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The State of Korean PC Gaming
Gamasutra has up a feature on the world of PC gaming in South Korea, a country well-known for their love of online play. Nick Rumas, the author of the piece, takes us further behind the scenes of a country stereotyped by swarms of screaming StarCraft fans. He looks at what is hot on store shelves, discusses the reality of illegal game downloading there, and walks through the ten most popular online games in the country (StarCraft isn't even #1). From the article: "That, in a nutshell, is where the PC gaming industry in Korea currently finds itself. Physical retail is dead, and while that isn't going to change any time soon, it's a rather insignificant issue, because the online market is the only one that really matters here ... The world of PC gaming in Korea may massively dwarf that of consoles, but Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are engaged in their own little war on the peninsula, as well."
While there are a lot of obvious things in the article, there are a lot of things I hadn't read before. It's worth reading just to see where America might be going (on the other hand, 'net cafes aren't doing as well around here, so who knows?) Worth giving it a read.
It seems like being able to spend real money on a game is a big draw for Koreans. While people in the US don't seem very eager to warm up to paying more for in-game content Koreans seem to be all over it. I wonder if it's a cultural thing or just the fact that all of the good games happen to have micropayment stuff tossed in.
I read the internet for the articles.
Not enough minerals.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
From what I can gather from the article and from the Korean gaming trends... Starcraft would have been #1 if only there was an ability to buy in-game upgrades and items using a cell phone. Such an interesting culture, I'd love to visit there someday. (South Korea, that is)
Well, everyone in South Korea already has Starcraft, there's no reason any of them would still be buying it :P
I lived in South Korea, at Yongsan, from 99-2000. I can tell you, I enjoyed the PC rooms immensely. I was in the army and I had a group of friends who were geeks, of course, and we all fell in love with the PC rooms right away. As the contributor's article said, you just pay a couple of bucks and sit down to these decent sized CRTs(probably LCD now)and go to fragging. The Korean gamers were quite accepting and we used to have some heated american vs korean fights as sometimes we'd go into a place 4-5 strong and most of the shops only seated about 10-12. I really thought this sort of thing could take off in more metropolitan areas in the US, but I haven't seen much evidence. Another cool thing, although most of you will probably roll your eyes, were the naure'bons(sp?), or singing rooms. Basically, they had little places you could go, with 4-5 small rooms that could seat 6-8 people, and this TV and karaoke machine was setup and you had a table in the middle with a book of songs. Cheesy, but immensely fun and in most of the places you could buy beer so that was a plus. Of course now the consoles have the karaoke games, but this could be popular---a lot better than karaoke bars in my opinion.
Anyway, if anyone ever gets a chance to go to South Korea, do it. I wish I could go back, it is a fun culture and a lot of it is westernized, good or bad, but they're used to Americans by now.
Kart Rider aparently is big enough to have televised tournaments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfjCBZ63HDo
RTFA.
There was an entire paragraph on Kart Rider.
I've found that almost all Korean-made games are either MMO Grindfests that offer no new gameplay (Lineage II) or are free-to-play little online games where they make money by selling in-game items for money that kick the ass of all non-money items. (GunBound, PangYa aka Albatross18 aka Super Swing Golf, etc)
Essentially they hate MOST games that don't have that MMO element of "time or money spent in/on the game means you're ALWAYS better than the guy below you."
Super Swing Golf and its online counterpart Albatross18 are actually a VERY nice golf game, though. Think Hot Shots Golf but online. Great course designs and decent friendslist-type things.
And I can tell you e-mail is for old people.
My roommate is from Korea and he plays StarCraft for many hours every day. How strange it was, then, when I learned that he had never played the single-player campaign at all! Basically, most people in Korea never play single-player video or computer games. They only play games like StarCraft, Lineage II, or Sudden Attack online with their friends. I asked him if he had ever heard of popular games such as Halo, Gears of War, Civilization, Counter-Strike, etc. but he has never heard of any of them. I think StarCraft, Lineage II, and Sudden Attack are the only games he has ever played, but he plays them for at least several hours every day. Very different from the Western hardcore gamer, who typically owns 100's of games.