Video gaming in South Korea
Encyclopedia
This article is about video gaming in South Korea
.
Since 2006, the country has had its own video game rating board, the Game Rating Board
, taking over from the Korea Media Rating Board
following a controversy where they rated a gambling game as suitable for all ages following a bribe. Another contribution to the massive amount of gaming in South Korea are the PC bangs around
is well known for the fact that professional gaming has a very substantial following in the country, with the top players winning hundreds of thousands of US dollars in competitions, and spending several hours practicing every day. One particularly popular video game for pro-gamers is StarCraft
. Well-known players include Lim Yo-Hwan
, Choi Yeon-Sung
, Park Sung-Joon
and Lee Jae-Dong. However, due to problems of widespread video game addiction (for example, a man died in 2005 after a 50 hour long StarCraft session ), the Korean government banned anyone aged under 18 from playing games online between midnight and 8 am.
, which was licensed by Samsung
and released as the Samsung Gam*Boy in South Korea, on April 1989. The country's first fully-fledged computer RPG was Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol, also known as Legend of the Sword, released for the Apple II
computer platform in 1987. It was programmed by Nam In-Hwan and distributed by Aproman, and was primarily influenced by the Ultima series. In the late 1980s, the Korean company Topia began producing action role-playing game
s, one of which was Pungnyu Hyeopgaek for the MS-DOS
in 1989. It was the first Korean title published for IBM PC compatible
s and is set in ancient China. Another action RPG released by Topia that same year was Mirae Sonyeon Conan, a video game adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki
's Japanese 1978 anime
series Future Boy Conan
, for the MSX2
platform.
1994 saw the release of two major Korean RPGs: Astonishia Story
, and an MS-DOS
enhanced remake Ys II Special, developed by Mantra. The latter was a mash-up of Nihon Falcom's game Ys II (1988) with the anime
Ys II: Castle in the Heavens
(1992) along with a large amount of new content, including more secrets than any other version of Ys II. Both games were a success in Korea, Astonishia Story more so.
Commercial online gaming
became very popular in South Korea
from the mid-1990s. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
, designed by Jake Song
, was commercially released in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. It was one of the earliest massively multiplayer online role-playing game
s. Song's next game, Lineage
(1998), enjoyed even greater success gaining millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan
. This helped to secure developer NCsoft
's dominance in the global MMORPG market for several years.
-based Ragnarok Online
, produced by Korean company Gravity Corp, was released. Though unknown to many Western players, the game took Asia by storm as Lineage had done. The publisher has claimed in excess of 25 million subscribers of the game, although this number is based upon a quantity of registered users (rather than active subscribers). 2002 also saw the release of MapleStory
, another sprite-based title, which was completely free-to-play
- instead of charging a monthly fee, it generated revenue by selling in-game "enhancements". MapleStory would go on to become a major player in the new market for free-to-play MMORPGs (generating huge numbers of registered accounts across its many versions), if it did not introduce the market by itself.
In October 2003, Lineage II
(NCsoft's sequel to Lineage) became the latest MMORPG to achieve huge success across Asia. It received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and is now the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide, with servers in Japan, China, North America, Taiwan, and Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West.
: PC방; literally "PC
room") is a type of LAN gaming center
, where patrons can play multiplayer computer games
for a small hourly fee. The typical cost for an hour of play ranges from 500 to 1500 won
(approximately $0.44 to $1.32 USD.), but 1000 won per hour is the most common cost in PC bang. Although the per capita penetration of computers and broadband internet access
is very high in South Korea, PC bangs remain popular as they provide a social meeting place for gamers (especially school-aged gamers) to play together with their peers. Furthermore, the computer hardware
used by PC bangs may be more powerful than the systems available in the players' homes. Most PC bangs allow players to eat, drink and smoke (often with separate smoking and non-smoking sections) while they play. It is common for PC bangs to sell ramen noodles, canned coffee, soft drinks, and other snacks.
PC bangs rose to popularity following the release of the PC game StarCraft
in 1998. Although PC bangs are used by all ages and genders, they are most popular with male gamers in their teens and twenties.
Many popular Korean multiplayer games provide players with incentives which encourage them to play from a PC bang. For example, the Nexon games Kart Rider and BnB reward players with bonus "Lucci" — the games' virtual currencies — when they log on from a PC bang.
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
.
Since 2006, the country has had its own video game rating board, the Game Rating Board
Game Rating Board
The Game Rating Board is the South Korean video game content rating board. A governmental organization, the GRB rates video and computer games to inform customers of the nature of game contents....
, taking over from the Korea Media Rating Board
Korea Media Rating Board
The Korea Media Rating Board ' is a ratings organization in South Korea. They rate movies, videos, stage performances, and phonogrames. The current chairperson is Kyung-Soon Lee...
following a controversy where they rated a gambling game as suitable for all ages following a bribe. Another contribution to the massive amount of gaming in South Korea are the PC bangs around
Pro-gaming
South KoreaSouth Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
is well known for the fact that professional gaming has a very substantial following in the country, with the top players winning hundreds of thousands of US dollars in competitions, and spending several hours practicing every day. One particularly popular video game for pro-gamers is StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
. Well-known players include Lim Yo-Hwan
Lim Yo-Hwan
Lim Yo-Hwan , known by the pseudonym SlayerS_`BoxeR` , is one of the most successful players of the real-time strategy computer game StarCraft to date...
, Choi Yeon-Sung
Choi Yeon-Sung
Choi Yeon-Sung , also known as iloveoov, is a professional Korean StarCraft player who uses the Terran race. He is known for his excellent macromanagement, leading to his nickname "Cheater Terran". However he is better known as "Monster Terran" because of his ability to produce a massive amount of...
, Park Sung-Joon
Park Sung-Joon
Park Sung-Joon is a professional player of the real-time strategy game StarCraft. He is known by his pseudonym July, a shortened version of JulyZerg...
and Lee Jae-Dong. However, due to problems of widespread video game addiction (for example, a man died in 2005 after a 50 hour long StarCraft session ), the Korean government banned anyone aged under 18 from playing games online between midnight and 8 am.
Role-playing games
1980s–1990s
South Korea's RPG industry began with translations of RPGs imported from Japan and the United States. The first fully translated Japanese RPG in Korea was Phantasy Star (1987) for the Sega Master SystemSega Master System
The is a third-generation video game console that was manufactured and released by Sega in 1985 in Japan , 1986 in North America and 1987 in Europe....
, which was licensed by Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
and released as the Samsung Gam*Boy in South Korea, on April 1989. The country's first fully-fledged computer RPG was Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol, also known as Legend of the Sword, released for the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
computer platform in 1987. It was programmed by Nam In-Hwan and distributed by Aproman, and was primarily influenced by the Ultima series. In the late 1980s, the Korean company Topia began producing action role-playing game
Action role-playing game
Action role-playing games form a loosely defined sub-genre of role-playing video games that incorporate elements of action or action-adventure games, emphasizing real-time action where the player has direct control over characters, instead of turn-based or menu-based combat...
s, one of which was Pungnyu Hyeopgaek for the MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
in 1989. It was the first Korean title published for IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
s and is set in ancient China. Another action RPG released by Topia that same year was Mirae Sonyeon Conan, a video game adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
's Japanese 1978 anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series Future Boy Conan
Future Boy Conan
is an anime series, which premiered across Japan on the NHK network between April 4 and October 31, 1978 on the Tuesday 19:30-20:00 timeslot. The official English title used by Nippon Animation is Conan, The Boy in Future....
, for the MSX2
MSX2
MSX2 may refer to:* Msh homeobox 2, a human gene* The second generation of the MSX home computers...
platform.
1994 saw the release of two major Korean RPGs: Astonishia Story
Astonishia Story
Astonishia Story is a series of 2D RPGs created by the Korean video game developer Sonnori. The first game in the series was released as Astonishia Story for Microsoft Windows in South Korea in 1994. A sequel, also for Windows, was released in July 1994 in South Korea under the title Astonishia...
, and an MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
enhanced remake Ys II Special, developed by Mantra. The latter was a mash-up of Nihon Falcom's game Ys II (1988) with the anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
Ys II: Castle in the Heavens
Ys (anime)
are two different anime series, both of which are based on the video game series Ys. The first series spans seven episodes and covers the general plotline of the first game of the series, Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished. The plot centers on Adol Christin as he journeys to the island of Esteria in search...
(1992) along with a large amount of new content, including more secrets than any other version of Ys II. Both games were a success in Korea, Astonishia Story more so.
Commercial online gaming
Online game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
became very popular in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
from the mid-1990s. Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds
NEXUS: The Kingdom of the Winds , alternately known as Nexus TK or simply Nexus, is a Pay to Play MMORPG, currently run in the US by Kru Interactive. Nexus began as a U.S. version of the Korean game 바람의 나라 developed by NEXON Inc...
, designed by Jake Song
Jake Song
Jake Song, Korean Name Song Jae-kyeong , b. 1965 , is a South Korean programmer who is regarded as one of the greatest game developers in Korea. He played a major role in creating the MMORPG Lineage, an online game with huge following in Korea...
, was commercially released in 1996 and eventually gained over one million subscribers. It was one of the earliest massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
s. Song's next game, Lineage
Lineage (computer game)
Lineage is a medieval fantasy, massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in the United States in 1998 by the South Korean computer game developer NCsoft. It is most popular in Korea and is available in Chinese, Japanese, and English language versions...
(1998), enjoyed even greater success gaining millions of subscribers in Korea and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. This helped to secure developer NCsoft
NCsoft
NCsoft is a South Korea-based online video game company, which has published massively multiplayer online role-playing games including Lineage, City of Heroes, Wildstar, Exteel, Guild Wars and Aion.-History:...
's dominance in the global MMORPG market for several years.
2000s–present
In 2002, the spriteSprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
-based Ragnarok Online
Ragnarok Online
Ragnarok Online , often referred to as RO, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG created by GRAVITY Co., Ltd. based on the manhwa Ragnarok by Lee Myung-jin. It was first released in South Korea on 31 August 2002 for Microsoft Windows and has since been released in many other...
, produced by Korean company Gravity Corp, was released. Though unknown to many Western players, the game took Asia by storm as Lineage had done. The publisher has claimed in excess of 25 million subscribers of the game, although this number is based upon a quantity of registered users (rather than active subscribers). 2002 also saw the release of MapleStory
MapleStory
MapleStory is a free-to-play, 2D, side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by the South Korean company Wizet. Several versions of the game are available for specific countries or regions, and each is published by various companies such as Nexon...
, another sprite-based title, which was completely free-to-play
Free-to-play
Free-to-play refers to any video game that has the option of allowing its players to play without paying. The model was first popularly used in early massively multiplayer online games targeted towards casual gamers, before finding wider adoption among games released by major video game...
- instead of charging a monthly fee, it generated revenue by selling in-game "enhancements". MapleStory would go on to become a major player in the new market for free-to-play MMORPGs (generating huge numbers of registered accounts across its many versions), if it did not introduce the market by itself.
In October 2003, Lineage II
Lineage II
Lineage II is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game for Microsoft Windows. It is a prequel to Lineage, and is set 150 years before the earlier game. It has become very popular since its October 1, 2003 launch in South Korea, reporting 1,000,918 unique users during the month of March 2007...
(NCsoft's sequel to Lineage) became the latest MMORPG to achieve huge success across Asia. It received the Presidential Award at the 2003 Korean Game awards, and is now the second most popular MMORPG in the world. As of the first half of 2005 Lineage II counted over 2.25 million subscribers worldwide, with servers in Japan, China, North America, Taiwan, and Europe, once the popularity of the game had surged in the West.
PC Bangs
A PC bang (KoreanKorean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
: PC방; literally "PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
room") is a type of LAN gaming center
LAN Gaming Center
A LAN Gaming Center is a business where one can use a computer connected over a LAN to other computers, primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games. Use of these computers or game consoles costs a fee, usually per hour or minute; sometimes one can have unmetered access with a...
, where patrons can play multiplayer computer games
Computer Games
"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
for a small hourly fee. The typical cost for an hour of play ranges from 500 to 1500 won
South Korean won
The won is the currency of South Korea. A single won is divided into 100 jeon, the monetary subunit. The jeon is no longer used for everyday transactions, and appears only in foreign exchange rates...
(approximately $0.44 to $1.32 USD.), but 1000 won per hour is the most common cost in PC bang. Although the per capita penetration of computers and broadband internet access
Broadband Internet access
Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just "broadband", is a high data rate, low-latency connection to the Internet— typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56 kbit/s modem or satellite Internet with inherently high latency....
is very high in South Korea, PC bangs remain popular as they provide a social meeting place for gamers (especially school-aged gamers) to play together with their peers. Furthermore, the computer hardware
Computer hardware
Personal computer hardware are component devices which are typically installed into or peripheral to a computer case to create a personal computer upon which system software is installed including a firmware interface such as a BIOS and an operating system which supports application software that...
used by PC bangs may be more powerful than the systems available in the players' homes. Most PC bangs allow players to eat, drink and smoke (often with separate smoking and non-smoking sections) while they play. It is common for PC bangs to sell ramen noodles, canned coffee, soft drinks, and other snacks.
PC bangs rose to popularity following the release of the PC game StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
in 1998. Although PC bangs are used by all ages and genders, they are most popular with male gamers in their teens and twenties.
Many popular Korean multiplayer games provide players with incentives which encourage them to play from a PC bang. For example, the Nexon games Kart Rider and BnB reward players with bonus "Lucci" — the games' virtual currencies — when they log on from a PC bang.
See also
- History of Eastern role-playing video gamesHistory of Eastern role-playing video gamesEastern role-playing video games are role-playing video games developed in East Asia, specifically Japan, and, to a lesser extent, South Korea and China...
- StarCraft professional competitionStarCraft professional competitionThe computer game StarCraft has an active professional competition circuit, particularly in South Korea. The two major game channels in South Korea, Ongamenet and MBCGame, each run a Starleague , viewed by millions of fans...
- Video games developed in South Korea