Don’t get mad, get freeware and get even

It’s been quite a while since the Internet became the unofficial agora of the 21st century, but Web users are now expressing themselves on cyberspace through more than just text ― games have become the new way to rave, rant or simply poke fun at public figures.
Some Koreans adept at flash animation have started creating simple games about hot issues. These games are being uploaded on portals for games, video clips and flash animation, such as Flash 365.
For example, last Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine to pay homage to Japanese war dead. Koreans were furious, since the day marks Japan’s surrender in World War II, which Korea celebrates as Liberation Day. No Japanese prime minister had visited the shrine on Aug. 15 since 1985.
While thousands of protesters took to the streets in downtown Seoul to stage rallies that day, tens of thousands flocked to the Internet to play games that involved a variety of stress-relieving actions one could take out on Mr. Koizumi. One crudely-designed game was a variation of an old brick-breaking game, only the bricks were replaced with Koizumi heads. Another game involves kicking Mr. Koizumi’s head across the ocean, which is dotted with buoys. The point is to try to get the prime minister’s head on the buoys, so that it bounces back up and doesn’t fall into the water. This game wasn’t created in Korea, but its popularity among Chinese hints at its origins.
Another game based on a popular social topic these days is the “doenjang girl” game; doenjang means “bean paste,” and a bean-paste girl is one without a lick of common sense. Created by a 20-year old man using flash animation, one clicks through a story, selecting between two choices, which leads to the next turn in the story. The object of the game is to become a “doenjang girl,” and wheedle men in buying you lavish luxury goods. Those who win know to always pick the miniskirt from the closet instead of the jeans.
Since these games are freeware, they can be copied and pasted or linked to one’s blog, an indicator of what social topics people are interested in at the time. Last month, at the end of the World Cup, games featuring the French player Zinadine Zidane head-butting opponents were extremely popular.
People also post messages beneath the games on the portal sites, saying what they think about them ― a new form of digital public opinion.

by Wohn Dong-hee

The hottest sports action in Korea is computerized

Some of the hottest sporting action this summer is taking place on computer screens. Crowds of thousands lined the beaches in Busan and Seoul’s Olympic Park recently for separate computer gaming events.
E-sports is more than a kid’s game ― it is a 100 billion won ($107 million) market in Korea, and it nearly doubles in size every year.
At Olympic Park in southern Seoul, the Seoul International e-Sports Festival ended a four-day event yesterday amid game character fashion shows, concerts and other events.
The festival also included the finals of a 256-team “StarCraft” single-elimination tournament offering a cash prize of 20 million won. The winner of a single-player “WarCraft 3” competition got $20,000. About 50 gamers from numerous countries, including China, Poland and Sweden, participated.
Although many of the participants were professional Korean gamers, international teams came out strong in the shooting game “Counter-Strike.”

	In Seoul, gamers compete this past weekend. Provided by the organizations

The Seoul City government said next year it expects some 200,000 people for the event; the entire event was broadcast live on the Internet video portal GomTV.
Also part of the e-sports festival, the 2007 Korea Pump Festival drew huge crowds of people who wanted to see contestants dance.
“Pump” is a Korean-developed game similar to “Dance Dance Revolution,” where players have to step on pads on the floor as directed by arrows that appear on the screen. At yet another venue, digital avatars danced away in a competition for the game “Audition,” where cyber figures do the actual bodywork.
The Seoul festivities were just one of the many summer computer game festivals going on nationwide this summer.
On Aug. 4, Busan’s Gwangalli beach was packed with people watching the finals of the Shinhan Pro League, one of the biggest StarCraft tournaments in Korea.
The event attracts tens of thousands of spectators each year.
Prior to Busan, e-sports festivals also took place in the city of Daegu, in the mountainous region of Gangwon and at the Gyeongpo Beach in Gangneung City in Gangwon ― all drawing big crowds.
“I heard that e-sports will be a pilot category for the Beijing Olympics,” said Ma Jae-yoon, a top Korean StarCraft player. “It motivates me to play harder.”

By Wohn Dong-hee
Staff Writer for JoongAng Daily

PS3 shaky debut in Korea

Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) has finally been launched in Korea after months of delays. On June 16, Sony Computer Entertainment Korea held a special launch event at the Ipark Mall in Yongsan, central Seoul. The release came five years and four months after the PlayStation 2 was officially launched in Korea. The festivity was accompanied by female models in tight-fitting outfits holding elements of the PS3, a feature that seems to be essential for any local game or console release.
Hard-core gamers stood in line to buy a limited supply of 300 PS3s, but the crowd was not overwhelming. Standing at the front of the line was Kang Yoo-min of Seoul. He said he had waited since 9 a.m. on Thursday for the Saturday morning launch.
Interestingly, the console launched in Korea is 80 gigabytes ― the largest memory for any PS3 console yet. However, the price here is lower than in most other countries, except for Japan. In Korea, the PS3 is 518,000 won ($560) ― in Europe it is 599 euros ($801), in Japan 59,980 yen ($486) and in the United States it is $599.

	Gamers waiting in line on June 16 to buy a limited number of PS3s. Provided by the company

Lee Seong-ug, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Korea, said that the decision to release the “bigger” PS3 here is because Korea has a strong Internet infrastructure. “We believe that Korean game users will make the most of the PS3 functions, utilizing it for games, films and networking,” he said. “The PS3 is the diamond in the crown of digital convergence technology and this is the country that can optimize the console’s performance and online service functions.”
Lee said that new PS3 services are also waiting to be launched. “We have finished developing a high-resolution video-on-demand service technology for the PS3, which enables Korean users to watch digital content such as films in real-time. We are currently negotiating with Korean firms in order to launch this service,” he said.
Despite the comparatively low price of the PS3 in Korea, the console still faces lots of hurdles. For starters, it is still pricier than Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Nintendo’s DS Lite (the Wii has not been released in Korea yet).
Also, although the PS3 has multimedia features such as the Blu-ray player, Internet functions and so forth, Koreans still don’t think of game consoles as integrated multimedia players.

	The PS3 console in Korea supports 80 gigabytes.

Finally, console games still account for less than 5 percent of the entire game market because of the dominance of online games.
In fact, a source at Microsoft Korea said that the company was waiting for the release of the PS3 because it would help raise recognition of console games on the whole.
Strangely enough, in Korea, Microsoft and Sony are pretty much in the same boat.
Gamers also point out that the PS3 needs to have more unique titles. Currently 15 titles have been released here with the Korean PS3, but 10 of them are available on Sony’s Xbox 360.
Also, only six of them have been converted to a Korean-language interface, thus creating a language barrier for users.

By Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily

Starcraft 2 preview sets gamers buzzing

Korea’s e-sports scene is heating up along with the weather, as major tournaments are taking place, headed for late-summer finals. But the surprise announcement that a new edition of StarCraft is coming is stealing the spotlight and causing both excitement and apprehension in the gaming industry.

Although electronic sports, or e-sports, embraces 28 games ― with the latest addition being Dungeon and Fighter ― StarCraft accounts for the bulk of the action. The largest StarCraft tournament for teams, the Shinhan Pro League, is well underway, with the Korean Air Force team achieving a surprising three victories in nine games. Led by the legendary Lim Yo-hwan, whose gaming career has evidently not stopped despite being drafted into the service, the team is currently in 11th place. The Shinhan Pro League ― formerly the SKY Pro League until its sponsor Pantech went under debt restructuring ― is only one of the many StarCraft tournaments taking place. The games are also on the Internet and on three cable television channels devoted exclusively to computer games.

Taking the local games industry by surprise, Irvine, California-based Blizzard Entertainment announced during a game festival held May 19-20 that StarCraft 2 would soon make its debut. Blizzard, the maker of the original StarCraft, chose Seoul as the venue for the new game, but that is hardly surprising since Koreans account for roughly half of all global StarCraft sales. But the prospect of a new blockbuster game ― regardless of the fact that it will take a couple years to get here ― was enough to send the share prices of local game companies Ncsoft, Webzen and CJ Internet down when the market opened after the weekend festivities.

More interested than investors are actual gamers and the e-sports industry, because no one is sure whether StarCraft 2 will be able to take over from the original StarCraft. Although the game is yet to be released, many gamers expressed disappointment at the slightly slower movement of the units in a demonstration video, although Blizzard developers said that the speed had been toned down for demonstration purposes. Korean gamers are showing heightened sensitivity to StarCraft 2 because StarCraft itself had once been threatened by the release of WarCraft 3 in 2002. At the time, most StarCraft players converted to WarCraft, but the game wasn’t able to win players over for the long haul and they eventually went back to StarCraft. WarCraft is now just a minor part of the e-sports scene.

So what is this StarCraft 2 all about and will it live up to the hype? The game’s story takes place four years after StarCraft’s Brood War, and protagonists from the original game, such as Zeratul, Kerrigan, and Jim Raynor reappear. The game maintains the three main breeds: the alien-like Zerg, human-like Terrans and highly intellectual Protoss. Some have new abilities and a few new units were added, including several for the Protosses. The majority of the game-playing is mostly the same, except that the graphics are entirely rendered in 3D.

By Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily