PUBG Corporation CEO Chang Han Kim was interviewed recently regarding PUBG’s (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) rapid success on Steam and Xbox One. Prior to PUBG Corp (when it was known as Bluehole Ginno), Kim served as the producer for Devilian from 2009 and was promoted in November 2015 to vice president at Bluehole (as well as serving as executive producer for Project EXA; what eventually became known as PUBG). After Bluehole Ginno was renamed to PUBG Corporation, Kim replaced Won Hee Park (Devilian’s original creator) as CEO in October 2017. LinkedIn profile:
“Unexpectedly, we have seen global success and feel we have the responsibility to improve the game and sustain this at a global scale, so we are looking to expand our offices and we hope to do that in a few areas this year,” he says.
“We wanted to start with regions and countries that have larger userbases. So last year, we started by opening and expanding the offices in those areas… we’re aggressively hiring there. We have established offices in Santa Monica, Shanghai, Tokyo and we are recruiting in those offices. This February, we’ll open the new office in Amsterdam and expand the team over there.”
What I found interesting was that he literally has no clear strategic vision for the game and uses well crafted DBS (designer bullshit) speak under the guise of being agile in their process.
“I think my management style and how our company has functioned this past year means we don’t really paint a clear picture in the beginning – we just run towards whatever the next goal is,” he says. “We would not have been able to achieve the success we have if we took the conventional approach. If we had followed the steps of other games, I don’t think we would have seen the same results.”
As I’ve noted before, PUBG Corporation was a kneejerk reaction to the games unexpected success on Steam Early Access. Parent Bluehole were tripping over themselves trying to figure out how to parlay this into an ongoing success because up until that point, they were reliant solely on TERA. When Bluehole acquired Ginno Games for Devilian, they were hoping to strike gold with it via the Diablo audience (given how much money Blizzard Entertainment had made with Diablo III). That never materialized because of circumstances in Korea where it remained a niche during a time when venture capital money was heading into mobile development and publishing.
Once Hangames (NHN) decided to re-focus on mobile publishing (and started by unpublishing titles that had the lowest CCU’s first; which included Devilian), that put Bluehole into a bind since TERA (which was also published by Hangames) also eventually had to go offline while they made backend changes to it in order to integrate those systems with Nexon’s (their current publisher) backend. That timeframe was tenuous for Bluehole due to the lack of revenues. Once TERA came back online, that saved Bluehole from going under. Devilian’s future was pretty much telegraphed back then though (I detailed some of this back in early 2017 when I called it Deadvilian).
Bluehole was also going through this period of acquiring other smaller studios, bringing them under what they called the Bluehole Alliance, allowing them to operate independently, and hoped they would become a success. What eventually became PUBG was not expected to be as hugely successful when they hired Brendan Greene as creative director for Bluehole Ginno (the reason as stated before was that Ginno was originally going to be the subsidiary to create games for a global audience). Devilian was Bluehole Ginno’s only IP and was floundering on the PC side.
When GAMEVIL offered to do a global promotion and marketing campaign for Devilian Mobile, that is when Bluehole Ginno re-focused their efforts into completing it (at the expense of the PC MMO). And as I wrote before, that was the former CEO’s last card to play for the franchise. The mobile version was an initial launch success but it could not sustain such revenues on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, there was no interest by others to license the Devilian IP (specifically the human/devil-form transformation).
Given that current PUBG Corp CEO Kim was Devilian’s long time producer, it’s not surprising that he has no clear roadmap for the game. PUBG isn’t the type of title that Korean designers are intrinsically familiar with. Most cut their teeth in the actual MMORPG design/development realm and creating systems that integrated well with Korea’s ubiquitous gaming cafe’s (PC bangs). To put it bluntly, he has been elevated to a position of trying to manage this unexpected success with a team that is also comprised of developers (more familiar with the genre) that are mostly from Europe (where Greene is also from).
He is also tasked with trying to parlay this into something long term (which is why all the prior kneejerk with Epic Games Fortnite). This is literally uncharted territory for Kim as well as Bluehole in general. But this is exactly the type of success that Bluehole was always looking for with its alliances. The issue I see though is that most of their original acquisitions were mobile developers (none of which panned out) and also Ginno Games for Devilian (which also did not pan out; but was also partially Ginno’s fault for having very little content in the original Korean version and not having additional content ready to go past the level 58-60 content they had).
I don’t have a great crystal ball but just observing how Bluehole has been handling PUBG’s success (with several kneejerk reactions), they need to be careful about over expanding the business operations side of things. Talking the talk about increasing the quality of the game is one thing; they need to put that into action. Most Korean game development has been about short term bang, using the revenues from that to fund the next thing (while also providing a return on investment to the VC’s and private investors), and rinsing and repeating that cycle (it worked well with MMO’s and mobile ones). Actual long term quality and longevity were not what you would consider primary objectives. Neither is security because most target installations were gaming cafes plus also the fact that all accounts require an actual Korean SSN (so hacking is not a thing since that can affect ones future).
Publishing in the west was just an additional source of revenue. That creates an obvious dichotomy where the original design parameters don’t sync up well when it comes to broader/heterogenous deployments which span multiple regions and timezones. The venture capital eventually shifted from PC MMO’s to mobile gaming which is why there is has been this slowdown from what was an initial onslaught of dreck. Mobile is also going to end up experiencing this shift where the pendelum is probably going to swing towards the middle.
Trying to parlay PUBG into a long term global IP (like say Call of Duty), means that PUBG Corporation is going to have put that talk of quality, into actual action. Looking at how Bluehole Ginno ended up treating Devilian across ALL of its design iterations, leads me to believe that Kim (who again was Devilian’s producer) is in over his head (what he referred in the quote above as his management style) when it comes to that task. What I see are attempts to get lucky again with their global initiatives including the e-sports angle. But as I mentioned before, this isn’t a genre they created. Epic Games Fortnite is experiencing its own smaller level of success for example.
This is also why parent Bluehole isn’t placing everything into the PUBG basket. It is why Project W was quickly unveiled with its actual name (Ascent: Infinite Realm) and why actual new content is being created for TERA. They are obviously going to leverage some of PUBG’s success back into what they know well which is the MMO market which Bluehole’s CEO mentioned is stagnant and is hoping that A:IR will be the first of their new venture to reinvigorate that market.
I personally do not see A:IR as being a huge game changer (Unreal Engine 3 is just going to hold it back). TERA is Bluehole’s basic bread and butter (which they are going to try and make extra revenues from when it releases on PS4 and Xbox One later this year) but they also aren’t going to place a huge emphasis on optimization at this time while they ride PUBG’s success. But as Nemarble has shown with their recreation of TERA assets in Unreal Engine 4 for TERA M, the game would work, look, and play even better on PC with an engine change. However, the work involved would be better done in a new title (which Bluehole has already mentioned, there won’t be a TERA 2 sequel; that doesn’t technically rule out a prequel though).
Digressing, it is what comes AFTER A:IR and how well managed PUBG is at the tail end of 2018 heading into 2019 (and whether or players are still onboard or whether or not something else has come into to take away marketshare). NCsoft’s Project TL (formerly Lineage Eternal) which is going to be an isometric style MMO with ARPG combat, is a huge wildcard because of the fact that they are redoing it entirely in Unreal Engine 4. That will give this title a huge leg up on Lost Ark which is already entrenched in Unreal Engine 3. The biggest issue with NCsoft though is how they monetize their games and how quickly they shutter ones they deem as not performing.
As I’ve noted before, ARPG style MMO’s are a niche in Korea and also globally. Their designs also suffer from the same linear gear progression design (versus the wider RNG based itemization of actual ARPG’s which also affects build/skill variations and thus actual theory crafting), lack of in-depth story/lore, and randomized world design (though Wolcen in early access sort of moves away from that with static tilesets as well as the lack of fog of war).
My point is that IF NCsoft can live up to the original vision they had with Lineage Eternal (the G-Star 2011 trailer below), I can see Bluehole in that future, trying to re-tap some of Devilian in that future. Webzen with MU Legend was a non-starter in terms of having any sort of wow factor but it didn’t do Devilian any favors either. The Devilian franchise is indeed listed under parent Bluehole now BUT primarily from an intellectual property point of view. Bluehole is obviously going to observe both Lost Ark and Project TL to determine its longer term fate (where that IP will only end up being re-deployed in a newer game engine; Devilian uses Gamebryo+PathEngine).
Trion Worlds was a poor choice as a publisher to begin with but that was the cards that were dealt since it was a deal made while Bluehole was still in the process of finalizing the Ginno Games acquisition (plus En Masse Entertainment was a Bluehole subsidiary meant for publishing to North America only).
That is why in some respects, I am rooting for Project TL (since Bluehole has this recent history of kneejerk reacting to things). Lost Ark has some innovative and interesting systems BUT I cannot see Tripod Studio nor publisher Smilegate doing this game right (especially business model) in the west versus a huge studio/publisher like NCsoft that has experience in this area. The 2009 based version of Devilian will be sunsetting in NA/EU in a few short weeks from now but there is still hope in the future that portions of its IP will resurrect in some form in the future.
