Once upon a time, Korean games occupied half of the domestic game market, many players are still secretly proud because they are playing "imported products", but with the development of the domestic game industry, the existence of Korean games has become minimal, and in recent years, it has been almost forgotten, and even the most die-hard Korean gamers have forgotten the taste of kimchi.
In the face of the lack of Korean tourism, many netizens attribute it to the impact of the "Korean restriction order", believing that there is no trace of Korean online games in China, and in the overseas market, Korean online games are still the top existence in the industry. This kind of thinking is undoubtedly full of "fan filters" for granted, and the 2022 Korean Game New Year Greetings truly show us the true status quo of the current Korean game market.
According to media reports, not long ago, a number of veteran game companies in South Korea announced their development goals in the new year through New Year's greetings. In the exposed content, not only lack of pursuit of game quality, but also reveal signs of "fried cold rice and speculation". For example, the entertainment virtue company that once made a lot of money with "Legend of Blood", the biggest goal is to hope that the blockchain game developed by itself will become the "key currency of the game industry", and the research and development company of "Miracle MU" Wangchan also said that it will graft the blockchain cause in its own games. Com2us, South Korea's largest mobile game producer, has announced that it will launch a meta-universe platform and will work with the blockchain economic system to "connect the real world and the virtual world." ”
Old IP hype, blockchain and meta-universe, these speculative words have become the "top priority" of South Korea's oldest and largest game manufacturers, revealing such a helpless reality for us - South Korea's game industry has long been in a bottleneck, there is no future to speak of, for this reason, game manufacturers can only hope for speculative products, hoping to temporarily boost the company's stock price with human greed. What is causing this situation is, in the final analysis, the limitations of the Korean market.
As we all know, South Korea is only a very limited island country, in the early years because of betting on the online game industry, South Korea's game industry did achieve a certain leading position, but South Korean games have had a fatal wound since its birth, that is, the weakness of the cultural core. The Korean games that players often talk about refer to those empty games with monotonous gameplay modes that only emphasize Korean aesthetic graphics. In the early years, when the game was scarce, this fast-food product could still meet the needs of players, but when the game industry developed to a certain level, this thin content would naturally be abandoned by players.
In fact, the most critical factor for the development of the domestic game industry is also the fierce competition in the game industry, forcing relevant practitioners to dig deep into the cultural core to launch high-quality content that can impress players. Take NetEase's martial arts online game "Against the Water Cold" as an example, when this game is developed, the official production staff will grasp the "cultural" factor, the historical background of the game is set in the most prosperous period of the Song Dynasty, the development team also uses "History of Song" and a large number of essays describing the customs and customs of the Song Dynasty, in a total of hundreds of thousands of words of information on the history of the Song Dynasty under the data, try their best to restore the game according to historical facts, and strive to let players experience the wind and bone of the Song Dynasty era a thousand years ago across the screen.
In addition to cultural characteristics, in terms of gameplay content, domestic online games are also constantly innovating. To this day, many Korean online games are still following the core of the gameplay of fighting monsters and leveling up more than ten or twenty years ago, but only using the operability and technology that looks more tall to increase the threshold of players. In the more than three years since its inception, "Against the Cold Water" has continuously enriched and improved the playability of the game, not only integrating the popular "self-propelled chess" and "eating chicken" gameplay into the game, but also announcing that it will launch a subversive "open world" gameplay in the latest expansion pack, with a 2400 square kilometers of super map to create a new other-world survival experience for players. This way of constantly improving the playability of the game and adapting the game to the player rather than the player can meet the needs of the majority of players as much as possible and get more support.
So, what do you think of the current state of the Korean game market? If you had to choose, would you play Korean games or Chinese games?