Nexon's Min Kim On The 'Free2pocalypse'

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Nexon America co-founder and longtime free-to-play evangelist Min Kim is stepping up as the company's head of Live Games, and the move is part of a number of initiatives. It's a new, integrated team focused on better overall management of marketing, production and communications within the team -- and a sign of continued evolution as the free to play space starts to mature in the West. When flagship title MapleStory launched eight years ago, its ...

behold the grandaddy inspiration for Disc Locked Content.

"People are coming to realize just like there are awesome paid games and really poor paid games, there are awesome, great free-to-play games and really bad ones." Service makes the difference, says Kim: "You can trick somebody to spend money once -- a console game can have a really awesome marketing campaign, and then it's like, 'aw, this sucks.' You can't trick anybody to spend money for three years."

He doesn't even understand his own business model.

He doesn't even understand his own business model.

This was clearer;

"We have more than 200 people [at Nexon America], and we actually don't make games -- we service games," he emphasizes.

They don't service games. They serve games with zero service.

"We have more than 200 people." 187 of whom are janitorial staff.

He didn't say in the US.

Ok, I'm a space cadet, yes he did.

Wonder what they all do.

Wonder what they all do.

Seems unlikely; They don't seem capable of that degree of coordination.

I'm sorry but I have never played a Free 2 Play MMO that was remotely popular that had "good" service. Perfect World is some what popular and I thoguht there service was non-existence. Same for nDoors ( before Nexon took over ).

He doesn't even understand his own business model.

Or you don't understand it...maybe that's why you think he doesn't understand it.

Wonder what they all do.

50 lawyers trying to shut down those over 200 illicit gaming sites they claimed they knew of.
10 people in accounting/payroll/HR to produce financial statements & payroll & position descriptions & stuff
15 are working up ideas for new content.
10 are vetoing ideas for new content.
5 forum monitors (including other sites since we know they monitor those too)
10 Korean translators
10 programers writing code for new content.
5 programers writing code that's not directly for the game - their ticketing system, forums, HR database, etc
5 programers writing those fixes and updates and w/e for server checks
10 testing code for upcoming content (and what a great job they do! /sarcasm)
25 are doing GM service in game (remember 24/7 so only 7 at most on a time for however many servers we have now)
45 are answering tickets (40 hour weeks so they should be able to do 90 a day per person at 5 min each - don't forget two 15 min breaks - so that's a grand total of 28,350 tickets a week responded to - that seems reasonable for a game with over a million customers)
5 managers who do nothing but supervise and have meetings and hold up progress (that's what managers do anyway right?)

So where does the NX all go? I'd say to the 50 lawyers.....

10 programers writing code for new content.
5 programers writing code that's not directly for the game - their ticketing system, forums, HR database, etc
5 programers writing those fixes and updates and w/e for server checks
10 testing code for upcoming content (and what a great job they do! /sarcasm)

Can't be accurate. I would put them at MOST at 5 programmers for this entire region for everything combined, and a more probable amount would be 3. I'd say, 1-2 work on gMS exclusive content, probably 1 with the second doing a quick errorcheck, 0 programmers for outside of game systems (that's what 3rd parties and contractors are for!), all 3-5 of them scrambling their feeble overworked bodies to do all of the testing/bugfixes while putting off new content (we will call that priority 3!), and all 3-5 scrambling with their now even more overworked bodies to take care of maintenance once a week (trumping those "priority 2" testing obligations as well). Just because it is a large company does not mean it has a large programming team, at least not here where almost none of the content is exclusive and everything is just localization. A friend of mine was an in-office GM at OGP for a little while and they only have a senior dev+a Korean translator in their Vancouver branch, and like 2 more at their US base of operations in California, that's all they had in all of North America. They aren't as big of a company, but I don't see why the circumstances would be any different in this case.

And yeah, probably the lawyers and, even moreso, the highest up execs paychecks/bonuses. Just like a real business in that aspect, at least!

Wow guys why are you all so ignorant? THERES OBVIOUSLY LIKE 6 GM'S NOT 3 LOL MAN

Or you don't understand it...maybe that's why you think he doesn't understand it.

I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding the statement she made.

I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding the statement she made.

I'm pretty sure he's just being an ass.

I'm pretty sure that's why I didn't respond.

I'm pretty sure I knew that.

Wow guys why are you all so ignorant? THERES OBVIOUSLY LIKE 6 GM'S NOT 3 LOL MAN

I didn't say anything about GMs. Programmers does not equal GMs. GMs are regular ass people with no remarkable skills other than babysitting a game while playing around with the internet/personal characters in another window all day.

I didn't say anything about GMs. Programmers does not equal GMs. GMs are regular ass people with no remarkable skills other than babysitting a game while playing around with the internet/personal characters in another window all day.

Like Mods!

Like Mods!

I wasn't gonna go there. dohoho

Oh man the comments in this thread made me lol.