Korean Job Discussion Forums

[myenglishisno]

There are a few games on the Korean "market" (PC Bangs) now that are replicas of American games. I played Battlefield Free2play at home and then I went to a PC Bang later on and fired up Battlefield Online expecting it to be the exact same thing. Instead, it was just a watered down, arcade version of the original.

I find this with most Korean games. They take a good game (FPS or otherwise), copy it, reduce it to it's simplest parts and release it. All the complexity is gone and often what's left is just a twitchy arcade game that looks to be about ten years old. Pretty much every shooter plays just like Sudden Attack, which is an inferior CS knockoff, which itself is pretty dated and out of the mainstream due to the fact that people are bored with it.

So I'm curious... why are Korean-made PC games so simple and boring, considering how often Koreans play PC games?

[eamo]

I've a little theory that this is because of the PC bang boom in the late 90's/early 2000's.....

During that time a huge percentage of young Koreans were in PC bangs playing the online games out at that time, most significantly Starcraft, and I think they just fell in love with the look and feel of those games. So started the PC game culture in Korea.......

And it still persists. The current generation of young Koreans have inherited the PC game preferences from their older brothers, uncles, fathers, whatever.

Also, PC bang computers don't really have the horsepower to play newer games at decent settings.....so they play the old, clunky looking titles.

[nukeday]

apparently they make internationally famous mmorpgs

[Bloopity Bloop]

[myenglishisno]

[crossmr]

Aion is Korean, which is very big around the world.

As far as engines and games go, they use a wide variety of engines. AVA uses Unreal 3, and one was one of the first games to do so.
There are a host of new games being released fairly regularly in Korea.


*Warcry (Fantasy FPS, magic dwarves, etc)
*Hessian (first cover based shooter)
*Battlestar (RTS vs FPS, bugs are RTS humans are FPS)
*Battery is a FPS that has health packs, no fixed bases, (spawn points randomize depending on where people are) and dead players sometimes drop other interesting things like artillery strike options
*Another Day is a FPS based on jetpacks and helmets that can be blown off (and actually impacting gameplay. Lose your helmet lose some heads up info)
*Psychic online is based around the use of Jedi like mind powers including repulsion, invisibility, and slowing other players down
*AVA is one of the first FPS games to use the Unreal 3 engine and still a decent game with some unique gameplay modes
*Blackshot has a defend the bunker gameplay mode as well as a couple other interesting features with the guns and armor.
*Wolfteam You turn into wolves.
*Metalrage (unfortunately just closed down, it had been around for a few years) was actually a giant robot fighting FPS

You're right. So repetitive. Yeah sure, Sudden attack is popular, but there is far more out there beyond that.

As far as Battlefield is concerned, EA has a fairly large stake in Neowiz, the owner of the Pmang portal. You'll actually notice several EA games on that site, and that is why.

and as to the graphics, I find most of the newer games look great maxed out on my 460GTX. Yes, they scale, that's the point, but set them to high and they certainly don't look bad or off-putting.

[myenglishisno]

[crossmr]

[methdxman]

[vDroop]

Korean mmo's tend to suck.

Guildwars and Guildwars 2 are American. A company called ArenaNet makes them, NCSoft (Korean) is just the publisher.

Aion (NCSoft) is big here but failed hard in the west.
Lineage and Lineage 2 were huge in Asia but not in the west.

Tera, is the next one. It released here in December 2010. The west is hyped and awaiting an English version but Koreans feel it's a failure over here already.

The games look pretty but lack any real depth or content, and tend to have a huge level grind, which most western players will not tolerate.

[crossmr]

[vDroop]

[red_devil]

Korean games FPS or MMO have much different style of preferences, gaming culture, and styles of play. Most Koreans play these games: Starcraft, WoW, Sudden Attack, CS, and AION. A lot of Korean games aren't popular in the US but a lot of US games aren't popular in Korea either. Also the business models are very different. Koreans are used to F2P with digital downloaded games launched via an internet portal website at a PC cafe, but US games are driven by retail purchasing like BestBuy and Gamestop where you get a physical box, DVD, etc. (because download speeds blow in most parts of the world...) and people play from home by themselves. Oh and Koreans don't like to read English if they don't have to.

Almost the entire Sci-Fi genre isn't popular in Korea...including the big ones like Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, etc. Same with comics. I met so many Koreans that loved the movies Spiderman, Dark Knight, Ironman but had no idea they came from comic books...Koreans are still very much living on an isolated peninsula..

[myenglishisno]