E3 takes on a very international flavor

South Korea’s success story
One of the larger booths at the Los Angeles Convention Center this week belongs to a South Korean company that since its founding in 1997 has not only succeeded in penetrating the North American market, but with a series of games that remain Korean in attitude and game play.

The company is NCsoft, publisher of multiplayer online role-playing games such as "Lineage II" and "City of Heroes." Both are long, involved gaming experiences that reflect South Korea’s love affair with the role-playing game.

"There is a PC gaming mentality in Korea," said Robert Garriott, CEO of NCsoft’s 500-person North American unit. "They are more hard-core. They don’t have the ‘quick fix’ console mentality. In Korea, saying that ‘I’ve suffered through 12 levels’ is a badge of honor."

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Online PC gaming is practically a national pastime in South Korea, where it has been helped along by cheap and easy access to broadband Internet. The same is true in China and Taiwan, but the online fever has only recently caught on outside Asia.

China, like Taiwan, is now offering subsidies to game developers, and industry giant Electronic Arts recently moved its worldwide online gaming business to the bustling city of Shanghai.

Mobile phone gaming is another platform stronger outside the United States than in it. So online and mobile games are both increasingly being conceptualized and created outside of the U.S.

"A lot of money and technology are being developed outside the United States," said Garriott. "They are looking at the U.S. and seeing how behind we are."

But Americans may be catching up, at least as far as their game tastes are concerned. NCsoft’s booth at E3 was packed with curious attendees from the moment the show opened.

"There’s some basic stories that are worldwide," Garriott said. "Love, success. You see it with foreign films and you see it with gaming."

NCsoft Screenshot from "City of Heroes," NCsoft's award-winning multiplayer game.

NCsoft’s 3.5 million subscribers for the PC multiplayer game "Lineage" may pale in comparison to sales for a "Mario" title from Japan or that most quintessential of American titles, "Grand Theft Auto" (which is, of course, a product of Scotland), but for an intricate, time-consuming Korean title, that’s not bad.

Last year at E3, NCsoft’s "City of Heroes" won best multiplayer game.

And now there’s a flip-side to the success of foreign game publishers in the United States. Garriott’s brother, Richard, is now developing a game for NCsoft. Richard Garriott helped create the U.S. role-playing game with the Ultima series.

"We are an outsourced business from Korea," Garriott pointed out. "Korea decided to outsource product development and networking to us. If we try to say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to participate,’ it will be mean that all of the great advancements won’t happen here."

For Matthew Karch, the globalization of gaming is already a done deal.

"Did you read 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman?," Karch asked, referring to the book on globalization by the New York Times columnist. "It's all there. The Internet. That's us. Working worldwide. That's us."

"He didn't even mention games. I felt like writing to him."

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