게임업계 IP 확장해 수익구조 다각화... 중국서 조회수 17억 돌파한 스마일게이트의 ‘크로스파이어’<br /><br />Korea's gaming industry has been popular overseas for some time. Now, firms are looking to use that popularity to expand into other forms of entertainment, like dramas and animations.<br />Our Kim Bo-kyoung met one of the marketers who was at the frontier of this sort of content cross-over.<br />The Korean gaming industry isn't limiting itself to just games. It's using its intellectual property to expand to other areas of entertainment.<br />Smilegate's first-person shooter 'Crossfire' has been a huge hit. At one point, it had over 8-million users in around 80 countries playing the game at the same time.<br />“Smilegate’s shooting game ‘Crossfire’ is still popular in China even ten years after its launch. The company jumped at the chance to turn it into a drama, which was a big hit.”<br />Made by a Chinese director, the drama 'Crossfire' was launched in late July on Chinese website, Tencent Video.<br />The total accumulated views for the 36 episodes has reached 1-point-7 billion.<br />The senior vice president of marketing for Smilegate believes the reason behind its success is thorough localization.<br />"Chinese users have their own fun factors and also pay differently. We thoroughly researched and made content that could attract the local users. I believe the story of the already-popular game 'Crossfire' happening during the times of great change in China made users nostalgic."<br />She says Korea's gaming industry is in a strong position to take advantage of its intellectual property.<br />"Other intellectual property, such as movies, is hard to localize due to different languages and culture. But gaming has a relatively lower threshold with the story and universe already in it, so it's easier to develop. The Korean gaming industry has lots of great intellectual property that could be a big success."<br />Other companies have already started expanding the use of their intellectual property.<br />Mobile game company com2us has made popular story game 'Marked by King Bs' into a web drama which hit 70-million views.<br />Its global hit game 'SUMMONERS WAR: SKY ARENA' has also been made into a short animation to mark 100-million downloads.<br />As long as games have interesting characters and stories, the chances of using their intellectual property to expand into other areas is very promising.<br />Kim Bo-kyoung, Arirang News.<br />
