Games Will Finally Be Completely Mainstream In 5 Years, says NexonKorean game publisher Nexon has released over 40 games to the market over the past 17 years. The company has experienced huge global success with free-to-play games like MapleStory, Dungeon Fighter and now Combat Arms. Globally, Nexon has over 300 million people that have played its games. And since it doesn’t rely on a single platform like Facebook, it has a huge reach that’s strongest in Asia, but growing in Europe and the U.S. Won ll Sue, vice president of business development at Nexon, talks about the future of gaming in this exclusive IndustryGamers interview.
IndustryGamers: What are your thoughts on the emergence of cloud gaming and how it will impact the industry moving forward?
Won Il Sue: Cloud gaming is very interesting. As broadband goes up and developers are more aware of it, I think that’s going to be an integral part of game design, as well as how you host your game and how you interact with your users. Game companies in Asia have had our own cloud service for years. It’s actually very efficient and I think it will be widely adopted. It’s a no-brainer.
"Give us five years and I think as many people will know about the gaming as they do about who made the latest movies."
IG: How far away are we from the game industry truly going digital where more games are being purchased or played without needing physical discs or retail stores?
WIS: I feel that part is never really going to go away, but it’s going to diminish in importance. EA recently came out with their Origin platform. All the free-to-play and online game companies from Asia have already been doing this for the past several years. I think it’s a model that’s just gaining momentum here. It hasn’t been a technology issue, but more about broadband penetration. Also, users need to feel comfortable downloading things off the Web knowing that you can pay $49 or $29 or $10 for something but you don’t actually need a box to represent that you’ve bought it. There are some users who value having something physical there; that’s why I don’t think that market is going to disappear.
IG: Do you think that microtransactions seen in social games, MMOs, or 99-cent app stores will drive prices downward across the whole video game industry as happened in music?
WIS: I think that’s the way it should go. It’s not what we want as the people who create the game, but I think that’s what the consumer wants. They see alternatives to the actual business law that’s going on now; and who wouldn’t want to try a free version? If they like it they can pay money for it. Now with iTunes and social gaming, all of those things are happening. Users are so used to that way of doing things that if you’re a developer and you don’t have that process internally, it’s going to be tough for you.
IG: And what are your thoughts on the emergence of social games?
WIS: Social and casual games have been growing over the last two or three years. It’s an explosive growth and that’s how gamers are connecting with their devices, with their games and with content. As a company that creates content, our job is to make sure the users who want our games and who play our games can have access to them wherever and however they want them. We’ve been very strong on the PC side, but we have diverse platforms in play right now. We have mobile games that are coming out. We have social games that are coming out on the web and on Facebook. We have games coming out on Android. We have over 1,500 developers so we actually develop a lot of games for a variety of platforms and we’ll have more to come.
IG: How do you think social games will fit into the games industry in the long run?
WIS: It’s not about social games fitting into the gaming industry. It’s the game industry that’s going to gravitate towards the social part of it because we’ve been in the online business for about 17 years and all of our games are online. They’re a community within the game. We’ve been looking at these things for a long time, over a decade, and I think in the last couple of years there’s just been a lot more focus on social gaming because it’s the new hot trend people are looking at. But when you look at a lot of the online games that have been in service, we released Kingdom of the Winds in Korea in ’95. It’s a 16-year-old game but we still generate tens of millions of dollars off of it every year because that community is there. The social component is there and I feel that’s the way it’s going to be with everything. The consoles are going to become a lot more social. Hopefully, they’ll become a lot more open and I think mobile is going to lead a big part of that. Social will be the bigger aggregator of all content.
IG: How will the powerful new tablets and smartphones fit into the gaming ecosystem?
WIS: They make games a lot more accessible. My older sister who is in her 40s was never a gamer, but once she got an iPad she started playing games. Now she knows what it feels like to have her brother work in the gaming industry working on the free-to-play side. It’s widening the audience by a different factor. We’re reaching the non-core gamers. And once they access game content, they consume it on their tablet. We’re going to have more people becoming gamers and that’s going to bring revenue, introduce new ideas and make our industry a much more prominent industry. The game industry is much bigger than the box office industry but it’s not relatively mainstream like movies because games still cater to a relatively core audience. Give us five years and I think as many people will know about the gaming as they do about who made the latest movies.
IG: Thanks for your time.
