By Cho Mu-hyun
Anybody who plays games on mobile devices will be familiar with constant pop-up ads and enticements to buy in-game items for cash. More than once, they may have clicked that annoying ad or bought an item they needed to get a higher score.
Some consumers are protesting against game companies' overly aggressive sales tactics to entice money from the lucrative mobile market.
Mobile game distributors such as Internet giant NHN and Korea's No.1 game maker Nexon have increased their number of commercialized games in recent months, which industry observers believe is due to a substantial increase in mobile users here.
In 2010, when the smartphone market was just burgeoning, most games were offered for free as game makers needed to draw users in.
"More and more users will turn from free to paying as companies gain stronger loyalties from consumers," said KDB Daewoo Securities analyst Choi Hoon. "The ad marketing on these games will also increase, because that is where the main revenue will come from."
Korea now has more than 37 million smartphone users, making game distributors confident there are enough potential users that at least one will buy a game they offer, instead of choosing one for free.
One widely used strategy by game distributors is to first offer a title for free, with the catch that ads will appear during game play. Once a user is hooked, they offer an alternative, "ad-free" version for purchase.
"Sometimes the ads get so annoying that you inadvertently click that ‘purchase' button for the ad-free version, and decide, ‘oh what the hell' and press ‘agree,'" said Jun Song, 28, who plays mobile games to kill time on the bus or subway.
The tactic has a double benefit for game distributors of making advertising clients happy, while giving a chance for a good payday for developers of ad-free versions. "I don't mind paying cash for games that will contribute to developers who really put efforts into their games. But I think a lot of these games aren't so hard to develop and are mere rip-offs from old titles," Song said.
Another issue alongside the ads is the in-game items that are sometimes exorbitantly expensive.
Most mobile games have multiple currencies: ones that are easy to earn within the game, and one or more that are rarer, or sometimes exclusively accessible by cash. Rare goals or features in the game are usually the latter.
One example is a farm-building game called "Wooparoo Mountain" by NHN's game unit Han Game. Users create habitats for certain creatures and feed them in a farm-like mountain.
One creature, called "Goldy," costs 3,000 diamonds. Diamonds are a rare currency in the game, and 4,800 of them can be bought for 110,000 won ($98.50). To compare, the recently released Heart of the Swarm by Blizzard for PC costs 36,000 won, meaning a single in-game item in a mobile game can cost more than an entire game for a desktop computer.
"Most of the time, achieving some goals in a game can take days, but if you pay cash it will be done in a single click. It's extremely annoying," said Jang Haet-nim, 32, an actor who enjoys playing simulation and building games.
Though the average data use for long-term evolution (LTE) subscribers is 2 gigabytes per month, analysts say there are enough "heavy users" that spare no cost in playing high-quality games, who use up to 10 gigabytes. These users, a majority of them teens, are more likely to pay exorbitant amounts to play the games.
"There is always a niche for heavy users that will subscriber to expensive price plans to play games and watch videos," said HMC analyst Hwang Sung-jin.
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Some consumers are protesting against game companies' overly aggressive sales tactics to entice money from the lucrative mobile market.
Mobile game distributors such as Internet giant NHN and Korea's No.1 game maker Nexon have increased their number of commercialized games in recent months, which industry observers believe is due to a substantial increase in mobile users here.
In 2010, when the smartphone market was just burgeoning, most games were offered for free as game makers needed to draw users in.
"More and more users will turn from free to paying as companies gain stronger loyalties from consumers," said KDB Daewoo Securities analyst Choi Hoon. "The ad marketing on these games will also increase, because that is where the main revenue will come from."
Korea now has more than 37 million smartphone users, making game distributors confident there are enough potential users that at least one will buy a game they offer, instead of choosing one for free.
One widely used strategy by game distributors is to first offer a title for free, with the catch that ads will appear during game play. Once a user is hooked, they offer an alternative, "ad-free" version for purchase.
"Sometimes the ads get so annoying that you inadvertently click that ‘purchase' button for the ad-free version, and decide, ‘oh what the hell' and press ‘agree,'" said Jun Song, 28, who plays mobile games to kill time on the bus or subway.
The tactic has a double benefit for game distributors of making advertising clients happy, while giving a chance for a good payday for developers of ad-free versions. "I don't mind paying cash for games that will contribute to developers who really put efforts into their games. But I think a lot of these games aren't so hard to develop and are mere rip-offs from old titles," Song said.
Another issue alongside the ads is the in-game items that are sometimes exorbitantly expensive.
Most mobile games have multiple currencies: ones that are easy to earn within the game, and one or more that are rarer, or sometimes exclusively accessible by cash. Rare goals or features in the game are usually the latter.
One example is a farm-building game called "Wooparoo Mountain" by NHN's game unit Han Game. Users create habitats for certain creatures and feed them in a farm-like mountain.
One creature, called "Goldy," costs 3,000 diamonds. Diamonds are a rare currency in the game, and 4,800 of them can be bought for 110,000 won ($98.50). To compare, the recently released Heart of the Swarm by Blizzard for PC costs 36,000 won, meaning a single in-game item in a mobile game can cost more than an entire game for a desktop computer.
"Most of the time, achieving some goals in a game can take days, but if you pay cash it will be done in a single click. It's extremely annoying," said Jang Haet-nim, 32, an actor who enjoys playing simulation and building games.
Though the average data use for long-term evolution (LTE) subscribers is 2 gigabytes per month, analysts say there are enough "heavy users" that spare no cost in playing high-quality games, who use up to 10 gigabytes. These users, a majority of them teens, are more likely to pay exorbitant amounts to play the games.
"There is always a niche for heavy users that will subscriber to expensive price plans to play games and watch videos," said HMC analyst Hwang Sung-jin.
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