Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: You guys have definitely put a lot of effort behind MapleStory and Mabinogi but maybe not so much for Audition or Combat Arms.

Min Kim: We’re trying to figure that out with all of our games, how do we present these games [the media]?

We’re constantly adding new content, but how [does the media] know what’s basically the right content to highlight? What’s important and what’s not? And so we’re trying to go with this type of expansion method where we try to lump up a lot of stuff. Then [we] release one gigantic expansion a year that everybody can focus on. We changed our business model up for that, too. You knew that right? That we changed our business model up?

Ten Ton Hammer: Yeah, with the aging system in Mabinogi, right?

Min Kim: Yeah, the rebirth card and we added two new races. That actually worked for us, so we’re going to try to think of more ways to do things like that. With Combat, we’re just constantly adding new features to make it better. The game’s actually doing really well. We’ve added a lot.

Ten Ton Hammer: You guys had a lot of competitors jump in the market last year. What do you need to do to stay ahead of everybody else? There’s some pretty big ones coming up, like Runes of Magic and Atlantica. Those games are doing really well.

Min Kim: I’m hoping they all do well to be honest. A lot of it is in the titles. What we’re trying to do is focus on marketing titles and how we talk to [the media], like localization that we’re doing with Combat right now. You might have seen the stuff about the “nut shot.”

Ten Ton Hammer: I did, actually. That was funny because we had a bunch of “nut” press releases the last couple of days. Somebody else released “flesh sacs” for their game, and I’m like, “Oh, there’s a nut shot and there’s a flesh sac.” [laughs] It was pretty funny. [Dreamlords announced the flesh sacs—Ed.]

Min Kim: What we did with that is we’re kind of just joking around, but it was actually very strategic at the same time. The challenge that we have with Combat is that it’s a first person shooter. Unless you are a Counterstrike or Call of Duty [fan], a lot of people just glaze over it.

It’s a first person shooter and it’s free, so there are probably a lot of stereotypes that are going to pop up and all that. Somebody in our office really related well to the whole thing by saying, “Hey, you’ve got the Bruce Lee issue,” which Counterstrike is basically Bruce Lee and any other game that came out after that was basically stupid.

How do we break that? We know there are some [popular] features in the game, like the persistent stat tracking and all the client features, and we’ll continue to add stuff. But how do you convince gamers to give it a try?

Check out the nut shot video. The funny thing about that is a lot of people are talking about it. A part of the strategy is if were just to put out a video about the gameplay, would a lot of people have looked at it? Probably not. But then when we put in the nut shot thing, people are looking at the nut shot, and then they’re getting to see what the game is looking like. So it’s kind of working for us in that way. Like the Trojan horse that is getting us into Minor. It’s getting us out there right now.

Ten Ton Hammer: Is there anything else that is coming up? You’ve talked about Dungeon Fighter. Is there anything else that you want to talk about?

Min Kim: Dungeon Fighter again has been the game that has been killing it for us out in Asia. And I don’t know if you know, but we actually acquired the company that made it. We didn’t build this internally.

Ten Ton Hammer: Oh really?

Min Kim: So, we don’t buy a lot of companies, but this one we actually did buy.

Ten Ton Hammer: Because you thought the game was that impressive?

Min Kim: Oh yeah. Super solid. And Nexon’s gotten where it’s really good at being able to take those titles and then branch them off into different countries. As an international publisher, we can probably do more than just a company doing it on their own for the first time.

Ten Ton Hammer: Thanks for your time, Min! I wish you and Nexon the best and look forward to seeing more about your games in the future!