Nexon America To Expand Its Games to Mobile Devices This Year—CEO

LAS VEGAS -- Nexon America is seeing the free-to-play with pay microtransactions business model that it specializes in start to be embraced in the U.S. market “on social platforms [and] on mobile devices -- and that’s something that we're starting to look into,” CEO Daniel Kim told us at the Design Innovate Communicate Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit last week. To take advantage of that, the company plans to expand its connected online games from the PC to unspecified mobile devices and social networks “definitely within this year,” he said.

It’s already tested the Apple device waters. It released MapleStory: Thief Edition on the App Store in the fall. But that was not a connected multiplayer game like the ones that Nexon specializes in; it was instead a single-player title, Kim said. “It did quite well” and was among the top two-selling games at the App Store “for a number of weeks,” he said. But Kim said “the new product that we're working on right now” will offer “a connected experience."

The company has focused on the PC “because of its ubiquity and its reach,” which met its target to have its games “available on as broad a platform as possible” that’s connected, Kim said. But there are now a large number of smartphones and tablets owned by consumers, and that will accomplish the company’s goal also, he said. “You will hear from us more throughout the year” about its specific plans for mobile devices and social platforms, he said.

Kim told us at last year’s D.I.C.E. that his company was “keeping an eye on” platforms including the iPhone and consoles (CED Feb 23/10 p3). It’s still “open” to offering its games on as many platforms as possible, he told us last week. But he said the console makers remained unwilling to allow Nexon to make its games available on their online services using the free-to-play, microtransaction-based business model that Nexon supports.

Nexon is “constantly talking” to the console makers about bringing Nexon games to those platforms, Kim said. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony Computer Entertainment are “starting to see the writing on the wall” about the growing popularity of the business model that Nexon backs, he said. Nexon released one of its games, MapleStory, on the Nintendo DS in the spring, and that “was a huge hit in Korea,” he said. That was its first game release for one of the console makers’ platforms, he said. But he said, “We don’t have any plans to bring that to the States as of yet.” For one thing, Nexon America doesn’t have experience with distributing packaged games, he said.

The publisher has also “been investing in companies in North America and in Europe” that develop games, said Kim. As examples, he pointed to developers Antic Entertainment and one2tribe, who Nexon America recently said “will share more than $1 million in development funding” from the company’s “Nexon iNitiative” to create new games for Nexon’s global publishing network (CED Feb 1 p6). The program was started in spring 2010 “to identify and fund new and innovative” game projects “that align with Nexon’s focus on building community and that encourage long-term user engagement,” it said. Antic specializes in developing and publishing casual games for core gamers. It will develop an unannounced social media game for Nexon America. Polish studio one2tribe has made massively multiplayer online games including Xyber Mech and The Witcher: Versus. Nexon didn’t offer specifics on what game one2tribe will develop for it. But Kim said last week that the games both developers make for it will be browser-based.

Nexon hasn’t offered games for Macintosh computers, opting to focus on PCs due to “the ubiquity of the Windows platform,” Kim said, but “we're definitely recognizing that a lot of our audience is now starting to [use] the Mac OS, and that’s something that we're keeping an eye on.” A way that Nexon can “approach that audience is to focus on games that are browser-based which is platform independent, or at least OS independent,” he said. “We get tons of fan mail asking us ‘when is Maple Story on Mac OS coming out?’, but as of yet we don’t have any plans to port our games over” to Mac OS directly yet, he said.

The company has also “talked to” OnLive “about possibly streaming our games” to that cloud-based game service, which can be used on Apple devices, Kim told us. But he said “we're still in the early stages” of those talks. “Technology-wise it’s really intriguing and we're excited to see where it goes,” he said of OnLive.

The next major title that Nexon America will launch is the free-to-play massively multiplayer online game Dragon Nest, Kim said. No launch date was provided, but he said “we're targeting some time [in] the middle of this year.” It will “definitely” launch “before the holiday season,” he said. The game has already “been a huge success” for South Korean parent company Nexon in Asia, he said. It launched in China late last year, South Korea in late 2009 and Japan in mid-2010.

D.I.C.E. Summit Notebook

Next year’s Summit will be the same week of February as this year’s, again at the Red Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences said.

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"One of the biggest obstacles” facing the game industry is the widely held perception that playing games is a waste of time, Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, told the Summit Friday. She argued that gaming is a positive activity thanks in part to the positive emotions it creates, relationships that can be forged while playing, and sense of accomplishment it can help foster. Games can also be meaningful, but that’s the one area where game developers have fallen short, she said. Gamers are spending 3 billion hours a week playing games globally, and McGonigal said she would like to see that grow to 21 billion hours by the end of this decade. McGonigal is also creative director of new San Francisco development studio Social Chocolate, which she said will soon release its first game, SuperBetter. The game was originally designed to help treat concussions and mild traumatic brain injuries, but it’s now also being developed to help users overcome nearly any injury or medical ailment, McGonigal claimed at her blog.