South Korea: what any developer who wants to localize his mobile game needs to know

We have already talked with Josh Burns about what opportunities mobile game developers in Japan have . Josh is a consultant with a wealth of experience who helps leading mobile game developers to enter Asian markets. This week, he shared with us his knowledge of the South Korean market - one of the largest markets in the world.

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What is the most attractive in the South Korean mobile gaming market?

Compared to many other countries in South Korea, an incredibly high level of smartphone penetration is the highest in the world, about 88 percent, unlike other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. For example, in China, it is 58 percent, and in Japan - 39 percent. At the same time, mobile networks can boast excellent coverage and high speeds, that is, 1 GB games are not a problem (example: Marvel Future Flight, a 1 GB game that has been downloaded 30 million times ). Over 80 percent of users have LTE. The mobile content market is dominated by iTunes and Google Play, together covering approximately 80 percent of the market. Plus, the fact that, in relation to the size of the population, the mobile market is simply huge: $ 2 billion, one of the five largest markets in the world, despite the fact that the country barely falls into the top thirty in terms of population. All this makes the South Korean market extremely interesting.

What difficulties do you face in South Korea?

The Kakao platform - a whole range of products, from social networks to taxis - is still one of the dominant ones, although it has lost its positions over the past few years. Almost everyone uses it as a mobile messenger and - historically - to get to the top of the charts, developers have to integrate with Kakao because of the huge user base. But in recent years, more and more developers are leaving Kakao, especially if it’s not about casual games, because there are already so many games on the platform that the market is oversaturated, and also because Kakao requires a significant share of the revenue and That integration requires additional development and support. However, many of the most profitable games in South Korea are still associated with this platform. The problem for western developers may be the fact that building good relations with Kakao from abroad is not easy, while integration alone is not enough: constant work is needed for the game to be recommended to players and to be noticeable after integration.

In addition, local companies dominate the South Korean market, many of which are focused on creating games for local users. Netmarble , for example, according to some estimates, receives almost half of the total revenue from mobile games, and the first ten games on the market account for almost 75 percent of the total market revenue. In this market is similar to the western: local games are firmly established on the leading positions of the ratings.

You also need to know that the marketing budgets for games in South Korea are enormous - we see such budgets in the west for console games, with a focus on advertising in buses and subways, as well as on television. In the South Korean metro, most of the advertising is advertising for mobile games, because almost the entire population of the country is concentrated around Seoul, which makes traditional advertising, such as advertising in the metro, very effective. Millions of dollars are spent on launch - according to some estimates, Clash of Clans spent about 20 million dollars to get into the ranking of the best games in terms of revenue, and then only after they spent a whole year studying the market.


Advertising mobile games in the subway car in Seoul | AP

Finally, the tastes of the locals in terms of graphics are very different from the tastes of Western players. Just look at the AppAnnie list of South Korea's best games to see how big the differences are.

Is there any game genre, especially successful in South Korea? Are there any habits and tastes inherent to South Korean players?

In South Korea, all games are role-playing. This is always an RPG. Action RPGs, including games with synchronous multiplayer battles, are especially popular. A powerful mobile network allows you to use this functionality.

South Koreans try a lot of games: they play them for a short time, consuming them “bit by bit” , less than an hour for each. In South Korea, it is very important to send notifications at the correct time: local developers send push notifications when players go to work or home, or during the lunch break, and in-game sales usually start on payday (24-26 day of the month) . Also, developers have been using in-game subscriptions for quite some time, so players are used to this monetization strategy.

As I have already said, the game graphics here are rather peculiar - the realism of Western games does not at all attract players from South Korea. Moreover, South Koreans prefer deep, complex games. Even casual games here can boast a large set of characters and a deep development system that we used to meet in the RPG.

We recently talked about how to localize games for Japan . Are localization recommendations for South Korea different from the steps described in that article?

The overall strategy I described for Japan will work for South Korea, so feel free to use this guide . For most studios this will be enough to advance on the South Korean market, given the limited potential of their game or games. It is important to understand that even in South Korea there are local app stores for Android and together they have a serious weight, this should not worry small studios with limited resources.

Western developers who want to enter the South Korean market should know that local developers have achieved significant success using monetization systems such as VIP (special in-game rewards that a player receives when his total game costs reach a certain level), bonuses for the first purchase (special in-game items) and monthly subscriptions (in-game items that the player receives every day for 30 days).

What you need to know about the partnership developer who wants to localize their game for South Korea?

Now local South Korean publishers are not very interested in Western content, only a few "fashionable" publishers are looking for Western games to import. Virtually any Western developer should rely on their strength in localizing the game and researching local advertising strategies. The biggest development opportunity for Western companies is now in contracts for a global publication with large South Korean companies that can release their games both in Asia and in the West. In addition, many South Korean companies are interested in expanding beyond the South Korean market, since there is high competition there - this opens the way for mergers and acquisitions. For example, Netmarble invested $ 130 million in SGN, and Nexon bought Big Huge Games . In 2017 there will surely be more such deals.

The South Korean market opens up a wealth of opportunities for Western developers for many reasons, not the least of which is the highest smartphone penetration in the world. However, success will require an understanding of the differences in the habits and tastes of local players, as well as an understanding of the fact that the market is extremely competitive in terms of marketing. Watch for mergers and acquisitions in the coming quarters and you can understand what the players of the South Korean market are looking for in the west.


About the translator

The article is translated in Alconost.

Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 68 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources, translation of technical texts .

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