Conversation with a Korean games company executive, "Jun".
Greg: "Why didn't anyone in Korea make an RTS to compete with Starcraft? You guys had ten years!"
Jun: "That's like saying, 'Do you play Go? Why didn't you make another version of Go? That game is 5000 years old.' We didn't make another version because we were already playing Starcraft!"
Me: [lol]
Jun: "It's like if you said to someone, 'Would you like to play chess, or a chess-like game whose rules I made up?' They'd say, 'No, I'll play chess!'"
Haha, yes. I've spent ages on the Team17 forum and people are constantly demanding to know why the recent Worms games don't simultaneously have all the features of the old ones, a host of new features (come on guys, you've had ten years) and the simplicity of the new/original games.
ReplyDelete...all the while happily playing the same copy of Worms Armageddon they paid ten quid for in 1998 and calling themselves 'loyal customers'.
Writing a hit game seems to be a terrible business move.
The Korean executive is wrong. There can always have a home grown variation of the Starcraft embedded with Korean folklores. People can and will switch if there is a better product. This is why there is Baidu even though there is a yahoo and google. In fact, the easiest way to make a better product is improving on an existing product.
ReplyDeletelike!
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