Access Korean Social Games from your NateOn Messenger

“Is Nate AppStore any better than Facebook in terms of social games platform service?”  It’s a question that most people in Korean social game industry once had in their mind.  Oh well, it would be a rash judgment to say which is better over the other but one thing for sure is that Nate has been making some good progress recently.

Then how exactly is Nate AppStore progressing?  As I’ve mentioned briefly in my past article, Nate AppStore’s primary users are from its SNS, Cyworld.  But apart from Cyworld, Nate also has a big pool of users using its messenger service called NateOn.  Before moving on to more details, a brief overview of NateOn is prerequisite. 

NateOn is the biggest messenger service in Korea which has accumulated total 35 million users and 15 million MAU as of Aug. 2010.  Actually MSN Messenger was the leading messenger since 1999 but it yielded first place to NateOn in 2005.  NateOn promoted aggressive marketing strategy since 2002 by giving out 100 free SMS to its SK Telecom users and 50 free SMS to KTF and LG Telecom users.  Later in 2003, the outburst of Cyworld boom also contributed to the success of NateOn due to the linkage system with Cyworld mini blogs.  The synchronized NateOn and Cyworld created a synergy effect and led to the growth of both platforms.

And once again with its past success model, Nate is using its in-house viral resources to position its AppStore as the leader of the social games platform market.  NateOn recently started a promotion, introducing a new linkage system with AppStore by adding short cuts into “Quick Launch” on the bottom.  By adding short cuts in NateOn, users can directly go to the game page more efficiently.

Moreover, toast messages appear whenever a friend invites the user to try out a new game or challenge each other.  In this way, NateOn becomes more than just a “chat” messenger.  It is starting to send game feeds and let the user customize it into an apps-oriented messenger.  Depending on what the user puts more focus into, NateOn can become the perfect messenger for various usages.

On the other hand, however, NateOn only limits the toast messages to personal messages.  For example the user can’t see what other people are doing if the event has no direct relation to the user.  The user is only limited to seeing direct challenge or invite messages.  This may be one of the improvements NateOn can make, where the user can see his/her friend’s activities from the messenger.  Facebook, for example, let the users post game feeds on their wall, which would appear on their friends’ news feed when they log in.  Ignoring the fact that many people might consider game feeds as spam, at least the virality seems resolute.  One may argue that there is a distinct difference between a “wall” and a “messenger”, but if NateOn is striving to become more AppStore friendly, it needs to offer more ways to become MORE VIRAL.

Item Shop Now Open

After 2 weeks since its launch, Shooting Star has finally opened its new item shop.  We’ve been receiving many feedbacks from our users that some stages are “almost” impossible to clear without using special features.  Now to help our users who are struggling with those “stressful” stages, we are introducing the SOS Item.

SOS Item includes: 1) Slower ball speed, 2) Decrease one color, 3) Eliminate bad items.  Each item costs 100/150/100 star fuel respectively.

Also to help users accumulate more star fuel, there’s an item shop for star fuel as well.  Star fuel is purcahsable through Dotori, which is a cash unit of Nate.

Now that we have more features to help users clear all stages, let’s see how many can clear whole 50 stages, since only three did so far :)

The Korean Fortress – What’s keeping them away from Korea?

Cyworld, the biggest SNS in Korea is often referred as the Facebook of Korea.  Many social games company from Facebook such as Playfish, PopCap, Rekoo, RockYou have knocked the door on Nate AppStore but most of them are in slow progress compared to their success in Facebook or other SNS around the globe.  Some of you might already be confused by the term “Cyworld” and “Nate Appstore”.  To give you a brief idea, “Cyworld” is a micro-blog SNS service provided by a portal called “Nate” and Nate AppStore is the social game platform provided by Nate.  

Looking at the size of the market and the number of users for each game, actually it’s a bit hasty to evaluate their success.  Currently there are about 2.7 million users using Nate AppStore out of 21 million users of Cyworld.  Within this small pool of market, each foreign company has accumulated the following amount of users: 

**Statistics taken from Facebook and Nate on 30 July, 2010**

Just by looking at the numbers, the market size is relatively unattractive; Nate (2.7M) vs Facebook (500M).  This may discourage foreign developers from publishing their successful games in Korea since their intial cost may exceed its short term profit.  Moreoever, it may be easier for them to concentrate on acquiring more Facebook users than jumping into a whole new market carrying risks.  In reality, RockYou didn’t even publish their most successful Facebook game “Zoo World”, which has accumulated more than 6.7 million users in Facebook.  Zynga, Crowdstar, and Playdom have not yet established their based in Korea.  Why is this so?  There could be few reasons for this.

Firstly, localization cost.  Localizing the game into Korean is not as simple as one may think.  Not only it requires a good translation, but also a good understanding of the culture itself.  The cultural difference can make the game look fresh, but also foreign too.  We will cover the characteristics of Korean social game market and its user behavior in depth, later in other posts.

Secondly, the payment system.  Using a Paypal system is not yet familiar in Korea.  Koreans rather use direct credit card payment or most often times use phone bill monthly payment to purchase cyber cash.  In order to purchase virtual items in social games, “Dotori” is required, which cash credit unit for Nate.  Dotori can be purchased in many different methods as listed below.  The problem foreign developers face is that it is hard for them to get the payment up for themselves without going through Cyworld or third party publishers.  

Thirdly, the Game Rating Board (GRB).  Every game published in Korea needs to get approval by the GRB, an organization that rates games before it is published.  Rates are categorized into “all age usage”, “over 12”, “over 15”, and “over 19”.  

The problem with the rating system is that it discourages developer’s efficiency and it prohibits many explicit contents.  Recently released StarCraft 2 was originally rated as “over 15” usage but right before it was released back in April, it was hold back since GRB changed its rate to “over 19” use due to its violent graphics.  After modification, it was able to release its open beta version with “over 12” rating.  As such, foreign game developers have difficulties fulfilling GRB’s requirements.

Fourthly, lack of information on the Korean social game market.  Currently, there are not many information about the Korean market  both online and offline.  At the moment, Nate does not provide any detail statistics such as user gender ratio or ARPU per game.  Also there are no regular report about market analysis, thus holding back foreign developers as well as VCs from entering the market. 

Last but not least, the Cyworld wall.  Unlike Facebook’s wall interface, cyworld allows users to hide their walls from others.  Moreover, more and more Cyworld users are hiding their blog contents from others, which discourages viral.  

Another difference in platform is what each platform shows on first page.  Facebook, for example, shows what other friends are up to on its first page.  Cyworld, however, shows personal page first, thus relatively harder to pay attention to what other friends are up to.  In the end, Cyworld needs to come up with a better solution to solve this viral problem for their Nate AppStore to quickly spread.  

In conclusion, Korea is yet a market with many entrance barriers.  However, the market is still in its infant stage with numbers growing steadily.  As mentioned in our previous post, Nate AppStore’s revenue is quickly increasing and Naver, Daum launching their new platforms could be the bright side of the picture.  Local “foreign game” publishers, which there is none notable yet, could also be a solution for foreign developers.  By minimizing initial costs and taking care of localization process, local foreign game publishers could also be the next successful business model in Korea.