Trends in the South Korean mobile game market

hello everyone and the president of Keene Ville USA so okay so about about game build um so we we were one of the first mobile game developers in the world earlier today was interesting to see David bloom talking he was he used to run em for month back in the days and then he was talking about Barry Bonds so Omran history I think that was the game that we developed so we started from a very small developer and yet I was constantly coming to the US just to get more deals with the publisher so I think now and now we're on the publisher side so it's it brought back a lot of old memories and like yeah my Pocket Gamer

was always there too so I'm really glad to be part of this event so we started in 2000 we went through all of the feature phone era we did j2me brew games and then once the smartphone came around I think it really turned around our business so we have our own 550 employees right now more than half a billion installs on iOS and Android we have offices all around the world now and we also have subsidiaries and the most noticeable one will is probably come to us which we acquired a couple of years ago so yep so we're public with this company you can see our growth we came from we started from zero I think just just like everybody here and then last year I think game villain come to us revenue

combined together we we passed around half a billion in terms of revenue yeah with come to us and end us we have a thousand two hundred employees and we have fifteen different branches so what we thought was like on the App Store there's the Apple and Google has some amazing stuff for us but what they do is they only provide the distribution of the builds and as a publisher we thought like how can we really add value to the to the developers and we thought in the games as a service era I don't think all the developers can afford to build out all of the infrastructure in order to do life operations so we built out we we set up like a lot of different offices just to provide light live operations in 14 different languages we also built out huge back end tools so that all of the developers can use that who work with us

so I think so I would say I was really thinking about like what should I talk Chris told me to talk here and there's so much good information on like a penny and like new zoo and all of those reports I think everybody can get get the numbers correctly Korea is a big market it's the fourth largest market we have around 50 million people but an interesting thing is like around half of the 50 million which is around 25 million lives around Seoul so it's a it's a it's it's kind of like Singapore in some way you know but at a bigger scale so everybody lives in the same city and so word-of-mouth is so easy and then like everybody so this happens in a highly populated area but I think everybody's so competitive it's it's a Korean nature it's maybe maybe it's the peninsula thing but it's not Korea's Koreans are very hot-tempered

tempered they're also very competitive and I think the best way to understand the Korean market is you have to understand that Koreans are very competitive you know even when you're drinking with Korean Korean friends you know they have to drink the same amount as you you know just to see who's winning you know so they're very competitive and so I think that's one of the most important things that you really have to know about Korea and so early in Korea the government had regulations on like what type of games you can service and so gaming was an area where you had to get approval from from from the government and since the AppStore couldn't get approval from all for all of their games in Korea the store wasn't open though only the entertainment category was open so there was no games and what happened was the carrier stores actually took on took on

I took advantage of the of that up opportunity so SKT k TF and LG t which are the three top carriers that they opened their own stores and so the tell-tell co-stars was the biggest store for the carriers and then once the Apple regulation and all of those things got resolved a big thing that happened was the introduction of the messenger platforms which Kakao in line so and so there was a big wave of cacao online just like Facebook games that happen you know so the same thing happened there were there the Zynga of Korea was named marble and so they rose really quickly with uh with with with the help of the cacao platform and so the the market grew so big that you know like so new marble was like probably a number four or five publisher and in the

PC era and then they were so close to running out of business and they were like we have to turn around the ship and the only way to do it is to move to mobile quicker so what they did is they brought all of their PC online talent and then they shifted 100% to mobile and then they went all-in and they executed very well and I think that's the reason why they grew so fast and then so the market totally changed Google Play which was which was in a lower position than the telco stores they actually rose because cacao was rising so fast so and everybody who was on the cacao platform they were playing games that led to the Google Play Store and so everybody got totally educated about the Google Play and Appstore and then of course new marble and these companies become so big

and they're they establish a brand on mobile and they don't need cacao in cacao anymore and then it's now they're all going directly so so um there's still a lot of good games top games on cacao it's because games nowadays they run for a very long time so it's the same game that's running for multiple years all of their new games are published under their own names so it's tell you a funny funny story you know um so I met a old developer who was around not not that old he's about my age but he's he's almost getting near 50 and he said when he first joined that company he was like 20 and then after he service launched three games now he's 50 it's what he was saying so so that's

that's what that's a typical Korean MMO MMO game developer he's so lucky because he launched three games because you you launched three games and then you have to do live operations you do it for at least like seven years or so and so if you if you do three games that's 20 years so and I was like I launched 200 games I think and yeah I've been in this industry for 15 years but so that's and that really shocked me you know I kind of got to understand what it is to live as a PC MMO game developer and so if you look at the publishers in Korea this is the amount of employees that they have so Nixon has 4,500 name Marvel 3,500 NCsoft 2002 under newest thousand there so these are all companies that are making like Nixon and numerable they're

making more than a billion dollars in revenue and all of these other companies are also making at least 100 million plus you know and I couldn't list everything but all the companies on the left they come from a PC background and the right which are us you know and for 33 they come from a mobile drab background so there's so much talent in Korea that's been there for such a long time and when when when these guys were looking at them Marvel launching new titles and then like making tons of money and and launching games you know so all of these uh the PC online MMO game developers got shocked you know they're like I probably I work for as he saw for more than a decade and I never launched the title there's there's a lot of people like that you know because the projects get killed for a lot of different regions and you know like so all of these a lot

of these developers started leaving and then creating their own Studios launching on cacao and what happened it's like there's an infinite competition of games that are happening in the market so all of a sudden the Korean production level became so high compared compared to the rest of the world even nowadays in Korea if you're number one for like three months you're so lucky the the charts change every day every every three months you'll see another big game that everybody's playing so um so I'll show you some of the games that were launched I think Monster Academy I'm not sure if that's the right translation but that was one of the first hits by name marble blade was a

game action RPG by 433 dragon blaze was a game Ville published game seven Knights is another collection RPG by name marble Raven so an action RPG by name marble and hit is a action RPG by Nexon but you can get the idea so this is this isn't it marvelous first big hit that really changed the market it's a action RPG a lot of collection aspects this is still probably one of the top games in Korea seven nights it's it's it's also a top game now in Japan too and yeah in the western market I'm seeing it more and more often in the top hundred - so beautiful art this dragon blaze which we launched in Korea it's still it's been like more than 2 years now this plate

yes and this is Raven and this is hit so um so as you can see like so all of these titles these action-rpgs they're like number one for two or three months and then the next one comes with better quality and and then even better quality before you're just attacking and then now you can defense and so they added a lot of and then before you had a you had a cap to what type of weapons you can buy for your character but now you it's suddenly all unlocked from the beginning so like there's a lot there's a lot of tweaks to the monetization a lot of improvements to to the video to the quality of the game and I think just the Korean and since it was getting so much

money all the VCS also got excited they're pouring in more money they're grabbing more talent from the top studios to set up a new company and then let's make it public it's so easy to make a public company in Korea so so this this positive cycle really helped the Korean market gaming companies compete better in a global level so I think game villain come to us was a little bit sidetracked because we came from a mobile origin area and then we were always trying to do something more on a global space and where all of the Korean companies there right now they're still competing in Korea and the marbles slowly coming out to the market won by tacking one on market after one and you'll see all of those top quality games coming over to the West more and more I think no Marvel it's probably gonna launch at least a dozen games in

the next next year or so so this is someone or swore we were so lucky to have this as a hit um and I think one of the true beauties of this game was that it's a top 20 title everywhere around the world and if you click that revenue it's actually pretty big I think the games making close to 400 million dollars a year now this is another action RPG this was actually we actually published the game from a former PC online gaming company and you know first months they're making more monies on mobile than than they are on on PC so yeah and this is a marvel future fight by name Marvel this is actually a reskin of the very first mobile game that you saw in Korea so which is a which was the

monster Academy game so it's the same development team they got the IP and then they rushed this out but but it's still very good you know so and imagine like if they take there they have so many good engines they have so many good piece online development talent and now what they're doing what Nomura was trying to do is they're trying to work with more and more Western IPs so that it's easier for them to expand their footprint in the in the West so so so I think I talked about like all of the competition the competitiveness of the publisher and the App Store's but I think the most important thing is are like really the gamers they really in Korea everybody before they play a game they read through all of the blogs and then they look at like what are the what

is the best way to start the game what are the reviews how are the are the people people playing it there's actually a term called reset ma reset ma is a reset in marathon which means there's a lot of games where they give you a gotcha upon box at the very beginning and they want to start really well so if the if the first cut show that they get is bad they'll delete the game and then though restart it again and then delete the game restart against of it they'll do it until they exactly get the best character possible because it makes such a big difference depending on who what you're playing with at the very beginning so this is this is kind of like one of an example that shows like how hardcore the Korean gamers are and they buy before they play - so I think all of the Western people if once they come to a roadblock that's when they start buying stuff but in Korea they know that if you buy it since they fully

studied the game they're fully committed to the game they know that it's much more easier to buy and then play the game rather than grinding through the whole stuff so if you're playing clash royale they'll just drop like a hundred bucks at the beginning you know instead of like grinding through all of that because they know that they want to play to win so and and if if they want to win they know that they have to pay so they're so ready there's already the the the purpose of them playing games is not actually to enjoy I think it's it's to win their latest photo and and if they if they're playing a game to win they won't play games that don't have PvP you know so you definitely have to have P be in there and and since they're not enjoying the game itself you know they don't really need the battle you should you just you just want to go through that as quick as possible so that's so

you definitely need auto battle and in there and a lot of people are like in Korea they in the US I think parents spoiled their kids by having personal TVs in their rooms or in Korea that you don't get personal TV so mobile is your your only personal device and especially because also Korean education is so competitive you know you're not you're you the only way that the teenagers can cram in time to play games is to play on their mobile devices but they're stuck at school like I when I was at school in Korea I went to school at 6 a.m. and then I came back home at 12:12 a.m. every day my in high school and so because we wanted to go to the best school and if you want to play games in that environment you have to play games at school and if you want to play games at school without getting caught by your

pick up your your teacher you have to play secretly alright so you have to turn on the auto battle keep it in your desk every time the teacher is watching somewhere else somewhere else pull it out press a couple of buttons and then put a pick in and it's the same way at work - like they're invested and they're embarrassed to play games at work so they put it in the pocket and then after the auto battle it usually vibrates so they take it out and then they press a couple of buttons put it back in - so you really have to understand how competitive these Korean people are and how much effort they that they put in just to play games and they only want to play games that other people are also playing so and so it becomes very important for for publishers to make it a big thing that

everybody plays rather than targeting a niche market you know so it's so mass marketing is very important which I'll also show you show you some examples so so these are like top top class celebrities like they used to only do like Samsung and SK Telecom advertisement but now they're all all all of the top celebrities in Korea have done mobile games jang dong-gun tell someone you know so this is mu and this is Raven those are the most popular comedians show Pro variety show celebrities in Korea they did candy crush on that's a subway and this is also a bus this is super self this is the biggest mall in South Korea the COEX

mall supercell took over and the mall at the center of the mall and they also did everything on the wall there so yeah I think I think I'm getting a little bit short on time but I'm almost done and this last night yeah but anyways what I wanted to tell you is that the Koreans are very competitive and you have to understand you have to do something you have to create a very competitive environment for the Koreans so that they can enjoy your game and I think that's pretty much it thank you very much