Korea, was [MUD-Dev] [News] NCSoft + Richard Garriott

[Dave Kennerly]

Daniel Manachi wrote:

> how well are the Nexon titles doing in the US compared to how they
> did/are doing in Korea?

Briefly, Nexon's six international online titles are much larger in
Korea except Shattered Galaxy, which has more players in the US than
in Korea.

To illustrate the most dramatic difference: Nexus: The Kingdom of
the Winds peaked about 60,000 simultaneous users in Korea alone, but
has not yet peaked 2000 simultaneous users in the US alone.  There's
many factors at work, especially that TK released in Korea in 1996
and in the US in 1998 in a very crowded market.

Incidentally, I guess the ratio is proportionate to Lineage in Asia
and Lineage in the US.  Jake Song would know better.

> Do you have two separate teams working on the new title?  If so,
> how are the communication and time difference issues playing out?

The new title has one team, albeit part of the team is remote by
6000 miles and about 12 hours.

These factors enable the team:

    1. The game director communicates bilingually.

    2. An assistant game director translates the English design
    documents into Korean.

    3. The game designer knows preschool Korean, elementary Korean
    culture, software/operation localization, and knows what to
    expect (he has worked with most core team members for 3 years).

    4. A couple critical team members swap locales (so far the game
    director and the game designer).

    5. The game designer programmed 12-hour lag compensation into
    the US element.  :) (see Game Developer June 2001, "Leveling the
    Playing Field")

Dave Kennerly
Game Designer


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