[MUD-Dev] [News] NCSoft + Richard Garriott

[Dave Kennerly]

A few authors speculated price-elasticity of usage; suggesting Korean
cyber cafe players play less than the US average or international
average.

Richard Aihoshi wrote:

> However, if we assume the great majority of Korean players are
> paying by the hour, it seems reasonable to assume that the average
> playing time is lower.

Vincent Archer wrote:

> If you're playing from a cybercafe, it wouldn't be odd if the usage
> figure per player were waaaay lower.

But I guess Korean cyber cafes charge less than US equivalents, so
usage price-elasticity is not directly comparable.  I don't know the
average for either nation, but when I played in Korea (in April), it
was just under US $1 per hour (about 1100 Won), and at a local cafe in
California, it is about US $5 per hour.  Therefore, the usage, at this
varying price, could be equal or higher with an identical demand.

This cafe had an IP account for the game I was playing, so I didn't
need to pay anything additional.  For example, I wouldn't need to pay
$10 per month to play The Kingdom of the Winds, if the cafe had a
cyber-cafe account.

Factually, usage was equal in 1998 for Nexon games: 21 hours per week
in Korea and 21 hours per week in the US.  This is probably the best
comparable Korean/US usage statistic, because the games being compared
were mostly equivalent.  I haven't calculated usage recently.

As Jake Song wrote some months ago, most NCSoft revenue is from cyber
cafes, who--in turn--charge their customers.  Therefore, it could be 2
million with a high turn-over rate.  That is, these 2 million change
much more rapidly than what you expect, which is about 3-6 months for
the US MMORPGs.  Also, Richard Aishoshi and others stated, accounts
don't equal warm bodies.  It wouldn't surprise me if there were a
half-dozen other combinations that produce a misleading player-base
fact.  Nexon offers 6 MMOGs in Korea, but doesn't consider how many
"subscribers" it has, because most subscribers are not end users, but
are cyber-cafes, who have varying numbers of end users.

In this case, if one wants to compare success or "bigness", then I
would guess direct revenue comparisons are the most applicable, first,
and second: average daily user volume.  Peak user counts are
misleading, because peak counts has higher statistical error.  Peak
volume is not a multiple of the average volume; the two values
correlate but imprecisely.  For a simple illustration: nobody mentions
their lowest peak (trough?) user volume.

> This adds a social element to the game that is hard to reproduce in
> the US, where the norm is a subscriber logging in from home.

Indeed.  Imagine 50%+ of a game's player-base on LANs, talking with
each other in the cafe.

Another factor: Koreans socialize more than Americans, which means
they value vectors of socialization more than Americans, such as: cell
phones, online games, video chat, and cyber cafes.  This statement is
based on personal experience and casual conversations with Koreans and
Korean-Americans.  Every time I've visited Korea (2-10 week trips each
year during 1995-2001), I felt like I was being adopted into a family
for the duration.

Dave Kennerly


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