South Korea Grapples With Online Gaming Addicts

Thanks to Yahoo News/Reuters for their story discussing the problems associated with online gaming addiction in MMO-crazy South Korea. According to the article, a 12 year-old named Lim's "love affair with the fantasy game [Lineage] saw him fall foul of the law after he stole $16,000 from his father and ran away to feed a passion for online gaming." This issue is particularly marked in Korea since "...about 70 percent of South Korea's 48 million people have access to the Internet, with 11 million using high-speed services, the world's highest broadband penetration rate." The article ends with the note that, "while some game industry alliances have been pushing game makers and distributors to provide purchasing guidelines, the likelihood of authorities imposing regulations that may pull the plug on a lucrative 500 billion won [$420 million] industry seems unlikely."

Comments

Re:Why South Korea?

[y0bhgu0d]

Now if the game was free upfront and it was only the monthly fee, I could be lured in...

Like the Korean MMORPG Ragnarok Online, perhaps?

Re:Why South Korea?

[sandalwood]

This is not a complete answer, but to generalize vastly, the competition is really fierce. Games are played to be won and to be a demonstration of skill. This permeates a lot of East Asian culture, and I am sure you could delve into history to find all kinds of examples of this, although anyone who's had a traditionally-minded Asian mom* will understand what I mean. Piano lessons, anyone? ;)

Accordingly, you "win" at MMORPGs by investing more time into them. I'm not saying their parents are making them do this, of course - just that the idea of "winning" is very important in these cultures.

There are other factors too, of course - high broadband penetration in South Korea and the group-oriented gameplay of titles like Lineage. I might add that being part of a group isn't just important in Asia, it's important everywhere. How many times have you heard people go, "Well, I really only log onto EverQuest to chat with my guild these days"...

*my mom is from Tokyo

Re:Why South Korea?

[NanoGator]

"PS: And why SHOULD I pay $10 a month for a game I already paid $60 for? Silly marketing execs. Now if the game was free upfront and it was only the monthly fee, I could be lured in.."

You do realize that it costs them money every month to run and moderate the on-line servers, right? MMORPG's aren't like Quake where anybody can host a server. Assuming service is good, the price is reasonable.

Re:Why South Korea?

[bugbread]

First, an aside: the US mantra may certainly be "be yourself", but it's just as conformist as Japan or Korea. It just doesn't like to admit it.

On topic: There are many reasons for MMORPG success in Korea; I'll take a stab at mentioning one that hasn't been mentioned so far.

(Although it's a chicken-vs-egg argument), the wide range of people playing means that you are not necessarily playing against the stereotypical l33t h4xx0r or "30 year old in mom's basement" types. This increases the appeal for regular folks, as they realize that they are playing against other regular folks. This removes a lot of the stigma attached to games like this, and also makes it easier to meet up with friends from real-life within the game.

Re:my 2 cents

[jafuser]

I played it for about 2 weeks before I became completly bored with it. I kept thinking to myself.. what is the point? I level up so I can get better weapons so I can kill bigger animals so I can level up so I can.. etc.

This is what we call in the MMO industry, treadmilling. It's working hard to get nowhere.

Some games make it obvious and unrewarding, but many have managed to disguise the treadmill with entertaining content (and these games go on to become successful). It can all depend on the game you're playing. I've not personaly tried FFXI, but I've played a few other MMO games (E&B, AO, SWG).

I spent about 6 months on Earth & Beyond. It was a very fun game, very social, and the treadmill was not too bad in the first 2/3 of the game. The only real problem I had with it was that it had a short feature list (ie no automatic selling), and I was interested in trying something more sophisticated.

I spent about 2 weeks on Anarchy Online. I got tired of doing the missions, and it seemed like there was nothing else to do, since PvP was not a realistic option until I had finished treadmilling. There was also little to no crafting ability, and very few people were open to socialize with a "newbie". =(

I spent about 4 months on SWG. I got in on the beta testing, and had a blast exploring all the new stuff and chatting with people who were game enhusiasts more than they were 'l33t d3wds'.

Once the game was released, it was still a fairly fun atmosphere, but it slowly degenerated into 'l33t d3wds' and people became less socialable. Also, by this time I had seen most of the content that was available to the game, and new content was very slow to come.

I think the problem with SWG was that they were all tied up with bugfixes that they had no time to add significant content in the first few months of release.

Finally, I found Second Life. =P I can't really expect that I will ever get bored here, since 95% of the content is made by the people who play it. It's not really even a game so much as a large simulation world. This is the closest thing we have right now to a metaverse.

I had heard of SL back when it was in beta, but what finally hooked me to try it was when I heard that it let everyone write scripts to put into the objects they build.

When I finally did the free trial, I realized the world looked a whole lot better than the website depicted it, and that it is a lot more flexible and friendly than I thought was possible in an online environment (minimum age of 18 could have something to do with this).

I think I've realized the problem with most online games is that the developers can't keep things fresh enough for all the users. This is why I think online environments that give the players the tools to create ALL of the content will become more popular as people get bored of the levelling treadmills.

I guess SL is a lot like slashdot. The developers give us bits of things to get us started, but we create and enjoy most of the content. I think this is the best way to go, and will definitely keep things interesting (and very addictive) for a long time to come.

Anyway on the topic of game addiction in South Korea, I think it has a lot to do with:

Availablilty of Technology + Social Acceptability to Enjoy that Technology

In the United states, we have a good amount of the former, but not much of the latter.

In the US, most people use technology only a tool. We have no more interest in it than to get the job done, so they can go home and watch friends or hang out at the bar. We don't need to upgrade because their current computer runs Word 97 just fine and that's all we need. Also, we don't have many "gam