Back in the old days when Krafton was known as Bluehole, Inc (before PUBG and the whole corporate rebranding), the company used to at least have codenames for their various projects; like Project S1 was TERA, Project W was Ascent: Infinite Realm (what was rebranded to ELYON), or Project BB was a mobile game they were developing back in 2018 (it was furthest along but looks like something they stopped pursuing) to name a few.
One of their newer projects (less focused on MMO’s) is this UNANNOUNCED PROJECT game that is based on a best selling Korean fantasy novel (The Bird That Drinks Tears) by Lee Yeong-do. Krafton’s core objective is leveraging the intellectual property of this novel (finding a way to leverage IP’s has been a major pursuit by Krafton CEO Chang-han Kim; an angle that was pushed by the other co-founder of the Ginno Games studio he was originally part of when they tried in vain to license out the Devilian IP, and once Kim became CEO of what was then known as PUBG Corp [now PUBG Studio], began to try to find ways to protect the PUBG IP) in a visual gaming experience (that was previously planned to be in an MMO format, but is now a single player driven visual experience).
The other part of this initiative is also Krafton’s emphasis on entertainment media crossover like their strategic investment/partnership with Korean drama production company, Hidden Sequence. The general jist is that Krafton wanted to have the sort of crossover that Blizzard Entertainment had with World of Warcraft (where a movie was created out of the game), or where portions of the intellectual property of various franchises becomes part of the cultural lexicon. It remains to be seen if they end up being even partially successful in this area.
Ok (and digressing a bit), back in 2018, this was actually what was referred to as Project Windless. But for whatever reason, Krafton decided to create a teaser site calling it UNANNOUNCED PROJECT. The site contains concept art (derived from the “new visual R&D” the company has been working on over the past few years). If that sounds like designer BSS (bullshit speak), it is. It’s marketing fluff for their investor relations material to make it sound like they are working on fancy production pipeline tech to create these next generation of games they are working on (and hoping one of them at least mirrors the level of success they had with PUBG).
It’s not a mistake if the above comes across as cynical (because I am). PUBG was not a planned success. And everything else planned after it, has not borne any fruit (MISTOVER became abandonware after just 6 months on Steam, Mini Life Social Avatar didn’t even make it past the 6 month mark, and Elyon “failed at the box office”). Back in 2018 (as they announced at GSTAR 2018), the company was working on at least 5 different mobile games (none of them have launched).
This project along with survival horror game Callisto Protocol (by Krafton subsidiary Striking Distance), BLACKBIRD (a console shooter), Project FF (a mobile based character collection game), and Project Whale (a casual mobile game), are the primary public pitches in recent investor relations material. Out of these, the only one that could potentially be a hit is Callisto Protocol. Striking Distance was originally a subsidiary studio created under PUBG Corp prior to Krafton’s most recent restructuring, where it’s primary objective at the time, was to expand the PUBG universe. Brendan Greene at that time, left PUBG Corp to focus on PUBG special projects in Amsterdam (he eventually left Krafton completely in August 2021).
Basically, there’s not a whole lot of innovation that can be done in this space of battle royales and survival horror games. But the company is highly focused on milking PUBG for all that it is worth, while hoping some of these other initiatives including “UNANNOUNCED PROJECT”, becomes another wild hit which they can milk (while looking like geniuses in the process).
