What G-Star booths say about the Korean Game Industry
Booths. Boobs. Boom.
On Nov 17th, South Korea’s biggest game show will hold court in the coastal city of Busan to showcase Korea’s greatest games. From Triple-A to indies, mobile to PC (but sadly not a lot of console) developers, the entire Korean game developer community will gather to share games, drink and cheer in a festive environment. At Gangnam Gamers, it is our goal to provide not only comprehensive coverage of the event, but also the stories that lurk behind G-Star. Welcome to G-Star Week.
From their size, decor, the presence of booth girls and so forth, a trade show’s booths says a lot about the convention and its respective industry. G-Star is no different. Here’s my analysis of the booths at G-Star, and what they say about the Korean Gaming Industry (KGI).
Booth Sizes and Market Share
G-Star was dominated by a few humongous booths mixed in with a smattering of small-to-tiny booths. About a third of the exhibition area was covered by Nexon and Netmarble alone. In like fashion, the grossing charts of Korea’s gaming market are dominated by these two companies. It was as if someone handed out floorspace according to the market share of each company, with the lack of booth diversity symptomatic of the scarcity of major players in the KGI.
Contrast this with an event like E3, where there was far greater booth equality. Not only were the major players more evenly distributed, but there was also a wealth of medium-sized booths to bring diversity and pizzazz to an exhibition hall dominated by the giant booths of Bethesda, Ubisoft, Square and Nintendo. The contrast with the cloistered, top-heavy market of Korea is stark indeed.
Booth Creativity, and the lack thereof
Another thing that just pops out about the booths at G-Star is how utilitarian they are: within a booth there are a bunch of games, with a bunch of seats to said play games. That’s about it. There are no missions or adventures, no ornate steampunk relics that shed light on the rich lore underpinning a franchise. In other words, there are no giant Titanfall robots:
Instead, there’s a whole bunch of screens:
The lack of imagination in the booths demonstrates an aspect of the KGI that appears to be here to stay: the absence of game lore, and, perhaps, the lack of creativity of the KGI. Now, it’s easy to point fingers at the Korean education system and its apparent tendency to stifle storycrafting. I won’t go that far, at least not in this article. But it does reflect a broader industry trend to emphasize multiplayer, competitive games over single-player, story-driven games. It should also be noted that the KGI lacks a relevant console market. Whether it’s the Playstation or XBox, consoles are not represented in any significant way here in Korea, and seeing that many story-driven games are console-first, it could be a case where the market is dictating the content.
Booth Girls
So I don’t really know what to say about this, except that sex sells games here in Korea.
I would say that in contrast, E3 didn’t really have booth girls, instead focusing on the strength of iconic franchises and immersive, story-driven booths to present their games. Is there some sort of correlation between booth girls and lore? Hmm..
VR is everywhere (again)
So, our colleague Jason is going to talk a lot about VR, AR and something called “VR Stank” in the very near future. I’m not gonna slow his roll. Nor am I going to dip too deeply into my previous negative outlook on VR. I’ll just point out that VR was everywhere, with tons of booths dedicated to showcasing VR games. At the same time, it can be argued that VR was nowhere — there was very little sentiment of VR as a must-have item, or any particularly outstanding VR games. Whether this is a temporary lull in the VR hype train or something more impactful remains to be seen.
University Booths
There’s been a concerted effort by the Korean government to have game-development education more readily available for the younger generation, and this was evidenced by several college-centric booths:
And that’s it for the booths! We’ll be back with more coverage of the games from G-Star and other cool stuffs real soon. Peace!
