines, China and Thailand.

Also, “injini” and “AAC” developed by NCSoft was demonstrated at the 2013 PyeongChang Special Winter Olympics in January. The games are designed for mentally challenged people and those who have communication handicaps in collaboration with Seoul Asan Hospital to attest to the game’s treatment possibility.

“Injini’ is a tablet PC game that aims to improve the cognitive ability of mentally challenged children; “ACC” is a table PC game for children with communication difficulties. The games were first introduced in the United States last year, receiving rave reviews for their functional aspects. The developer is planning to launch the games in Korean versions free of charge in Korea as part of the efforts to contribute to society.

“Talklish” launched by Dreamers Education is garnering attention with its effective English education program which enables learners to enhance English conversation ability. The game won the Game of the Month given by the KOCCA in the serious games category in 2011.

In the defense sector which is the most actively applied among the serious games, “War Game,” a simulation program, is testing the possibility of the effective military training, pitching up the necessity of the cooperation between the game corporations and defense sector.

“Lulu’s Monkey Land,” a policy promoting game co-developed by NHN and the Ministry of Justice, is designed to help people familiar with laws through entertaining activities. In this game, users are supposed to enact laws in a chaotic monkey society.

Kim Seok-min, general manager of T3 Entertainment, said that the Korean serious games industry is now beginning in its stage and it has a lot of rooms to grow for the future as serious games can be used for diverse purposes in social welfare.

“In many European countries, serious games are being used as social programs to help those who are in need of help such as the elderly suffering Alzheimer’s disease and medical assistance. So Korea might be quickly catching up such a trend,” he said.

“Now the conventional chimney-industry is no longer a driving engine in the nation’s competitiveness. The game industry which is rapidly coping with social change is the blue ocean the nation should explore,” he said.

Also, the current situation of the Korean game industry, which depends more on online games, should find a new model for a breakthrough to sustain its strong presence of the game industry. “We also should adopt mobile platforms to boost such serious games,” he said.