In the process of operating UO, Richard Garrett discovered that a large group of game players came from South Korea in Asia. At this time, the King of Britain would not have thought that in a few years, he would cooperate with a game in South Korea, even join, leave, and then sue a South Korean company.
At this time, South Korea’s game industry has not yet made it to the world stage. Most people only know that this is a small country in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. It is a difficult market to enter in the fields of automobiles and home appliances, and most people in this country’s game market are Know nothing.
In fact, South Korea’s game industry had sprouted before the 1990s, and a group of companies that produced stand-alone games appeared. They also produced "Astonishia Story" and "White Day". Day)" and other excellent games, but due to the narrowness of the Korean domestic market and piracy, the development of the entire game industry has been very slow until the emergence of online games.
In the early 1990s, the Internet penetration in South Korea was not as good as that in the United States, and there were no online game companies. Only some government scientific research institutions and universities had relatively high Internet penetration. At that time, there was a MUD called NetHack that was quite popular among Korean college students. Among the players of this game, there were three Seoul University students who would change the direction of the entire Korean game industry.
Song Jae-kyung, born in 1967, is a fan of comics and science fiction. In 1987, he entered the computer engineering department of Seoul National University, a prestigious Korean university, where he met Jin Zechen, a senior in electrical engineering, and Kim Jong-joo, a younger student in the same major. People are avid game lovers. After graduation, the three of them chose to continue their studies. Jin Zechen continued to study electrical engineering at our school. Song Jae-gyeong and Kim Jong-joo were admitted to the famous Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAIST) to continue their study of computer engineering. The three also successively obtained their majors. Master degree.
The popularity of NetHack makes them very fascinated, and making a game of their own has become everyone's goal, but there are differences in action. Kim Taek-chen, the oldest of the three, has accumulated rich experience in software development during his university years, and participated in the development of Korean domestic BBS and the Korean version of the well-known Korean software ALEA, but Song Jae-kyung was the first to achieve success in the field of game development.
In 1994, Song Jae-kyung launched the first commercial MUD game "Jurassic Park" in Korea developed by himself, charging 30 won (approximately ￥0.17) per minute, and was extremely popular. The MUD game "Jurassic Park" was rated as a landmark work in the history of the Korean online game market. Song Zaijing has accumulated experience and funds through this work, which also proves the market potential of online games. So in December of that year, together with Kim Jong-joo, he founded NEXON to develop online games for Korean players.
After the establishment of the company, Song Zaijing locked the subject of his first game on "The Kingdom of Wind" by his favorite cartoonist Jin Chen. For the early Korean online games, comics have a great influence, including "The Kingdom of the Wind", "Paradise" and "Ragnarok" and other works are adapted from comics. The works of cartoonists not only provide the game The story background and rich art materials have also attracted many users for the game with its own influence. Since then, with the continuous growth of the Korean online game industry, the quality and standard of Korean comics have also been continuously improved, forming a virtuous cycle mechanism. There is quite a bit to learn in this regard.
A lot of the work in the early stage of "Nation of Wind" was independently completed by Song Zaijing, mainly based on the graphical work under the MUD architecture. The later team also joined some personnel to assist in the development. The game uses the same background as the comics. It takes the Three Kingdoms period of Joseon around the 1st century AD as the stage to interpret the legendary stories and love-hate feelings of the second king of Goguryeo, the player is in the historical background familiar with the adventure. . The game uses 16-bit 2D graphics with a bird’s eye view. The picture is very simple, but the rich cartoon style makes the picture very cute. Compared with the online games of the same period, this kind of picture has very low requirements on the computer and is very easy. When it is promoted, it is also easy to attract female players who were not interested in the game before.
In 1996, the game was developed and officially operated in South Korea. As there was no graphical MUD on the market at that time, "Nation of Wind" quickly attracted a large number of gamers with its relaxed cartoon style. The biggest advantage of the game is that the community attribute is relatively strong, providing players with rich and effective interactive functions. In addition to appearing in the chat window, each player’s speech will also be displayed in the form of bubbles next to the characters in the game, so that everyone around can be seen. In the updated version, a red-letter shouting system has been added to the game, which allows players to speak to players in the entire map area to see, which is great for players who want to sell items, find hunting partners, or meet friends.
Compared with several online games in Europe and the United States during the same period, "Nation of the Wind" simply graphical MUD, and there is not much innovation, and the background story of the game is not familiar to European and American players, so in 2 When it entered the US market a year later, it did not cause much attention. But in South Korea, this game is an early national online game called evergreen, and it is still in operation. Since the game's operation, it still ranks among the top three online users around 2000, and set a peak record of 130,000 online users in 2005. It has undergone 1,000 updates and registered more than 18 million players. In September 2011, "Nation of Wind" became the first Korean game to be recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the longest-running commercial graphics MMORPG".
For the Korean game industry, this is a landmark work. Its greatest significance is to inject a vitality into the downturn of the game market at that time, allowing game developers to see a new path: users can only play games through the Internet, which limits the game market plagued by piracy. Cost, and the monthly fee model after being put into operation can maintain a long-term stable income, attracting more developers to invest in the online game development camp.
After "Nation of Wind", NEXON launched two MMORPGs "Dark Legend" and "ELANCIA" in 1997 and 1998, building a structure for three MMORPGs to beat the world. During this period, NEXON not only worked hard to export its three MMORPGs to many countries, but also established a Japanese branch, NEXON Asia and other overseas companies, becoming the leader in the Korean online game industry. But at this time, Song Zaijing has left NEXON and joined Ncsoft founded by another old friend, Jin Zechen.
Before 1997, Jin Zechen had been in charge of the group's website operations at Hyundai Electronics, but his dream of playing games during NetHack has not been extinguished. "The Kingdom of the Wind" created by Kim Jong-joo and Song Jae-kyung showed him the possibility of turning his dreams into reality. . So in March 1997, Jin Zechen gave up his PhD and his excellent job at Hyundai Group, and founded NcSoft, and he invited his friend Song Zaijing to join him. After some struggle, Song Zaijing left NEXON, which he had participated in, to join NCsoft. For him, making an online game with a world as large as NetHack is his goal, which is also Jin Zechen's goal.
The first project Song Jae-kyung brought to NCsoft was "Lineage: The Bloodpledge", which is also a comic adaptation of the game, based on the "Legend of the Red Lion" by the Korean female cartoonist Shin Ilsuk. Then, it is about the revenge story of the red-haired Prince Tross of Aden. Unlike "Land of the Wind", the background of "Legend of the Red Lion" is set in a medieval fantasy world with a western fantasy color. Princes and princesses, knights and wizards, and mysterious fairies and other common elements in Western legends have It can be seen that at the beginning of the development, there was a plan to expand the online game market in Europe and the United States, but the final result was that the game did not achieve very good results in Europe and the United States, but achieved great success in China and Taiwan. A few years later, a game that borrowed from the game system of "Paradise" and became more Asian has achieved unprecedented success in China. Its name is "Legend".
During the development of "Paradise", the two most influential games are Nethack, which is liked by Jin Zechen and Song Zaijing, and Blizzard's "Diablo." In Nethack, Net comes from its Internet-based development model, and Hack comes from hack and slash in Dungeons and Dragons-the concept of battle and exploration, both of which are also the theme of the game. The interface, ease of use and smoothness of operation of "Diablo", which was launched in 1996, have an impact on many online games.
Erich Schaefer, one of the three giants of the Northern Blizzard, once published an article on the gains and losses of game development after the completion of "Diablo 2", which mentioned that the foundation for the success of the first two generations of "Diablo" is to provide It is a simple pleasure for players. The most basic gameplay of the game is: kill monsters, and then get paid. As long as the players continue to kill monsters, they can get more treasures and experience points, and it is what attracts most players. at this point.
"Heaven" learned this well, the difference is that this is a huge world that can support 4000 players interacting on one server at the same time. Although adapted with famous comics as the background, the stories and missions are not the most important content of heaven. The core of the game is to obtain higher-attribute weapons and equipment and PVP through upgrades and monsters. Like "Diablo", you can get randomly dropped equipment by repeatedly killing monsters. The difference in equipment data between different players is also the biggest factor affecting the efficiency of killing monsters and PVP. An additional blessing system is provided in the game. Players can also use spells, blessing scrolls or potions to provide blessings for weapons, so as to increase attack speed and damage.
Similar to the death penalty mechanism in most online games of the same period, a player (above level 5) who dies in the game will lose their items, money, and experience. Attacking other players may get their equipment or items. Therefore, PVP in the game is very popular. However, the developers formulated a relatively complete PVP mechanism on the basis of UO to prevent its proliferation, which was later used for reference by many online games including "Legend" and had a far-reaching impact.
In "Heaven", it is not allowed to attack each other in safe areas such as towns. If you maliciously attack other players or NPCs in towns, their names will turn red, commonly known as red-named players. The town guard will attack the red-named players in sight. Most of the NPCs in the game will not sell goods like the red-named players. Other players in the game can also attack the red-named players at will without any penalty.
In September 1998, "Paradise" officially began commercial operations in South Korea. There were not many players in the early days, but the prosperity of Korean Internet cafes brought a turning point in the success of "Paradise".
Since 1996, South Korea, which has experienced a high economic development, has entered an economic crisis. Online games such as "Nation of Wind" and "Paradise" have given the South Korean government an opportunity for economic growth. Therefore, since 1998, it has been vigorously supporting the game industry. On the one hand, the network infrastructure was strengthened, and on the other hand, the Internet cafe industry was vigorously developed when broadband was not popularized in households. In this year, Blizzard's "StarCraft" entered the Korean market and soon became the most popular game, which indirectly drove the development of the Internet cafe industry. In 1998, South Korea had only 3,000 Internet cafes, but in 1999 this number had become 15,000, and in 2000 it had increased to 21,000.
The rapid growth of the Internet cafe industry has brought huge opportunities to online games. More and more companies and talents are investing in the development of online games. NCSOFT has made good use of this opportunity to bring huge opportunities to "Paradise". Success. In the early days, Internet cafes had very high Internet access fees, and users controlled their spending time in Internet cafés. However, NCSOFT cooperated with the Internet cafe industry to attract players for free to enter "Paradise" through joining Internet cafes, and then shared Internet access fees with Internet cafes.
With the development of the Korean industry, the number of online "Paradise" has also risen sharply. In the early stage of operation, the number of simultaneous online users of the game was only about 1,000. By 1999, the number of simultaneous online games exceeded 10,000. By the end of 2000, the maximum simultaneous online exceeded 100,000, which became the rare online game with more than 100,000 simultaneous online in the early stage.
With the great commercial success of "Paradise", NCSOFT has also risen rapidly and entered overseas, becoming a leader in the Korean online game industry like NEXON. In May 2001, NCSOFT established a branch in Austin and acquired a team reorganized by Richard Garriott who had just left EA to develop online games. The King of Britain served as the helm of NCSOFT North America. It became a sensational event in the European and American game industry.
For Song Zaijing, this is just a dream of himself. When Song Zaijing was developing online games in his early years, he wanted to release the game abroad, and Richard Garriott was his dream partner. For this reason, he sent his resume and work to Origin Systems, but There has been no feedback until he participated in the E3 exhibition in 1997 when he learned that the other party had never received it. After becoming the vice president of NCSOFT, Song Zaijing finally realized his dream.