게임업계 IP 확장해 수익구조 다각화... 중국서 조회수 17억 돌파한 스마일게이트의 ‘크로스파이어’
Korea's gaming industry has been popular overseas for some time. Now, firms are looking to use that popularity to expand into other forms of entertainment, like dramas and animations.
Our Kim Bo-kyoung met one of the marketers who was at the frontier of this sort of content cross-over.
The Korean gaming industry isn't limiting itself to just games. It's using its intellectual property to expand to other areas of entertainment.
Smilegate's first-person shooter 'Crossfire' has been a huge hit. At one point, it had over 8-million users in around 80 countries playing the game at the same time.
“Smilegate’s shooting game ‘Crossfire’ is still popular in China even ten years after its launch. The company jumped at the chance to turn it into a drama, which was a big hit.”
Made by a Chinese director, the drama 'Crossfire' was launched in late July on Chinese website, Tencent Video.
The total accumulated views for the 36 episodes has reached 1-point-7 billion.
The senior vice president of marketing for Smilegate believes the reason behind its success is thorough localization.
"Chinese users have their own fun factors and also pay differently. We thoroughly researched and made content that could attract the local users. I believe the story of the already-popular game 'Crossfire' happening during the times of great change in China made users nostalgic."
She says Korea's gaming industry is in a strong position to take advantage of its intellectual property.
"Other intellectual property, such as movies, is hard to localize due to different languages and culture. But gaming has a relatively lower threshold with the story and universe already in it, so it's easier to develop. The Korean gaming industry has lots of great intellectual property that could be a big success."
Other companies have already started expanding the use of their intellectual property.
Mobile game company com2us has made popular story game 'Marked by King Bs' into a web drama which hit 70-million views.
Its global hit game 'SUMMONERS WAR: SKY ARENA' has also been made into a short animation to mark 100-million downloads.
As long as games have interesting characters and stories, the chances of using their intellectual property to expand into other areas is very promising.
Kim Bo-kyoung, Arirang News.
