| Bubble Hall, Run Kart, Dungeons & Dragons...
Chinese gamers' youth memoirs are missing another big guy. According to foreign media reports, Kim Jong-joo, the founder of nexon, a well-known South Korean game company, died in Hawaii, the United States, at the end of February this year, at the age of 54.
NEXON's well-known online games such as "Adventure Island", "Bubble Hall", "Run Kart", "Rocky", "Dungeons and Warriors", introduced by Shanda, Tencent and other companies, are widely popular in China and have influenced a generation of Chinese players.
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most well-known IP, and many players have been impressed by NEXON because of this game. "Every time I open the game, I can see the NEXON logo, and I thought it was a studio under Tencent, but I didn't expect it to be a big Korean company." One Dungeons & Dragons player recalled.
Compared with his company, Kim Jong-joo himself is quite low-key, and there are few reports of Kim Jong-joo himself in the media Chinese. It is such a low-key foreigner who has led the Korean game industry to rise from the desert and influenced the game memories of a generation of Chinese players.
When it comes to game development, Kim Jong-joo is good at avoiding the mainstream and digging for gold in unexpected places: he focuses on PCs when console games are popular; he develops 2D games when 3D games are in the limelight. Each victory to avoid the mainstream has further increased his influence in the game industry.
Kim Jong-joo
In cooperation with Chinese companies, Kim Jong-joo is good at dancing with long sleeves. Shanda is an agent of Bubble Hall in China, and in September 2006 NEXON lobbied Chen Tianqiao to sue Tencent for QQ Tang infringement, which became the first transnational copyright infringement case in China's online game industry. In 2008, NEXON became a partner of Tencent, Tencent took the agency rights to Dungeons & Dragons from Neople, and in 2008, Neopole was acquired by Kim Jong-joo and became a subsidiary of NEXON.
Outside of the business world, Kim Jong-joo himself is saddled with controversy. There are Korean media reports: Kim Jong-joo is tired of the negative impact of social and state policies on the game industry, and also tired of the endless accusations against him personally. The most serious of the allegations was in 2016, when Kim Jong-joo was exposed for bribing a senior prosecutor for 900 million won and illegally profiting 12 billion won for it, and the prosecutor was eventually dismissed from his post and charged, and Kim Jong-joo was forced to resign as chairman of NEXON until 2018, when he was acquitted.
Kim Jong-joo suffered from depression and had been treated for a long time, but his condition deteriorated further before his death was revealed. He gradually lost his happiness in the pain of illness, and the game empire he single-handedly built is now weakening day by day, and in recent years, NEXON has not been able to produce new blockbuster games, relying on the old IP to maintain its business, and gradually losing the ability to create happiness for players.
A
At the beginning of February this year, the "Dungeons and Dragons" mobile game was announced in Hanbok to be scheduled for March 24, but it did not cause a warm response among Chinese players.
And just 10 years ago, in 2012, every version update of Dungeons & Dragons Hanbok attracted the attention of Chinese players - Hanbok updates were faster than National Costume, and players wanted to grasp the movement of the game in advance.
2012 was a milestone in Dungeons & Dragons' operations in China, with Tencent announcing that the game had more than 3 million simultaneous online players in China. When the "Dungeons and Warriors" national service was just launched, Neople and Tencent's expectations for it were "the highest simultaneous online users reached 300,000", and to the surprise of both parties, the first year of the national service launch, this data exceeded 1.5 million.
The game's success was the beginning of more than a decade of tight bonding between NEXON and Tencent, which helped Tencent jump from sixth to second on the list of domestic game companies in 2008, surpassing NetEase and approaching Shanda. The game's huge success caught Kim's attention, and NEXON quickly reached an acquisition deal with Neopol, the developer of the Dungeons & Dragons game, to buy Neopla for less than 2 billion yuan.
Source: Dungeons & Dragons official Weibo
According to the Korea Economic Daily, Tencent pays NEXON about $890 million a year for the game alone, and the share fee for only one year is far higher than the price of NEXON's acquisition of Neoplace that year. Tencent regrets missing out on the deal, and at the 2009 China Game Industry Summit Forum, the host asked Tencent President Martin Lau: "What would you most like to do if you travel back a year ago?" Martin Lau replied, "Rush to South Korea and buy Neoplor."
At the beginning of the cooperation, Kim Jong-joo taught Martin Lau a lesson with a neat acquisition, and the Martin Lau who had returned to the taste no longer hesitated to give in to the "League of Legends" developer fist game, and finally Tencent defeated NEXON, which also participated in the bidding, with the advantage of rapid capital mobilization.
NEXON and Tencent are partners and competitors. The two acquisitions have won and lost each other, and the game products of the two acquired targets have become classic games in the PC era in the future, and also reflect the industry acumen of Nexon helmsman Kim Jong-joo.
Kim Jong-joo is good at digging gold from niche markets that are not optimistic about the outside world.
In 1994, Kim Jong-joo, who was still studying, founded NEXON in his university dormitory. At that time, console games were the mainstream of the global game market, but Kim Jong-joo chose to invest in the field of PC online games.
This may be related to his personal background, Kim Jong-joo's family is well-off, he was exposed to computers at a very young age, and later admitted to Seoul National University to study computer technology.
At Seoul National University, Kim Jong-joo met Yoo Jae-kyung, who later became the father of South Korean online games. Together, the two developed NEXON's first game, The Land of the Winds, and were so successful that nexon earned its first pot of gold.
Later, Kim Jong-joo's senior, Kim Taek-chen, founded NCSoft and poached Liu Jae-kyung, and the MMORPG "Paradise" made by NCSoft became the most influential online game in South Korea, and the two companies have since become rivals.
Because of Paradise, none of nexon's subsequent MMORPG games have been successful. Kim Jong-joo intends to avoid its sharp edge again, he acquired Lodumani Studio, the studio's IP "Bubble Hall" into the pocket, and then Lodumani Studio used the character image in "Bubble Hall" to develop "Running Kart", which became another explosive IP after "Bubble Hall". With these two IPs, Jin Zhengzhou knocked on the door of the Chinese market.
Kim's keen sense of smell for popular games comes from an in-depth understanding of the player community. The early NEXON didn't even have game testers, the feedback came from players, and once the R&D team's proposal was rejected by players, it had to be torn down and restarted.
B
Several acquisitions laid the foundation for Kim Jong-joo's position in the Korean game industry, but soon, the acquisition of the "Bubble Hall" gold sign brought trouble to Kim Jong-joo.
Later partners Tencent have developed two games that are very similar to "Bubble Hall" and "Running Kart" - "QQ Hall" and "QQ Flying Car". NEXON's market share of two games was eroded, and Shanda wrote in its second quarter 2006 financial report: "Its casual game Bubble Hall suffered an 'aging' problem after 3 years of operation, and the revenue of the casual game business fell by 17.8% compared with the previous quarter." ”
Under the persuasion of Chen Tianqiao, NEXON launched a lawsuit in September 2006 on the grounds that Tencent was suspected of copyright infringement and unfair competition, which became the first transnational copyright infringement case in China's online game industry.
The lawsuit ended with NEXON losing the case and attracting the attention of Nintendo's legal department — because "Run Kart" was not original, but copied Nintendo's Mario Kart.
In the dispute with Nintendo, NEXON lost again, and as compensation, Nintendo got NEXON's most profitable IP", Adventure Island. Adventure Island came from a game company called Sizet, and Kim Jong-joo used up all of the company's liquidity in order to acquire Sizet.
The acquisition gave NEXON a game that lasted for fifteen years, but it also cost too much money, which indirectly led to the departure of developers, and the company's research and development capabilities fell sharply, and NEXON has rarely seen popular new works since then.
The acquisition of Neople, the parent company of Dungeons & Dragons in 2008, was Kim's last successful deal, and more than 10 years later, Dungeons & Dragons remains an important source of revenue for Tencent and NEXON.
The considerable benefits brought by several acquisitions have allowed him to be at the top of South Korea's rich list for a long time, but the drawbacks of a large amount of money for acquisitions are also obvious, and NEXON's own innovation and research and development capabilities continue to decline. As the Korean game industry put it: After NEXON went public in Japan in 2011, it began to focus on how to make business data look better, rather than developing games.
This indirectly led to the failure of Kim Jong-joo to sell the company later. In 2019, Kim announced the sale of a 98.64% stake in NXC, which he and his wife jointly held, for $16 billion. NXC is the parent company of NEXON and holds a 47.98% stake in NEXON.
At that time, the outside world believed that Tencent was the most likely potential receiver – the interests of the two companies were highly bound in the past decade. However, Tencent did not appear in the bidding list in the end, and other bidders failed to give a price that satisfied Kim Jong-joo, and the transaction was abandoned.
NEXON itself is not worth much, and what is really valuable to Tencent is Neople, the developer of Dungeons & Dragons. For Tencent, taking NEXON in its entirety is not cost-effective and troublesome. It is reported that Tencent had intended to acquire Neoploid separately, but Kim Jong-joo refused.
NEXON, which failed to trade, also tried to save itself, launching a mobile game version of "Running Kart", but the popularity was far less than its PC-side products; the "Dungeons and Warriors" mobile game that was pinned on high hopes jumped tickets several times, consuming the patience of players. It is reported that the "Dungeons and Warriors" mobile game is not operating well, the game has undergone several debugging, and the quality has not reached Tencent's standards, which is also the reason for its delay in launching.
From the failure of the bidding for the fist game, to the failure to sell the company, to the missed mobile game outlet, Jin Zhengju left NEXON with several IP that can still make money, but is aging. Although NEXON is still the largest game company in South Korea, the era belonging to Kim Jong-joo and NEXON is gradually fading away with the rise of mobile games.
Resources:
"NexON "selling" failed to make adventure islands and DNF, where to go from the leader of online games" Sohu
"Korean game giant Nexon's $16 billion equity deal is in vain? Tencent has participated in the bidding for the Southern Metropolis Daily
"Korea's largest game company Nexon founder Kim Jong-joo died at the age of 54" IT home
"10 trillion won no one to take over, DNF parent company "sold" failed" TopGame
"Nexon halo fades Where is the Korean game industry? Play more news centers