The Gadget Show #27
The Gadget Show #027 (MP3 – 13.4MB – 38min 54sec)
I’d been planning to chat with a friend of mine here in Australia for some time. Peter Anderson is involved in the World Cyber Games, which to me sounds like an awesome excuse to crank up the old console for another play. Peter and I chat about the games, Korea, and the latest gaming generation.
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TIME
00:00 Network intro
01:05 Summary and Flock
07:00 Peter’s background
10:10 Business Director for Game Power Australia. What’s that entail?
12:10 How you got involved with World Cyber Games
15:50 What is the World Cyber Games
17:30 Korea’s affection for gaming and technology
20:45 Major money in Sponsorship for Gamers (Australian IT Article)
25:45 How much effort it takes to be a competitive gamer
29:40 Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
35:00 World Cyber Games Finals in November.
37:30 Thanks
October 28th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
Hi! I heard you’re preparing a show for game industry and going to cover a little of Korea’s status. Here I post my essay written in early this year. I hope this helps you understand Korean game industry.
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Starcraft : They like it. So it becomes industry
The Game
First time I saw it was last 1998 when I was in army. After finishing routine job, we played it and think it’s fun. Also we realized it’s addictive. But that’s all. Nobody expected it would last almost 10 years, professional gamers would turn up and even it created such a considerable size of industry for itself.
Starcraft is a computer game, specifically said, real-time strategic simulation game. U.S company, Blizzard, made it in 1998 and blossomed in Korea exceptionally. Whatever it is categorized and called, it’s merely a game. Everyone expected it would be popular for 2~3 years and disappear like any other games. It’s getting more popular on the contrary. Even game plays are publicly broadcasted for the first time in 1999. And people think it’s funny and fresh but still had no doubt it’s temporary. It was wrong. Totally wrong.
Still Popular
Of course there’re better games being released and enjoyed by many people but not like SC. Why? It’s important. Why its popularity is not faded away?
Settled
It’s like chess and paduk now. Once they are used to it, they stick to it. They don’t like to change rules but like to create strategies. Try to count how many board games like chess exist all over the world. But really few of them are known and played worldwide. They’d rather create new strategies than adapt to new rules if it’s not worth it. SC becomes level of chess and paduk to young people in Korea. Even they think it’s one of the ways to make money or cool job like celebrities and professional paduk player. Isn’t it funny? Making money by just playing game? But gamers become professionals in reality.
People love them
Who is the most well-known Korean worldwide regardless of generations? It’s ‘Slayers_Boxer’ – Lim Yohwan’s ID. He is known not only in Asia or certain place but also all over the world. They call him ‘Boxer’ in short. He is more popular than Yon-sama or President definitely in cyber world.
They don’t cheat. Don’t have dirty scandal. Don’t do drunk-driving. Don’t’ do drugs. Only purely practicing, showdown and go back to friends again. They’re not dirty unlike many celebrities. They never let fans down.
And there’s an unignorable factor that it’s getting popular. Girls like it. Precisely they like gamers. If they didn’t like it or them, it would lose half of popularity. Maybe more than that. Once they fall into something, they’re more excited than boys.
Become industry - Big corporate sponsorships.
If one thing is very popular with people, it naturally becomes a measure of making money.
Most of telecom company, for instances, SKT, KTF, Pantech&Curitel owns game team now. Game team and league sponsorship matches with corporate promotional image very well. It’s young, new and fresh. Critical thing here is cost effective media exposure. Compared to other sports team like soccer, baseball, it’s much cheaper to maintain and has much effective exposure through cable stations broadcasting computer games only. With these reasons, more and more companies consider to acquire SC team.
Future
However there are obvious limitations and also potentials coexisting.
Gamers are young. Most of them started from under 20. So they should go to military service one day for 2 years at least. It’s fatal to them. You bet it is the end of gamer’s life as they join.
They can’t play games forever. Then what they’re going to do after quitting gamers? Ex-baseball player can be a coach in high school. Can they be like that? No chance. They didn’t study enough and had no skill but playing game. What to do? Not clear answer for that. Virtually no one ever went to there so far.
Until SC leagues are sponsored very well from corporate, it will survive. To be sponsored, it must be entertaining and be able to compete with new fancy games. Seems not easy so. But no competitor at all for the present.
One of the potentials is range expansion. Number of people playing and watching SC are increasing. Various people are enjoying it. So it is expanding a pool. Professional gamers are from that pool.
All this might be a Korea only phenomenon. So it can be a good cultural product. Among active gamers in SC team, there are American, Canadian, Aussie, French and so on. Some people abroad are willing to pay to watch online broadcasting. Based on this phenomenon, Samsung organize WCG(World Cyber Games) like Olympic. It holds every year at selected city in the world.
Anyway, I’m very interested in game itself and how game industry, especially SC, will be transformed or settled. And what they’ll be after leaving gamers’ life. Everyone is watching carefully its change and evolution.
Interesting Facts
-A couple of weeks ago, one of the major titles was gone to Park Taemin. 25 million won(Almost 20 grant in US dollar) for championship prize. He is 21 years old.
-There’re 170 professional gamers registered.
-Last summer, 100 thousand people crowded to watch SC league final game in Busan while 40 thousand in baseball all star game. Cable threatens broadcast in an audience rating survey. SC league final overwhelmed baseball all star game against teenage survey(SC : 9.77%, BB : 6.37%). In twenties, it’s close (SC : 10.39, BB : 11.34% ).
-The highest annual salary is 200 million won(Almost 150 grant in US dollar) for Lee Yoonyeol (Pantech&Curitel, 3 years contract) – excluding all of extra income like commercial, championship prize. He is 21 years old. Yes. His case is one of the exceptionals.
-Number of fans for Lim Yohwan is over 550 thousand in his online community. The most popular Korean singer such as BoA and Lee Hyori has around or less than 450 thousand fans registered.
-Hong Jinho interviewed with CNN. It’ll be broadcasted worldwide in the end of March.
-KTF put 4.5 billion won($3.4 million) against SC league for 5 years and gain 46.8($36 million) billion won worth of marketing exposure
-SKT put 2($1.5 million) billion won and gain 15 billion won($11 million)worth of marketing exposure
-It’s estimated around 10 million people enjoying SC in Korea
-SC gave 4 trillion won($30 billion) worth of economic effect to computer related industries and internet cafes during economic crisis (1998~2000)
October 29th, 2005 at 6:57 pm
[…] i listened to my first podcast yesterday. sounds hip hey? really though it’s not. i mean i don’t have an ipod, so you could say i listened to a mp3 file of some guys talking instead of singing. i listened to the gadget show, after following a link from a friends blog at learndog. i did this on my pc using itunes but guess if i wanted could put the podcast onto my pda (an o2). […]