South Korea's game devs need to start sharing more

As the success of Blade & Soul (and many other Korean games) in China proves, South Korean companies produce some kick-ass video games. Yet if you ask the average gamer in Southeast Asia or the US how many Korean games they enjoy, the answer might well be none. Why? Because Korean companies are ridiculously slow to release their games outside of Korea.

To illustrate this, let’s take a look at some of the country’s most popular games right now. At number three, Sudden Attack is the highest Korean-developed game on the list. That game was released in 2005 in Korea. Its first overseas foray wasn’t until 2007, when the game was launched in Japan. A few other countries got it in 2009. Some (including Taiwan) didn’t get it until 2012, at which point it was already seven years old.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Blade & Soul came to Korea midway through 2012, and it only just saw beta release in China—the rest of us are still waiting without so much as even a beta launch date. Dungeon & Fighter came to Korea in 2005; it was more than two years before China finally got the game in 2007, and Taiwan had to wait until 2009. Still, that’s better than North America, where the game didn’t launch until 2010—nearly five years after its launch in Korea. And I could keep going.

Now, I’ll grant that localizing these games isn’t simply a question of hiring some translators and maybe local voice actors. Because many of Korea’s most popular games are MMORPGs, launching in a new country requires a lot of logistical groundwork: local partners must be selected to operate the game, local servers need to be set up, local pricing and payment options will need to be patched into the game, etc. It’s not easy, and I respect that.

But I can’t help but feel like Korean developers are throwing away a lot of money—and a chance to share their games with the world—by localizing so slowly (when they bother to do it at all). Because even when a Korean game does come out in English, it’s going to be hard to get excited about it if it’s four or five years old already. Dungeon & Fighter, for example, is one of the most popular games in East Asia but it hasn’t done well in North America and its servers have already been shut down. Why? Probably because the game was already five years old by the time it launched in the States. It looked and felt dated, because it was.

Not exactly cutting-edge graphics for 2010.

I fear Blade & Soul is likely to suffer the same fate, too. The game is burning-hot in Korea and China, and it looks set to launch in Japan soon, but the English version—which was originally supposed to be coming this year—still doesn’t have a launch date in any territory (in Asia or anywhere else). One of the game’s biggest selling factors is that it’s one of the prettiest MMORPGs yet designed. But is that still going to be true after another two or three years, or will something better-looking have come out?

In fact, I suspect this may be a bit of a vicious cycle: Korean games are slow to release abroad, so they don’t do well abroad, so Korean developers don’t care that much about overseas versions of their games, so their games are localized very slowly…and on it goes.

But even if that’s not why this is happening, it doesn’t change my point: Korea makes some cool games and Korean devs should put more effort into sharing them with the rest of the world. I have a feeling that if the English version of a game like Blade & Soul were to come out this spring in Southeast Asia (which it won’t), it would do a lot better than it will if it doesn’t drop there for another couple of years. That’s not to say gamers don’t ever go for older games, but many of us certainly do have a preference for the shiny new ones.

And Korea does have some shiny new ones…if only it was quicker to share them with the rest of us!