More on the Opening of Korea's Smart Phone Game Market

As noted in an earlier post, the Korean government has decided to open up the market for mobile games, by eliminating required government ratings.  Bloomberg's Business Week has an interesting follow-up article on this development. It included the following description of a game developed in Korea that was not available to iPhone users in Korea until now.

Air Penguin, a game in which players guide an animated penguin across an icy landscape, jumped to near the top of the iPhone gaming charts last spring. Yet until now the game hasn’t been available to iPhone owners in the home country of its creator, Seoul-based Gamevil. That’s because South Korea has long required game makers to submit their products to the government for review of their suitability for various age groups based on factors such as violence and sexual content.

I particularly liked the illustration that accompanied the Business Week article (click to see a full size version).

Korea Eliminates Required Government Ratings of Mobile Games

As reported by Bloomberg, customers in South Korea will soon be able to download Rovio Mobile Ltd.'s best-selling "Angry Birds" on their iPhones. Korea scrapped rules yesterday requiring developers to have mobile games rated by government, said Yi Ki Jeong, a manager at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Seoul. The rule clashed with internal policies at Apple and Google Inc. (GOOG) enough for the companies to shut their mobile-game stores in the country, keeping Rovio and other developers from offering their products in Korea, Yi said.
“A new chapter is opening in the Korean smartphone-game market,” said Jang Woo Jin, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities Co. “With the rule out of the way, we can now expect Apple and Google to throw open games in Korea.”

Massive Multiplayer Online Games in Korea

South Korea was the first nation in the world where massive multiplayer online games (MMOG) became wildly popular, and the reason is fairly simple and straightforward.   South Korea built fast nationwide fiber-based broadband networks years before most other countries.  The point has been made over and over in this blog and in my new book with Dr. Oh Myung, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society (Routledge, 2011).  In the U.S., a 1994 by Vice-President Al Gore in which he argued for the need to build information superhighways, was heeded by South Korea, which implemented an ambitious Korea Information Infrastructure (KII) plan the following year.

The building of South Korea's broadband infrastructure and the spread of PC Bangs (Rooms) were necessary but not sufficient conditions for online games to thrive.  Today I ran across a very interesting post on the Massively blog about the origins of Lineage, a MMOG with which NCSoft struck gold years ago in Korea.  It is well worth reading.  It says in part:



So let's back up the memory truck to September 1998, when a then-fledgling NCsoft rolled out a Diablo-esque isometric MMO and struck virtual gold in South Korea. At the time, gaming rooms were becoming a huge thing in the country; a recession had hit (giving people a lot of time with nothing to do), and the government was rapidly expanding the broadband network. In the face of this perfect storm, titles like StarCraft and Lineage became overnight household fixtures -- and the country hasn't looked back.



What makes this post even more interesting to me is that the offices of our new Asia Center to Advance Educational Exchange are located just down Teheran-ro from the corporate headquarters of NCSoft.  Also, I've just read  the excellent book by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read, Total Engagement:  Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete.  I will definitely need to pay them a visit!

The Dilemma for Korea's Online Game Industry

The Korea Times earlier this week carried an excellent article describing the dilemma posed by its online game industry. The nation's policymakers recently decided to limit the amount of time that Korean youngsters can spend playing their favorite online games. The new online gaming curbs prevent gamers under the age of 16 from playing between midnight and 6 a.m. to combat addiction.   The age and the time period were the result of a compromise between the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, which had advocated imposing the limits on gamers age 14 and under, and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which had proposed restrictions for all gamers under the age of 19.  Eventually, the Blue House had to step in to referee the conflict between the ministries.

The dilemma is clear.  Stronger restrictions on online games also restricts the growth of the industry, while a lax approach which encourages industry growth may contribute to more internet addiction.  The dilemma is being exacerbated by the mobile broadband revolution.  The country’s existing rules require all game content to be screened by government reviewers before reaching customers, and critics have been questioning whether such rules are relevant in an era when more games are played online than through CDs or game cartridges.
Apple and Google have been forced to prevent its Korean customers from accessing the game categories on their content platform, as Korean censorship officials have no prayer of reviewing and approving the flood of games released by Apple’s massive network of developers every day. This has also prevented Korean games developers from marketing their products to local customers.
As noted by an official of one local gaming firm, "The Internet has no boundaries, and the new regulations have no grasp of the reality. Young users can easily log-in to a foreign online game service after we stop providing them after midnight."

Mobile, Immersive, Interactive Entertainment

I was catching up on Eli Noam's periodic contributions to the Financial Times and found his excellent article on the future of mobile entertainment in a July issue of the paper.  He points out that, at certain times of the day, there are already more Koreans watching television (DMB) on mobile handsets than on conventional television sets.  However, the heart of his argument is that the experience of mobile television is soon likely to be transformed into an immersive, interactive experience that equals or exceeds the quality of watching television on a large screen.  This will come about through new display technology involving eyeglasses or "heads up" displays, and other technological improvements.

South Korea's already strong position in multiplayer online games is likely something that can be translated into successful business in mobile multiplayer games.  Also, it is worth noting that there is a serious aspect to games.  If you don't think so, just check out www.seriosity.com

Korea's Growing Game Industry

I wrote a short post back in February about South Korea's Game Science High School, and thereby at least made a nod in the direction of the game industry within this country's information economy.  However, since that time, I have learned a great deal and today's news compels this posting.  According to statistics recently released by the Korea Game Industry Agency, Korea accounted for just over a third of global online game sales last year.The revenues posted by Korean online game companies totaled $2.41 billion in 2007, or 34.5 percent of the worldwide online game market.  The figure included $781 million worth of online games exported by the Korean companies.  According to  Business Week Online's "Eye on Asia,"  a report released this week by Pearl Research, a San Francisco-based consulting firm specializing in the Internet and technology markets, shows top Korean game portals such as CJ Internet's Netmarble, NHN's Hangame, and Neowiz's Pmang can attract 500,000 to 1 million unique visitors a day. More than 10 million Korean adults visit game portals every month, according to its estimates.  That's more than a fifth of the whole population.

Two English websites that provide useful background on the game industry in South Korea and its place in the world are the Korea Game Industry Agency site and the Game Industry Total Information Service System site.  I will obviously have much more to say about this important and rapidly-growing industry.