Licensing MMOs Worldwide

Gamastura covers an Austin GDC panel discussing the worldwide licensing of MMOs. The panel includes Nexon Corp’s Calvin Yoo, Turbine’s Jeff Anderson, Flagship Studios’ Steve Goldstein, and K2 Network’s Joshua Hong.

Steve Goldstein: (I agree that China’s going to slow down a bit, and that has a lot to do with a lot of publishers signing on Western titles, so there’ll be less for them to work on. But at the same time I think we’ll see a lot more Korean companies and maybe even Chinese companies setting up in the U.S. I see that as a huge advantage, but maybe I’m wrong. I think you’ll see a situation where you’ll have fewer opportunities where you can license territory by territory, but you’ll have more publishers that you can deal with in those regions.)

Joshua Hong: (I’m being more honest than I should be, but I’m a little bit confused, to a certain degree. I am a big proponent of a global publisher of online games. I bang my head against the wall to make it work, and it is working. But I study everywhere, and I see the local player dominating everything. China dominates the number 1, 2, 3. Same with Korea, Japan is in an infant stage.