Korean indie game studio with no games gets $1.8M investment from NCSoft

A fresh-faced mobile game developer from Korea announced today it secured a US$1.8 million investment without a single title in its portfolio. Seoul-based BiNAREE took the money from NCSoft, a high-profile Korean game company best known for its many PC-based massively multiplayer online (MMO) games.

BiNAREE is currently developing a zombie apocolypse-themed mid-core strategy game under the working title APO. Founder Kyungheon Kim tells Tech in Asia he expects the game to soft launch in 12 to 16 months and an additional two to six months for the full launch. That’s up to two years of development time for a single mobile game from an unproven indie game studio – a risky bet for NCSoft.

Kim’s resume is likely what instilled confidence in his investors. After a stint at Com2us (Summoners War), he joined CrayonPixel in 2009, which partnered with social gaming juggernaut Zynga to publish its debut game. After closing in 2013, Kim went on to work at Rovio (Angry Birds).

"I have pretty unique background compared with other game guys in Korea," he says. "I was told that CEO of NCSOFT was seeking a guy who has very strong entrepreneurship. I guess that NCSOFT might think I was the proper one. And my idea for the game was pretty clear, which was that I would make the game for the main stream of the international market." [sic]

Most Korean game makers either target only the domestic market, or at least use it as a test bed before going global. But BiNAREE plans to target the worldwide market from the outset, leveraging Kim’s previous experience at international studios.

"And for the Korean mobile game market, it’s very polarized," he says. "Because of this, it’s very hard one for a small startup like us to penetrate [the market] without a publishing deal. But the publishing deal itself is very risky as well."

Kim says his vision for the game clear, but he’s keeping his cards close to his chest and won’t show us any early images. Today’s press release states:

[BiNAREE’s] first game will be set in a zombie apocalypse, where players need to defend themselves and their shelters against humans and zombies alike. With an easy-to-learn control system, players will be able to enjoy the humans and zombies reacting with each other in the game world. BiNAREE will combine the best of Eastern free-to-play with Western story-driven gameplay.

The game will be free-to-play, but we can probably expect some freemium features.

He says hiring will be the biggest challenge, and he’s "very open to hiring from outside Korea."

Laid off

After Rovio failed to muster up hit titles on the scale of Angry Birds in 2014, it had to start cutting staff. "They proceeded with layoffs and Rovio Korea was not supportive of me. Then I made a big decision to start my own, and it happened," Kim says.