It's hard to deny the powerful presence of Nexon in the
free-to-play market. The company's wildly successful
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style="font-style: italic;">MapleStory
was one of the first titles supported by microtransactions to shoehorn
its way into the West.
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style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi,
another Nexon title has been in the top half of the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/Top10F2P" target="_blank">Top
Ten Free-to-Play Games for a long while, and the publisher
continues to look for the next game that will make a big splash in
Western markets.
Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye recently got a chance to
chat with Min Kim, Nexon America's Director of Game Operations, about
the status of the Nexon company, future plans, music, and more.
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MapleStory
is one of the giants of the industry.
Ten Ton Hammer: Is Nexon
feeling any sort of pressure with the economic problems the nations
had lately?
Min Kim:
Everybodys feeling it. Historically, I think our games really take off
when we hit this kind of financial crisis. If you want to play online
games and you know these games are totally free-to-play, theres no
reason for you do dump them unless you are cutting your Internet.
Ten Ton Hammer: Hows the
development of Sugar
Rush going so far? I know you guys closed it down at the
end of December and it still hasnt come back up yet.
Min Kim:
I dont know if you heard we shut down our Vancouver studio [which was
working on Sugar Rush]
some time in January. Not to say Sugar
Rush is dead. Were still trying to figure out how were
going to do that. That
we definitely did feel, I mean, [with the current economic situation].
That was really unfortunate because we still believe in it.
So right now, were really focusing on launching fewer titles
but launching them better and putting more marketing dollars behind
them and hope eventually they grow. We know what titles in Asia work
for us, so bringing the ones that actually hitreally decent hits, or
actually homeruns for usjust branching off from that would be a good
way to introduce Dungeon
and Fighter, which will be renamed for the States to
style="font-style: italic;">Dungeon Fighter Online.
It sounds a little weird to say Dungeon
style="font-style: italic;">and Fighter.
Ten Ton Hammer: Yeah.
Min Kim:
Grammatically, its probably correct, but it sounds like The Killers
song, like, Are we human or are we dancers? [The Killers song Human
is found on the album Day
& AgeEd.]
Ten Ton Hammer: [laughs] I
love The Killers.
Min Kim:
So theyll change it to Dungeon
Fighter Online, and that game is actually just taking no
prisoners out in Asia right now. Its one of our biggest titles. Its
probably doing better than MapleStory
in Asia. I think weve hit 170,000 concurrent users
in Korea. In China its hit [around] 1.5 million.
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Nexon
delivered another hit with Mabinogi.
Ten Ton Hammer: Wow.
Min Kim:
Its kind of like a throwback to the old arcade style games.
Ten Ton Hammer: Ah. Like
style="font-style: italic;">Gauntlet? Is that
what youre thinking?
Min Kim:
Its more like a Final
Fight-ish type game. It totally looks like it came
straight out of the arcade. Its very accessible and when we bring it
out here, I think thats going to be the growing trend
people playing
games like that.
Its a multiplayer online game, so youve got a lobby where
everybodys kind of hanging out but you join up with three of your
other friends and basically hop in and go into instanced dungeons. Its
a lot of fun.
If you look at the graphics style, some people might look at
it and say, Yeah, I dont know if its for me. But if you look at it
another way, I think the graphics style actually makes it really
accessible. When we were playing another MMO, like [
style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi], [that]
people that havent played games like that before, they are really
hesitant because they dont really know what to do. But I can see
someone will be playing Dungeon
Fighter Online and their friend coming over and saying,
Hey, move over. Let me try that. Its kind of the same for
style="font-style: italic;">KartRider, too. So
we think the games really got a lot of reach.
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Love for
Diablo-style gameplay is evident in the need for a third
title in the
series.
Ten Ton Hammer: So is it 2D?
I mean obviously its a side-scrolling type of thing.
Min Kim:
Its side-scrolling. Its really kind of like
style="font-style: italic;">Final Fight.
Ten Ton Hammer: I love
style="font-style: italic;">Final Fight! My
name is Cody, and there was Cody in the game. How could I not love it?
Does it have the same sort of RPG elements as normal MMOs?
Min Kim:
Yeah. Basically you can choose from five character classes and an
additional four sub classes below that. You progress and gain skills
and are picking up items. Its very
style="font-style: italic;">Diablo-esque in
some ways, too.
Ten Ton Hammer: Because its
all about action and hitting the button?
Min Kim:
Exactly. Its not really turned-based. Its about hitting stuff.
Ten Ton Hammer: How do you
guys pick the games that are coming out of Asia? Obviously some games
that do really well in Korea dont translate very well [to Western
audiences]. Are there any times when you have made a mistake?
Min Kim:
It gets pretty complicated when youre a publisher like we are and
weve got our own titles and third party titles. A lot of it really
isnt just about the game. Its about the relationship between the
publisher and the developer. A lot of titles we bring over are internal
titles so we have really tight relationships with those teams.
And having a really good relationship there magnifies and
multiplies your chance of success. Again, its going back to Asia and
seeing what worked and what games have been successful there for us and
what games we know, at least at the core, are games that can generate
money.
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Will Nexon
send another Mabinogi through its gates?
Ten Ton Hammer: Are there
any more big, full-featured MMOs like
style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi that are
over there right now that youre looking at?
Min Kim:
I think Dungeon Fighter
is going to be the big game for us. We think its going to be bigger
than Maple[
style="font-style: italic;">Story] has been in
the States. We really believe in that. Thats the one were spending
all of our money on right now. We trying to do a less is more focus,
and so thats going to be the whole show this year.
Ten Ton Hammer: Are you
going to do the commercials like you did for
style="font-style: italic;">MapleStory? Or
something like the 7-11 promotions. That sort of thing.
Min Kim:
Were still developing our marketing time because the game is pretty
unique in some ways. Were trying to figure how were going to do that.
But well probably spend more money marketing for
style="font-style: italic;">Dungeon Fighter
than weve done for any of our games.
Part of the problems weve had is we bring games over here
that we dont have necessarily all the resources to fund each of those
games responsibly. So the strategy were taking is lets just bring
our best titles here and then market those titles and operate them in
the best way possible and localize them well.
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Nexon
understands that marketing is key.
Ten Ton Hammer: You guys
have definitely put a lot of effort behind
style="font-style: italic;">MapleStory and
style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi but maybe
not so much for Audition
or Combat Arms.
Min Kim:
Were trying to figure that out with all of our games, how do we
present these games [the media]?
Were constantly adding new content, but how [does the media]
know whats basically the right content to highlight? Whats important
and whats not? And so were 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 were going to try to think of more ways to do things like
that. With Combat, were just constantly adding new features to make it
better. The games actually doing really well. Weve 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? Theres some pretty big ones coming
up, like
target="_blank">Runes
of Magic and
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target="_blank">Atlantica.
Those games are doing really well.
Min Kim:
Im hoping they all do well to be honest. A lot of it is in the titles.
What were trying to do is focus on marketing titles and how we talk to
[the media], like localization that were doing with
style="font-style: italic;">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 Im like, Oh, theres a nut shot and theres a flesh sac.
[laughs] It was pretty funny. [Dreamlords
announced the flesh sacsEd.]
Min Kim:
What we did with that is were kind of just joking around, but it was
actually very strategic at the same time. The challenge that we have
with Combat
is that its a first person shooter. Unless you are a
style="font-style: italic;">Counterstrike or
style="font-style: italic;">Call of Duty [fan],
a lot of people just glaze over it.
Its a first person shooter and its 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, youve got the Bruce Lee issue, which
style="font-style: italic;">Counterstrike is
basically Bruce Lee and any other game that came out after that was
basically stupid.
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Being
successful means knowing when to allow gamers to use a nut shot.
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 well 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 theyre getting to see
what the game is looking like. So its kind of working for us in that
way. Like the Trojan horse that is getting us into Minor. Its getting
us out there right now.
Ten Ton Hammer: Is there
anything else that is coming up? Youve talked about
style="font-style: italic;">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 dont know if you know, but we actually acquired the company that
made it. We didnt build this internally.
Ten Ton Hammer: Oh really?
Min Kim:
So, we dont 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 Nexons gotten where its 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!
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