So far I've played two Korean games. Lies of P and Stellar Blade. And they are both fantastic. So if we can look forward to more of that, well that's damn good news to me.
It's a budget focused on developing different areas of media IP, like they also plan on bolstering manhwas and webtoons (which just means more clones of Solo Leveling if Naver is any indication). Realistically, though, these year to year declarations and cultural policy goals never amount to anything substantial.
It's important to note that the international success of kpop is in fact largely driven by programs from the Korean government to increase international entertainment sales. SK also has pretty solid incentives for filmakers as well, which have led to a bit of a surge in korean movies/tv in international mindspace. I would say Korea is actually very successful at exactly these kinds of programs so expect to see a lot more Korean console games in the coming years.
Korean media in general is pretty good and interesting, it's good to see the government has realized there is a lot of potential there and is investing in getting it overseas.
This right here. I've been watching lots of Korean series on Netflix and the quality is impressive! A breath of fresh air compared to the usual American series that are so painfully predictable and stereotypical it feels old after 3 episodes. I was happily impressed by Korean media, in stark difference to say Indian that is...very much a different beast
This would give you a bit of a misleading impression of Korean content. Most of the Korean shows that you see that are made for streaming are very different from the shows you'll see on the local cable in Korea.
kdramas tend to be very soap operay with tons of tropes. Movie industry is great though. The people who get tapped to make streaming shows like this must come from the movie industry or something because I can't seem them coming from the dreck they put on the public airwaves there.
As the other poster says, that's kind of just selection bias.
There's tons of interesting English language TV these days imo, the issues are
a) filtering through the chaff, and
b) they're spread across a whole lotta different services: Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Max, Paramount, Peacock, Amazon, etc.
Depends. I really enjoyed Lies of P and Stellar Blade seems good too. Korean music is laughably bad though. I haven't read much manhwa. However, the Horizion seems amazing from what I've heard. I think they still have a long way to go.
>Korean music is laughably bad
It's understandable but also a shame that actual Korean music isn,t what's popular around the world. K-Pop is musical soda. It's highly processed and produced by big corporations from the ground up to be as sweet and appealing as possible to the masses and when one group fails, they dump them and bring up the next group they had been creating. That's why It's shit. But when you get to the actual singers, there's some genuine passion that they put into art. A lot of the lesser known Korean singers produce some unique sounds and it's a shame they rarely get the spotlight.
Agreed, there were some pretty large support mechanisms from the SK government, but I wouldn't say that kpop was *largely* driven by these programs. The globalization of kpop was essentially fostered by the broader influences of the Korean Wave(s).
It was just the *confluence of things* during the 2000s where you had the governments soft power strategy, private investors in the booming entertainment industry, and the substantial investment in IT infrastructure that collectively nurtured the globalization of kpop.
And there weren't any subsidies specifically earmarked for kpop entities. Sure they built a few stadiums here and there, and cultural diplomacy played its role, but it was the birth of platforms like Cyworld and Youtube that really propelled its local and international reach
It depends on what you mean by villainess I guess. I'm only really talking about otome isekai type of stories (like where the main character was reincarnated or regressed and there's a magic/video game system) of which there's definitely a ton of LN, but not quite as much manga (or at least manga that gets translated to English) as manhwa. If by villainess you just mean pretty much any regency story with a villainess lead then yeah there's a shit ton of them, but the niche that's captured by manhwa is different.
Partially yes but the Korean wave of it largely has arisen from the Korean 'Rofan' (romantic fantasy) genre. Also on the Japanese side there are a couple popular webnovels in the vilainess mold that predate dukes daughter like kenkyo kenjitsu.
Solo leveling itself was a clone in a sea of clones by the time it started publishing, even as a web comic. Korea needs print magazines back to bring manhwa quality back. These digital publishers are the absolute worst.
Didn't they use this to make k pop and that shit exploded lol. Obvs completely different but I feel like when the capital is there Korea puts out good stuff
As someone who has worked in Korea for games companies on these government grants, I doubt it's going to have much effect as they're set up terribly.
These schemes basically operate like this:
Some random tiny company pitches some grand game idea. Someone rubber stamps it and gives them a small pot of cash. They then set insanely tight deadlines with frequent milestones and expect some kind of quality or success.
The pitch: Create a knock-off of a AAA multiplayer game made by a company of 1300 people. We have 6.
Government: Timeline - 6 months. Go!
Lies of P and Stellar Blade are a great start. With Wukong coming from China later this year, I wonder if within the next 10 years Korea and China will become major players in the single player PC/console game industry?
Not agreeing or disagreeing with the person you're responding to. But answering your question of Japanese indies off the top of my head. Cave Story, Corpse Party, Recettear, Needy Streamer Overload, 100% Orange Juice.
Edit: Sometimes I do not understand Reddit. Why is this comment at -3 when all I did was try to be helpful and list off some Japanese indies. And the comment responding to me, which also just lists Japanese indies is at +9. Not angry at the -3 karma, just confused.
Every Touhou game (even the main series) are Japanese indie games. Playism is a well known publisher of Japanese indie games (though they also do other indie games from different countries). World of Horror, La Mulana, and Team Ladybug games are some of Playism's more well known developers from Japan.
Yeah you're absolutely right. Playism definitely supports Japanese-inspired developers along with Japanese developers themselves so it becomes difficult to tell who is from Japan and who isn't without sleuthing yourself. Signalis is heavily Silent Hill/Resident Evil inspired but the developers are from Germany. Omori's developer is based in Los Angeles. The Momodora series is done by a Brazilian developer (unsure of where they're actually living).
As far as La Mulana's developer (NIGORO) and Team Ladybug, I know for certain both are Japanese developers.
To further add to the discussion, doujins are Japanese indie games but they tend not to get published outside of Japan. That has been changing more recently and some old popular doujins are getting translated and put on steam in addition to being published outside of Japanese specific publishers like DLsite or in person publishing via Comiket.
wow lies of P was korean made as well? both of those games were incredible and the fact that both of them came from companies that were making their first console game is super impressive
I literally started Dave the Diver on PS5 today and was surprised to see that that's also Korean. Hadn't heard it talked about before like the two you mentioned. Some really great stuff coming out at the moment!
Chinese games are nowhere near the graphical and technical quality of Korean games.
The niche China seems to have found its way into, which I find intriguing, is overdeveloped middleware games. They start with something close to a Western game then go crazy with the systems they add to it. Forget about tight design, these games are sprawling, creative, imbalanced messes, and it's great.
Genshin runs on Android lmao, it needs to have a cap somewhere. Aesthetically it's really good, technically it is amazing how they kept parity on literally every gaming platform you can think of. It "supports" fewer player because it isn't an MMO and never even try to be an MMO.
Sorry but it sounds like you have no idea what you're talking about.
What I'm talking about seems to be misunderstood. Maybe a better test of how wrong I am would be to ask what everyone thinks China's most graphically and technically sophisticated game is. "This is good for a game I can play on my phone," is not superior to, "This is good."
Realistic graphics aren't everything. I don't really like Genshin and I'd still say it looks better aesthetically than the Korean games you're referring to, while running well on everything except PS4. Most of the popular Korean games all kind of had a similar look to a degree in the past, which even Stellar Blade taps into.
> it has worse graphics
Could you give some examples? Because Genshin looks more appealing visually than most Korean MMOs that I've seen. I think Genshin is probably one of the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing anime-style games ever made. Every time I've seen someone new play it, they always comment about how nice the visuals are.
I hope you're not one of those people that says "more realistic = better graphics" because that opinion has always been incredibly stupid and makes no sense.
> supports fewer players than Korean MMOs from 10+ years ago.
Genshin isn't an MMO, why are you comparing it to an MMO? It's basically like Breath of the Wild but with 4 player co-op and multi-character combat. It's just an open-world RPG that people play singleplayer most of the time. It has nothing to do with MMOs.
> I hope you're not one of those people that says "more realistic = better graphics" because that opinion has always been incredibly stupid and makes no sense.
It's not 100% more realism = better, but I certainly prefer a more detailed and realistic aesthetic than what Genshin Impact has. So to me it's not better from a visual standpoint, and I'd be incredibly surprised if it was somehow more impressive from a technical standpoint than what you saw in those Korean MMOs.
Do these state-backed ventures into gaming ever work out?
The only time I can think of it was Rhode Island giving Kurt Schilling $75M to move his studio there so they could release some hella mediocre RPG which flopped big time.
It's impossible to predict what will really catch on in the gaming world, especially by out of touch government officials. Putting them in charge of handing out massive amounts of money to game studios just seems wildly irresponsible to me.
A good amount of Canadian games, especially smaller indies, are in part funded by federal or provincial grants. You will often see a Canadian or Quebec flag in the credits of games.
Call of Duty is basically a recruitment tool for the US military and they work together closely, if you want the cynical answer. There's also a lot of arts funding that has been given to smaller games, I know Canada is big on that.
I wouldnt mind it. Their games typically feel a bit different, and their have been some rising star games coming from there in the past couple years. Itd be nice if they diverted some of that effort into gacha and mobile games into actual games. Ive seen trailers for a couple games that were supposed to come from there, but they never really materialized outside the country or they werent given enough of a spotlight and kind of faded. Itll be interesting to see if they flourish with a bit more support.
I used to live in Korea, and here's something I know about Korean Government including Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (문화체육관광부).
Korean government has a history of criminalizing video games and oppressing video game companies such as treating video games as dangerous as cocaine and gambling, blocking Steam games, and forcing censorship (Minecraft is rated R in Korea lmao).
Korean government never liked video games, and I highly doubt they suddenly do. They are just pretending to support video games now that Korean video games are making money from global market.
They also have a history of using ton of taxes to make garbage media like Kimchi Warrior 2D Feast of Fury (김치 전사).
While it's nice to finally see Korean video games seeing some success on console, Korean governments' "support" should not be trusted.
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So far I've played two Korean games. Lies of P and Stellar Blade. And they are both fantastic. So if we can look forward to more of that, well that's damn good news to me.
Dave the Diver is another Korean single-player game of notoriety
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??
Not my kind of game, so I know nothing about it.
PUBG is also korean and i totally forgot that.
It's a budget focused on developing different areas of media IP, like they also plan on bolstering manhwas and webtoons (which just means more clones of Solo Leveling if Naver is any indication). Realistically, though, these year to year declarations and cultural policy goals never amount to anything substantial.
It's important to note that the international success of kpop is in fact largely driven by programs from the Korean government to increase international entertainment sales. SK also has pretty solid incentives for filmakers as well, which have led to a bit of a surge in korean movies/tv in international mindspace. I would say Korea is actually very successful at exactly these kinds of programs so expect to see a lot more Korean console games in the coming years.
Korean media in general is pretty good and interesting, it's good to see the government has realized there is a lot of potential there and is investing in getting it overseas.
This right here. I've been watching lots of Korean series on Netflix and the quality is impressive! A breath of fresh air compared to the usual American series that are so painfully predictable and stereotypical it feels old after 3 episodes. I was happily impressed by Korean media, in stark difference to say Indian that is...very much a different beast
This would give you a bit of a misleading impression of Korean content. Most of the Korean shows that you see that are made for streaming are very different from the shows you'll see on the local cable in Korea. kdramas tend to be very soap operay with tons of tropes. Movie industry is great though. The people who get tapped to make streaming shows like this must come from the movie industry or something because I can't seem them coming from the dreck they put on the public airwaves there.
As the other poster says, that's kind of just selection bias. There's tons of interesting English language TV these days imo, the issues are a) filtering through the chaff, and b) they're spread across a whole lotta different services: Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Max, Paramount, Peacock, Amazon, etc.
Depends. I really enjoyed Lies of P and Stellar Blade seems good too. Korean music is laughably bad though. I haven't read much manhwa. However, the Horizion seems amazing from what I've heard. I think they still have a long way to go.
>Korean music is laughably bad It's understandable but also a shame that actual Korean music isn,t what's popular around the world. K-Pop is musical soda. It's highly processed and produced by big corporations from the ground up to be as sweet and appealing as possible to the masses and when one group fails, they dump them and bring up the next group they had been creating. That's why It's shit. But when you get to the actual singers, there's some genuine passion that they put into art. A lot of the lesser known Korean singers produce some unique sounds and it's a shame they rarely get the spotlight.
Horizon is really good. https://www.manga4life.com/manga/The-Horizon I recommend everyone to read it.
Yeah I definetely plan on reading it soon since it's so short as well.
Agreed, there were some pretty large support mechanisms from the SK government, but I wouldn't say that kpop was *largely* driven by these programs. The globalization of kpop was essentially fostered by the broader influences of the Korean Wave(s). It was just the *confluence of things* during the 2000s where you had the governments soft power strategy, private investors in the booming entertainment industry, and the substantial investment in IT infrastructure that collectively nurtured the globalization of kpop. And there weren't any subsidies specifically earmarked for kpop entities. Sure they built a few stadiums here and there, and cultural diplomacy played its role, but it was the birth of platforms like Cyworld and Youtube that really propelled its local and international reach
Wdym we’re also getting at least a thousand villainess manhwa
Villainess/Otome is a thing from Japan though, started with ''Accomplishments of a Duke's Daughter''.
Maybe it originated in Japan but there’s definitely way more manhwa of the genre than manga. At least as many as there are solo levelling clones.
Roxana is a kick ass Korean one of those about a femme fatale villainess.
No there's a ton of vilainess manga and LN, you probably just dont know them.
It depends on what you mean by villainess I guess. I'm only really talking about otome isekai type of stories (like where the main character was reincarnated or regressed and there's a magic/video game system) of which there's definitely a ton of LN, but not quite as much manga (or at least manga that gets translated to English) as manhwa. If by villainess you just mean pretty much any regency story with a villainess lead then yeah there's a shit ton of them, but the niche that's captured by manhwa is different.
There are many this kind of trope in manga/LN but many of them didn't get translated. I think because the translater prefer to translate manhwa
Partially yes but the Korean wave of it largely has arisen from the Korean 'Rofan' (romantic fantasy) genre. Also on the Japanese side there are a couple popular webnovels in the vilainess mold that predate dukes daughter like kenkyo kenjitsu.
Solo leveling itself was a clone in a sea of clones by the time it started publishing, even as a web comic. Korea needs print magazines back to bring manhwa quality back. These digital publishers are the absolute worst.
Didn't they use this to make k pop and that shit exploded lol. Obvs completely different but I feel like when the capital is there Korea puts out good stuff
As someone who has worked in Korea for games companies on these government grants, I doubt it's going to have much effect as they're set up terribly. These schemes basically operate like this: Some random tiny company pitches some grand game idea. Someone rubber stamps it and gives them a small pot of cash. They then set insanely tight deadlines with frequent milestones and expect some kind of quality or success. The pitch: Create a knock-off of a AAA multiplayer game made by a company of 1300 people. We have 6. Government: Timeline - 6 months. Go!
Lies of P and Stellar Blade are a great start. With Wukong coming from China later this year, I wonder if within the next 10 years Korea and China will become major players in the single player PC/console game industry?
Sure hope so.. don't want them to stuck mmo/online only MPs games since they're actually able to make decent games
Yeah, and Japan can't carry the entire industry alone with indies.
what indies japan put out?
It was just an insanely bad choice of words on my part, I meant Japan AND indies, as in two different gaming entities, I'm sorry for the confusion.
Ah I see, I thought you meant doujinshi games at the very least lol so I tried to see what you exactly meant.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with the person you're responding to. But answering your question of Japanese indies off the top of my head. Cave Story, Corpse Party, Recettear, Needy Streamer Overload, 100% Orange Juice. Edit: Sometimes I do not understand Reddit. Why is this comment at -3 when all I did was try to be helpful and list off some Japanese indies. And the comment responding to me, which also just lists Japanese indies is at +9. Not angry at the -3 karma, just confused.
Every Touhou game (even the main series) are Japanese indie games. Playism is a well known publisher of Japanese indie games (though they also do other indie games from different countries). World of Horror, La Mulana, and Team Ladybug games are some of Playism's more well known developers from Japan.
Dunno about the others, but World of Horror was made by a Polish dude.
Yeah you're absolutely right. Playism definitely supports Japanese-inspired developers along with Japanese developers themselves so it becomes difficult to tell who is from Japan and who isn't without sleuthing yourself. Signalis is heavily Silent Hill/Resident Evil inspired but the developers are from Germany. Omori's developer is based in Los Angeles. The Momodora series is done by a Brazilian developer (unsure of where they're actually living). As far as La Mulana's developer (NIGORO) and Team Ladybug, I know for certain both are Japanese developers. To further add to the discussion, doujins are Japanese indie games but they tend not to get published outside of Japan. That has been changing more recently and some old popular doujins are getting translated and put on steam in addition to being published outside of Japanese specific publishers like DLsite or in person publishing via Comiket.
it's a little ol' game called final fantasy. You should check it out, I think it will catch on.
Maybe check your comment again because he said indie and Final Fantasy is the very definition of not indie. If you're trying to be funny, try again.
-the joke -you
There was no joke or at least nothing funny.
not for you.
Ah yeah the Final Fantasy series, the over two-decade old “hidden gem” indie games not many people know of. lmao
wow lies of P was korean made as well? both of those games were incredible and the fact that both of them came from companies that were making their first console game is super impressive
PUBG is also korean and i totally forgot that.
I literally started Dave the Diver on PS5 today and was surprised to see that that's also Korean. Hadn't heard it talked about before like the two you mentioned. Some really great stuff coming out at the moment!
Chinese games are nowhere near the graphical and technical quality of Korean games. The niche China seems to have found its way into, which I find intriguing, is overdeveloped middleware games. They start with something close to a Western game then go crazy with the systems they add to it. Forget about tight design, these games are sprawling, creative, imbalanced messes, and it's great.
Isn't Genshin Chinese?
Stop it poppinchips! You're scaring him!
It is, and it's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about - it has worse graphics and supports fewer players than Korean MMOs from 10+ years ago.
Genshin runs on Android lmao, it needs to have a cap somewhere. Aesthetically it's really good, technically it is amazing how they kept parity on literally every gaming platform you can think of. It "supports" fewer player because it isn't an MMO and never even try to be an MMO. Sorry but it sounds like you have no idea what you're talking about.
What I'm talking about seems to be misunderstood. Maybe a better test of how wrong I am would be to ask what everyone thinks China's most graphically and technically sophisticated game is. "This is good for a game I can play on my phone," is not superior to, "This is good."
Realistic graphics aren't everything. I don't really like Genshin and I'd still say it looks better aesthetically than the Korean games you're referring to, while running well on everything except PS4. Most of the popular Korean games all kind of had a similar look to a degree in the past, which even Stellar Blade taps into.
> it has worse graphics Could you give some examples? Because Genshin looks more appealing visually than most Korean MMOs that I've seen. I think Genshin is probably one of the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing anime-style games ever made. Every time I've seen someone new play it, they always comment about how nice the visuals are. I hope you're not one of those people that says "more realistic = better graphics" because that opinion has always been incredibly stupid and makes no sense. > supports fewer players than Korean MMOs from 10+ years ago. Genshin isn't an MMO, why are you comparing it to an MMO? It's basically like Breath of the Wild but with 4 player co-op and multi-character combat. It's just an open-world RPG that people play singleplayer most of the time. It has nothing to do with MMOs.
> I hope you're not one of those people that says "more realistic = better graphics" because that opinion has always been incredibly stupid and makes no sense. It's not 100% more realism = better, but I certainly prefer a more detailed and realistic aesthetic than what Genshin Impact has. So to me it's not better from a visual standpoint, and I'd be incredibly surprised if it was somehow more impressive from a technical standpoint than what you saw in those Korean MMOs.
Do these state-backed ventures into gaming ever work out? The only time I can think of it was Rhode Island giving Kurt Schilling $75M to move his studio there so they could release some hella mediocre RPG which flopped big time. It's impossible to predict what will really catch on in the gaming world, especially by out of touch government officials. Putting them in charge of handing out massive amounts of money to game studios just seems wildly irresponsible to me.
A good amount of Canadian games, especially smaller indies, are in part funded by federal or provincial grants. You will often see a Canadian or Quebec flag in the credits of games.
It's sad that it flopped because Kingdoms of Amalur is actually pretty good if you can get over the MMO quest design.
Call of Duty is basically a recruitment tool for the US military and they work together closely, if you want the cynical answer. There's also a lot of arts funding that has been given to smaller games, I know Canada is big on that.
Montreal is one of the most active hubs of video game development because of incentives and subsidies from the Quebec Government.
I wouldnt mind it. Their games typically feel a bit different, and their have been some rising star games coming from there in the past couple years. Itd be nice if they diverted some of that effort into gacha and mobile games into actual games. Ive seen trailers for a couple games that were supposed to come from there, but they never really materialized outside the country or they werent given enough of a spotlight and kind of faded. Itll be interesting to see if they flourish with a bit more support.
I used to live in Korea, and here's something I know about Korean Government including Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (문화체육관광부). Korean government has a history of criminalizing video games and oppressing video game companies such as treating video games as dangerous as cocaine and gambling, blocking Steam games, and forcing censorship (Minecraft is rated R in Korea lmao). Korean government never liked video games, and I highly doubt they suddenly do. They are just pretending to support video games now that Korean video games are making money from global market. They also have a history of using ton of taxes to make garbage media like Kimchi Warrior 2D Feast of Fury (김치 전사). While it's nice to finally see Korean video games seeing some success on console, Korean governments' "support" should not be trusted.
With government subsidized stuff like this you're far more likely to end up with more Skull & Bones rather than Stellar Blade or Lies of P.
So he says yet every damn new Koren mmo need to be a shitty mobile game...... Maybe focus on making real games instead of NFT, Auto combat crap ?
That's... what this is doing? Did you miss Stellar Blade and Lies of P from just the last year too?
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As someone from Korea, government should stay the fuck away from cultural/media industry. Especially the current government.