Video games have generally been viewed as a cause of various harms for adolescents. Oppositions of video games have continuously criticized the addictive features of video games that might lead to social and cognitive destruction. It is true that video games have been a cause of many social and cognitive problems in adolescents, but it is also apparent that video games have become an indispensable parts of our everyday lives. Such indications are easily found economically and socially, especially in South Korea.

South Korea has been noted for focusing on the video game industry for an extended period of time. The magnitude of video games in South Korea is therefore immense, accounting for more than 75 percent of all the profits created by the cultural content industry. The amount of export video games produced is also huge. As of 2014, South Korea’s annual export was worth 526.76 billion dollars, of which the exports of video games were more than 8.3 billion dollars. Although video games accounted for just more than 1.6 percent of all the exports in the nation, they accounted for about 80 percent of all exports of Korean cultural content.

Due to the large amount of investment in the video games, a number of South Korean games have been recognized globally. According to the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), the amount of exports of video games from South Korea accounted for about 6.7 percent of all the video game transactions worldwide. On top of that, Korea’s online games were recognized as some of the best in the world, ranked as second in the amount of online games sold.

Although South Korea was once recognized as one of the leading powers in the video game industry, it has recently been losing its position. South Korea’s video game industry has been on the rise continuously until the end of last year. Ever since foreign game industries started producing new game contents that produced massive attraction globally, Korea’s video game industry has been stagnating. As of now, according to the Korean Economy Research Center, the magnitude of the Korean game industry is expected to reduce to half the current size by the end of 2016, and more than 10,000 game companies will cease to function if the current slump continues.

Khgames gathered 20 game experts to collect their opinions about the current trend in the game industry and how South Korea should cope with its problems. 90 percent of these experts believed that Korea’s game industry is currently in a bad state and that “The biggest problem the industry is facing at the moment is that lack of competitiveness in the global market, myopic game contents, and government regulation.” They pointed out that of all the problems Korea’s video game industry is facing, the three aforementioned problems led to unattractive video games and restraint from investing in video game industries. 

The Shut-Down Policy has been controversial ever since it was introduced and put into action. Although the policy was introduced in order to alleviate game addiction problems, there were opinions that the policy would not be able to achieve the goal it wanted to achieve. Nevertheless, according to ChosunBiz, the policy inflicted a direct damage to the game industry by preventing potential gamers to enter the video games market. The Korean Economic Research Center also emphasized that the anti-gaming law was something that was not found elsewhere, especially Japan, China, and United States, the countries that are recognized as some of the giants within the video game industry. 

Video game experts also pointed out the lack of diversity in Korea’s video games, including mobile games. According to khgames, ever since the video game industry in South Korea started putting relatively more focus on mobile games, content planners started mass-producing Role Playing Games (RPG). Consequently, investors started looking for RPG games and neglected most games that fell short of being role playing. Experts who interviewed for khgames mostly agreed that this phenomenon prevented creativity from entering the market. In an interview with zdnet, Jung Sang Won, the vice president of Nexon, also agreed that such “uniformity of Korean video games pushed the Korean industry away from the global market.” 

The lack of diversity also came in other areas. According to a trend report published by Create NeWave, some of the magnates of the industry, such as United States of America (USA), Japan, and China, have been experiencing a sharp increase in their profits. The report insisted that these nations were different from South Korea in that they were able to produce game contents in various platforms, ranging from old school console games to Visual Reality (VR). On the other hand, according to KOCCA, approximately 88 percent of all Koreanmade games were online games, despite the fact that the popularity of different platforms were evenly distributed from a global perspective.

The consequence brought by the lack of diversity has caused some of the greatest problems. With the lack of diversity in Korean-made game contents, gamers worldwide have started prefer foreign games to Korean. When asked why they thought the Korean game industry was struggling, according to khgames, many of them insisted that the lack of diversity in Korean games has allowed foreign video game giants to dominate the market while Korea’s video game industry kept falling behind. As mentioned before, South Korea has been accounting for approximately 6.7 percent of all the video game transactions worldwide, but the numerical figure is decreasing fast. Although no official organization has been able to precisely identify the most recent numbers, but the rapid shut-downs of numerous Korean game companies indicate the lack of influence Korean games have worldwide.

A Need for a Solution 

With a clear indication that South Korea is struggling within the game industry, interviewees of khgames all insisted the actions need to be taken. They insisted that governments should lift most of the regulations against game industries and create an atmosphere that encourages investors to invest in the industry. Game experts also said that South Korean game industries should regain competitiveness in the global market by coming up with creative game contents that may attract gamers worldwide. This was mainly highlighted due to a noticeable increase in the popularity of foreign video games in South Korea. According to the statistics done by Riot Games, more than 60 percent of all the online games played in South Korea were foreign–made.

On a positive note, 50 percent of the experts who interviewed for khgames predicted that the status of the Korean game industry will improve in the future, provided that actions will be taken in favor of the industry. Although video games may cause harm to adolescents, they are unarguably a significant part of everybody’s lives. With the Korean game industry falling behind quickly, it is important that it regain its status for the benefit of Korea.