The Blue Oceans of Korea
Despite the 36+ hour door-to-door transit time, I was very much looking forward to my first trip to Korea. I was invited by the Korean Game Development & Promotion Institute (the game support arm of the Ministry of Culture) to lecture on industry issues during the Korean Game Conference.
The first thing you notice is how infused gaming/games are into Korean culture. They are simply everywhere and no one really questions their place among other forms of art and entertainment.
Coming off of the Montreal Summit just a week prior, I was quite taken back by the opening keynote that echoed much of Warren Spector's discontent with the industry. HakGyu Kim, the CEO of Ragnarok Online creator IMC Games, referenced the "Blue Ocean Strategy" book as a call to be more innovative, take more risk and reach out to broader audiences. (Raph Koster took much more extensive notes on the keynote.) In effect, finding the "blue ocean" became the underlying current/theme of the entire conference as nearly every subsequent speaker referenced Kim's comment in some fashion...
Overall, KGC was a solid and well organized conference, with an impressive 2000+ attendance. Sadly, aside from the keynotes, the majority of sessions by Korean developers were not translated. So, instead of learning more about the Korean industry, I was mostly "forced" to listen to fellow North American speakers. This is something they should work on for next year as the try to attract a more international audience.
Running alongside KGC was the more E3-like game expo G*. Taking a quick spring around the expo floor, there were a lot of interesting looking games. But, what is most startling is when you realize that, despite similarities to E3, none of these games will ever hit a retail shelf! Korea is so overwhelming based on the subscription model, digital downloads and the burgeoning RMT approach (ie, real-money-transactions for in-game goods), that there is literally no retail side to the industry (of course, originally prompted by overwhelming piracy, as gman comments below).
Luckily, I had a bit of free time on the Saturday to head into downtown Seoul. Travel virgin, Marty O'Donnell (from Bungie) was happy for me to hold his hand as we wandered about... (see the touristy photos way below)
Posted on November 13, 2005 12:25 AM
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Tracked on November 2, 2006 02:36 PM
CommentsMy understanding is one of the reasons you saw no retail games is because there is no market for them being that all games that can be pirated are. Malaysia is the same way, retail games get pirated to the level where there is zero point in making them but subscription games etc still have a market.
Posted by: gman at November 13, 2005 12:08 PM
Heh, we were probably at the same palaces at the same time on Saturday! 
Posted by: Raph at November 14, 2005 02:46 PM
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