MapleStory Universe GDC 2023 Session FULL SCRIPT

This is the script from the MSU GDC session “MapleStory Universe: Perfecting the Core MMORPG Experience with Blockchain”. The session is broken down into 3 parts and can be watched on the MSU official teaser website.

MSU Official Teaser Website: https://maplestoryuniverse.io/

Part 1: Nexon & MapleStory

I’m Sunyoung Hwang and I’m spearheading the “MapleStory Universe” Project. Allow me to introduce myself a little bit before we start. I’m the production director for Nexon’s new blockchain based project, “MapleStory Universe”.

Ever since I first joined Nexon 15 years back, at the honor of a directing a few of Nexon’s leading online titles such as “MapleStory” and “Mabinogi”. And during my years as a director, I particularly focused on expanding our key Ips through various channel, both on and offline. While I’m sure some of you already familiar with Nexon and “MapleStory”, but some of you may be not.

So let me provide a quick rundown before we move on. As you can see here, Nexon is the number one online game developer and publisher in Korea, and we hold a very big portfolio of numerous global IPs. And with these IPs of various genre, we pride ourselves in being able to live service a game for an extended amount of time.

We’re listed in Japan and within the Japan game industry, Nexon ranked second in terms of market cap, placing it as a next biggest game company following Nintendo.

So we’ve been servicing over 50 games all over the world for past 20 years and we continue to scale as we speak right now. We also invest a lot in building a new Ips as we continue to put out project of different genre across the multiple platforms.

And today, I’d like to dive into Nexon’s leading MMORPG, the “MapleStory”, which I’ve been worked on as a game developer over a course of many, many years.

Yeah, that’s “MapleStory”. Has anyone here ever played “MapleStory” before? Oh yeah, that’s surprising.

So “MapleStory” is a 2D side-scrolling MMORPG that was first released in 2003 and it’s been serviced on a various platform as Nexon’s flagship IP. As a matter of fact, personally, I think it’s our number one IP actually.

Back in some times around 2000 and the early stage of the whole MMORPG boom, MMORPGs were often misconceived as a very dark and complicated genre, which I can’t say was entirely false, but Nexon radically broke this conception by developing quite unconventional MMORPG with adorable graphics and casual gameplay garnering heated attention within the industry. And with all the love we received from the public, who welcomed such a casual gameplay with open arms, “MapleStory” played a huge role in popular rising MMORPGs and online games in general.

It was particularly popular among our younger players, which has allowed us to build a diverse player base. Now I know all this talk about how great “MapleStory” is doesn’t quite suffice, so let’s just take a look at some numbers here.

“MapleStory” has approximately 180 million cumulative global players, among which roughly 50 million accounts have been active for over 10 years. And from a revenue perspective, we continue to demonstrate a rising curve as we grow in size yearly.

Games are very sensitive to technology and trends so that “MapleStory” have been serviced for such a long time is very extraordinary, I’d say even quite shocking. This is even more conspicuous when compared to the lifespan of other platform or genre game which typically struggle to maintain service for even just 10 years.

“MapleStory” is now expanding beyond the game space to whole culture of its own as we carried out various events like art balloon display, showcases for our players, and collaboration with world press celebrities, we are reaching corner beyond the screen as a global IP with the goal of scaling our influences and values. And players have enjoyed “MapleStory” in their own unique ways for a long time.

Every game wants to achieve such a decade long sustainable life service, but not every game can. So, this brings us to the important question today, why and how is “MapleStory” different? And what makes it capable of sustainable live service.

Part 2: RX Paradigm

So let’s get into the detail. What does a game need to do to provide a sustainable service? This is all too obvious for some, but I think the key is to the keep the fun going, make sure experiences don’t get old and that fun stays there. Even with the repeated play ups and contents, games should be fun.

As a matter of fact, in order for fun to keep going, the game’s core fun factor should be even more reinforced with the time for players to have a reason to keep coming back. So in turn, dev team should, one: identify the core fun factor, two: build a game so that these core fun factors are reinforced in a continuous and consistent manner.

If so, what is “MapleStory’s” core fun factor? I’d like to define it as the fun of winning items. The sensation that we want to give to player through gameplay is the reward experience that we we call the RX for the rest of the presentations.

Every player has probably had the experience of finally getting the item drop you’ve been waiting for or defeating the boss that wouldn’t just go down. And this success that you experienced in that moment was your reward, that ecstatic feeling of euphoria, that rush, is something you simply don’t forget.

Let me show you some few cases where the RX has picked. Everyone knows “Animal Crossing”, right? Coelacanths is an extremely rare fish that cost 15,000 bell per fish and this encapture the exact RX of capturing that unicorn fish.

Next is the legendary light pillar effect, that item drop in “Diablo 3”. As a player myself, I’d almost get a heart attack when I see this light pillar along the sound effect after hours and hours of farming.

And I’m sure you here today have had your own unique RX moment where you’re screaming of joy like Jonah Hill here. This moment right here is the RX, the fun of winning items.

From a dev team’s perspective, the key to RX seems rather simple, just give players good items. And as a developer myself, I agree. Honestly it feels like an easy solution, ’cause we technically have the power to shower players with endless reward if you wanted to. But it gets more complicated when it comes to the online game.

Every individual start gaming at a different point in life for his own reason and they’re all different paths to leveling up and people have different contents preference and it’s a total melting pot of unique players. And within this part, players fight, compete, cooperate, and exchange items, and ultimately build an entire economy.

In a world as big and complex like this, there are a situation where an item that felt good enough when you were out there field on your own no longer seems that great put next to all these other item in the market or players in the bigger city. And because item value is so flexible within online game economy, it’s actually very difficult task to generate good RX for players because you need to be able to generate consistent, stable, good item to do that which is very difficult job in itself.

This is why these are two criteria that dev teams look at in creating good items that suits “MapleStory” online environment. One is utility, the other is rarity.

So let’s start with the first criterion, utility. What we mean by item utility is how versatile it is. The more places you can use an item, the better an item is.

For example, you can walk on the ice without slipping in most normal sneakers, but let’s say there’s a pair that are made to be walkable on ice. These sneakers are better than the most and you know why? Because they can be worn in more occasions than a regular pair of sneakers.

Then what about the weapon with the different stat? All the other thing being equal, there are probably a lot more monster that can be killed with a deadlier weapon than a weaker one, meaning a high stat weapon can be used against a more monster in a wider variety of situation making it a better item.

With that, let’s talk about the strategy Nexon has taken to expand that utility.

Foremost is adding contents. To enhance RX, we’ve been diversifying where item can be used and most importantly, how they can be used. We’ve added six new continents and 16 new region, not to mention new classes, bosses, and more. Hundreds from our dev team have stacked up a massive amount of contents over 20 years we’ve been in live service and it’s not an exaggeration to say tens of millions of dollars have been spent on “MapleStory”, which is shy of any triple-A game.

When you look at the volume of a single update, it typically contains a new character class, a skillset, as well as a new region, custom bosses. And if we were take into account booster event as well, we say our updates are the scale of other MMORPG expansion packs that only come around once every few years.

But in the case of “MapleStory”, we carry out such a large scale updates about four to five times a year. If we count the small update as well, that actually makes it 10 per year. Can you tell, well, we are running a very dense high quality live game service? Such updates are still very well received 20 years in the running, which makes me think that calling a “MapleStory” a live game.

Let’s talk about how this ties back to RX. When these updates increase item value by expanding their utility, we’re creating a good item for online games. Utility expansion in short is the number one RX enhancement drive.

Rarity is still another criterion that determines if an item is good. No matter how great an item is, if it is easy for anyone to get, it wouldn’t be as meaningful to have it. On the other hand, even the most seemingly insignificant item can be very desirable if it’s hard to find or obtain.

What I’m trying to say is that there needs to be an adequate supply of items based on its qualities. Like I said earlier, as we proceed with updates, we’ll see cases where players experience deviates from what the dev team had originally intended. And because we’ve seen this happen all too often, we know the need to monitor games 24/7 after every update to ensure RX is maintained as intended. We plan updates in closer consideration with these values and sometimes we take quick measure after seeing how players react to the updates.

One key effort that we make make as a company to guarantee with RX is to get rid of bots and bots farms. Let’s say that game has a number of bots that continuously farm items, in that case, we’ll see a mass increase in supply of items and in-game currency.

By the law of supply and demand, the value of item will fall and the game economy will ultimately fail. What this all leads to is a decline in the reward experience, which we definitely don’t want.

This is why we have our dev team monitoring and updating as a first line of action. Beyond that, we have a professional data analytics team of over 200 people getting rid of bots too.

With this effort, over 10 million accounts have been suspended in the past 20 years. I know it’s hard to understand what a mindblowing number that is, so let me give you a comparison. The New York City population is roughly 8.4 million, which means more account have been suspended on “MapleStory” for last 20 years.

If it weren’t for organizing automated system that we built, especially for live game operation, this would’ve been impossible. We are only able to achieve this number because we believe in rarity control which enhance RX of the entire game.

Let’s sum up our journey as a mid session recap. So how was “MapleStory” able to grow over the last 20 years it’s been a service? We consider the reward experience as a core fun of “MapleStory” and have taken measure to ensure that RX is maintained.

First, expand item utility with contents update. Second, we incorporate proactive live operation to strictly manage the item rarity, and altogether, this have been key to providing a sustainable “MapleStory” service.

With RX at the center, “MapleStory” has been successfully operating for over 20 years. We’ve been seeing some amazing numbers along the way. Considering the average active period of top 50 of 50% of players is 15 years and I think it’s safe to say that “MapleStory” is a generational game now.

And what we really want is to continue this successful journey for the next 20 years as well, of course, but it wouldn’t just magically happen on its own, will it?

Now we need to talk about the future. What does the next “MapleStory” need to look like and how can you make this better experience? In order to answer these questions, we have been conducting extensive research on “MapleStory’s” unique RX and what that means. To make things to the next level, our dev team have chosen a direction, namely a new paradigm for enhancing RX.

As we struggle to find answer for what RX 2.0 would mean, we met blockchain. Let’s provide an important clue into how we could resolve some issues and limitation we are facing. Let’s go into detail on what this means and how blockchain reinforced RX.

We previously talked about how we’ve been making the dense contents update to “MapleStory” to expand item utility for players, even now as we speak, hundreds are working on these updates and this is what has maintained “MapleStory” RX thus far.

Now we need to talk what does next level RX means in terms of utility. If you were to expand utility, let’s say that we could just double the contents that we serviced by doubling, quadrupling the number of people you put into a project, that could result in more content, right? And we could do massive update, not by the year but by the months.

Yeah, the clear answer was no. The additional cost would be huge and simply not make sense. This would not just be about the headcount, but also operational cost that go to maintaining such a huge team. And simply mass-producing similar content would ultimately do nothing to improve RX of the players.

And so, we thought, we need to go a step further. What we did was we turned our attention away from the contents that dev team was creating, we instead turned our head to the activity generated by fans and creators.

Normally what we call gameplay only happens in game, but when it comes to online gaming, there’s usually much more than that. There are many fan made derivative works, secondary work by creators, and that exist outside the evident boundaries of what we call a game. Some examples of these derivative works are forum, fan art, a walkthrough, and much more.

And you notice that players move freely in and out of the game and that they ultimately perceive the entire experience as playing “MapleStory”. However, strictly speaking, in game derivative ecosystems are currently separated. This is because the fun of winning item, the RX, is limited to in-game experiences only.

Up until now, “MapleStory” item could not be used outside of the boundary of the game, meaning they could not be used in any other derivative ecosystems. But what if this is possible? What if you could use enhanced item outside of the game? What we want to do is build a new “MapleStory” on blockchain.

By doing this, we generate all items as NFTs and a structure where item can move freely between various apps. This means that item can go beyond the game and anywhere within “MapleStory” blockchain ecosystem. And because items are now free to move between apps, the previous boundaries of game are no longer there. “MapleStory” then goes beyond a single game into a bigger universe.

Players won’t have to rely on the dev team to fulfill their demand for new contents now, the existence of the derivative blockchain ecosystem with variety of creators will be meaningful now. This new organic content provides players with endless utility and enhance the reward experience. And dev team can go beyond their boundaries, collaborate with wide range of creators to produce creative and massive amount of contents. This is what we call next level RX, RX 2.0.

This is not all there is to RX 2.0, we need to challenge one of the most fundamental issues, what does controlling rarity means? What does controlling inflation means for the next level reward experiences? To answer this, we need to talk about how we control inflation.

Basically, it’s very difficult to control inflation within a game mainly due to its inherent design and structures. This is at the core of the product and challenges of inflation is hard to tackle unless you basically rebuild the game from the ground up. Let’s look into the case of “MapleStory” to go into further as to what this means.

Similar to other MMORPG, “MapleStory” has an infinite number of items that can be generated and inevitably makes it difficult to manage the rarity of item because supplies go infinitely. In MMORPGs, all rewards are generated and provided on per player basis.

Let’s say a game has 1,000 people playing and each kill one monster and win an item, that would mean that now the server has 1,000 of items. However, in the course of running a service, we can always accurately predict how many peoples are going to play and the number of players can always change and it’s not fixed number. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to predict the number of items that will increase over time, and this makes it very difficult to manage the rarity of items.

To overcome this limitation, we decided to introduce a new item generation structure which is limited quantity generation system. This way, we are able to limit the item generated within the server and say that a quantity of item is now finite, sort of how it works in the real world.

Instead of a structure that allows a game to have an infinite number of new items with more players, what we want to do is set the total amount of items for the entire server. This number doesn’t change based on number of players there are, and this sets a limit on the number of items that can be rewarded periodically.

This will be the market and generated transparently on the blockchain too. Once rarity is managed within the stable range and predictability is achieved, we’ll be able to solve the fundamental problems such as inflation that have been nearly impossible to solve thus far.

And this is number two of the key clues to reaching RX 2.0. By controlling inflation, we maintain the rarity of item that which then leads to a richer reward experience. To ensure “MapleStory” is a sustainable for more 10 years come, we will enhance “MapleStory” reward experiences, and we will actively adopt blockchain technology and the design to do so.

To expand utility, we will expand the scope of the game to include our derivative ecosystem based on NFTs and to control rarity, we will address the underlying issue of item inflations by introducing item generation structure that limits quantity. With blockchain, we hope to create a whole new MMORPG, a new virtual world.

Part 3: MapleStory Universe

So far, we talked about RX and how that was critical for the game, we also talked about how blockchain technology is critical to bring that RX to the next level to create a new era of a “MapleStory”.

Moving forward, the last chapter, we want to go into the detail on what that new era looks like and we call this “MapleStory Universe”.

In short, “MapleStory Universe” is a virtual world where various games and application made in “MapleStory” interact with NFTs. This include “MapleStory” MMORPG, but we have redefined what games can be and what the boundary is.

Now we see games as something more than before and wider universe where creator can participate together. This is a new chapter for “MapleStory”.

I’ll take you through our key project in turn now. Our first project is “MapleStory N”. This is the evolution of the original “MapleStory” infused with a limited quantity item generation structure that brings about RX 2.0. “MapleStory N” uses a blockchain technology and NFTs to define a new MMORPG experience.

You can win items by playing this like a conventional game and you can convert item you win into NFTs. Players will have full ownership of their items and will be able to freely trade and transfer them. We expect this to create a new game economy.

“MapleStory N” introduce a limited quantity item generation structure to tackle inflation. We mentioned this earlier. The quantity of all items that can be generated during the entire service period is predetermined by item type. After that, the fixed number of will be generated within the server periodically.

For example, 100 item will be generated across the server in a whole live period. Regardless of how many people farm items, only two will be dropped per week. And 50 weeks later all 100 rewards will be generated. And after that, there won’t be any reward.

Regardless of a number of players or other variable, the total number of generated items are kept in check. We are hoping that this will eliminate the fundamental weakness of having an infinite supply of items. In other words, inflation.

“MapleStory” will be the place where you can enjoy the reward experience of more powerful and meaningful items. This strict limitation on item quantities may result in a slightly different experience for each player. Item farming is no longer as self-centered, and you will have to compete with other players for some of popular items.

This may seem like an increase in difficulties, and it really is. And we see this as a part of a new fun that comes with RX.

Players will need to be a strategic about where they choose to farm items. They’ll need to choose between highly competitive item drop or easier drop in a less populated field. Each field and boss will have a different item reward pool, allowing for more variety in play and more fluid progression path. And if the item will have their own unique utility and rarity, giving players an enhanced sense of progression.

This will be the difference between original “MapleStory” and new “MapleStory N”. And we want the universe to be a world where NFTs are interoperable and thus we plan to release a couple of core applications with “MapleStory N” to achieve this.

Let me introduce our second product, “MapleStory N Mobile”. We are preparing to expand NFT utility in “MapleStory Universe” to wider range of platform agnostic environments. “MapleStory N Mobile” is blockchain version of “MapleStory Mobile” that allows player to enjoy MapleStory NFTs on their phones.

Players can acquire, utilize, and create “MapleStory” NFTs without platform restriction. And character NFTs and item NFTs acquired from “MapleStory N” can be imported to the mobile version and use it as it was on PC. And we expect “MapleStory N” to provide players with a different type of fun along with the PC “MapleStory N”.

However, there is a limit to Nexon single-handedly working on development to expand NFT utility. And dev team and creators, only by growing ecosystem together, can achieve the next level of RX.

That’s why we created “MapleStory N Worlds”. These are our development tool for “MapleStory Universe” that will allow individual businesses, amateurs, and professionals alike to develop a product with the various resources and NFTs of “MapleStory”. “MapleStory N World” is a sandbox platform where players can participate as creators as well to build various blockchain games.

Players can utilize various “MapleStory” IP resources, including NFTs, to create rich contents. As a creator, you can utilize vast resources available to you to easily make anything you can imagine and this makes you a true owner of your game contents.

At the same time, wide range of players around the world, including your friends, will also be able to play your contents and you can be rewarded based on how much your content has contributed to the universe. Players also will also be able to use their NFTs to interact with other players within contents created by many other creators.

What is more, “MapleStory N World” is a cross-platform service that supports not only PC but also mobile. Any game or application created through “MapleStory N Worlds” will be playable in any one environment simultaneously.

Last but not least, we will also provide an SDK that can be used to create a variety of apps. With this, “MapleStory” NFTs can reach beyond the boundaries Nexon has first defined. The possibility of apps that can be created with the SDK are truly endless.

Our hope is that “MapleStory N” SDK will enable new ideas beyond what can be created in “MapleStory N Worlds”. We want to encourage creators, including external professional game developer, to utilize “MapleStory” IP to create various applications and games. Of course, Nexon will also contribute to the ecosystem as one of the creators in the “MapleStory Universe”.

Here are some examples of contents that can be made with the SDK. A healthcare app that allows players to check their health and receive daily reminders, maybe a scheduler where you a make a new event with your friends, or a globe quest app where you win NFT Rewards for completing universe quests. It’s all up to you.

Eventually, we’re excited with a prospect of being able to integrate external NFTs and project into “MapleStory” too. What would happen if we brought other NFT project into the world of “MapleStory”? What you see on the screen is some famous NFT project that you may already recognize, right?

We’ve had a liberty of purchasing these NFTs and we pick up some example demo to see what they look like in our world. Cool, right? Yeah. The capabilities are endless. And this very space where various NFTs created by dev teams and creators can coexist is “MapleStory Universe”.

But we don’t want to stop there. We envision a word where NFTs go beyond the “MapleStory” IPs. So, you see there’s a character here that’s jumping into MapleStory N now is moving across to mobile. The same character stays there with NFTs. Now he’s going into “MapleStory Worlds”. And lastly, it’s going into dapps made by SDK. This altogether is “MapleStory Universe”.

One more thing, as the “MapleStory Universe” is an ecosystem built by various participants, we believe a sustainable reward structure will be important. We plan to measure the contribution of various participant in the universe and reward them accordingly.

To ensure that creators and dev team are aligned, we will measure their contribution to MapleStory’s RX and share reward between the dev teams and creators. Dev team, ultimately, will also act as another individual creator in the universe.

With a fair reward system, creator will be motivated to move in the same direction as the dev team contributes to the ecosystem. And this reward will be in the form of new token based on the player’s contribution to the ecosystem. But this topic is for another day. So, we’ll soon reveal more information about our token on our Medium post, so stay tuned.

Ultimately, the mutual understanding enables the dev team and creators to align their vision toward RX enhancement. Dev team will update content and creators will continue to expand utility within the NFT ecosystem that is “MapleStory Universe”.

This is the future of “MapleStory” where RX meets blockchain that can exist as long as there are creators, even without Nexon. This is an ecosystem where “MapleStory” NFTs can be used in various blockchain project around the world too, where other NFTs project can either enter “MapleStory” where NFT expand their uses and merge with each other by crossing the boundaries between their universes.

And this is how Nexon envisioned the ultimate MMORPG to be, an evolved virtual world that is based on blockchain.

Let’s wrap up all this presentation. To summarize, today we’ve talked about RX, the reward experiences. That was “MapleStory’s” key to 20 years of sustainable live service. Through blockchain design and technology, we aim to build RX 2.0 that will fuel “MapleStory” for upcoming 20 years. “MapleStory Universe” is turning this into reality as it goes beyond the existing boundaries to build an even greater “MapleStory” hand in hand with dev teams and creators, evolving into a virtual world where blockchain enables the limitless expansion with NFTs and flexible movement. This is the world that “MapleStory Universe” envisions.

The vision that we have for “MapleStory Universe” is “MapleStory” MMORPG in its ultimate form. We strongly believe that “MapleStory Universe” will be the foundation for the next 20 years of “MapleStory” and we are truly excited for what’s to come.

Thank you for being with us and on this long journey today. And we hope you will all support and join us as we take on a new challenge.

Thank you very much and please check out our Twitter account for the latest news. And for those of you with questions, please reach us separately for more information. Thank you very much again.