GStar has become an international game show representing Asia in spite of its short, four year history. However, GStar has had its share of critics stating that the show lacked its own unique character. But this year, all we saw at GStar 2008 can be expressed in one famous sentence: "The most Korean thing is the most global thing." GStar 2008 put together online games and e-Sports, the strongest fields of Korea. Therefore, it was able to show its best to Korean and foreign visitors.

Seo Tae-geon, Executive Vice President of the Industry & Culture Promotion Division of the Korea Game Industry Agency (KOGIA), acted as the leader of GStar 2008 and promoted it heavily. Seo said: "It was really hard to prepare for it because we had a very short time." That is not an exaggeration at all. In fact, the previous GStar organizing committee broke up in May, and a new organizing team in KOGIA was made in late June. Seo only had a few short months to prepare for GStar this year. Every team member had to work hard to persuade domestic companies to participate in GStar. In order to find foreign companies, they went to lectures of foreign international game shows such as China Joy and GC. Thanks to those efforts, the exhibition received its greatest number of participating companies with about 162 altogether.

Seo said: "By our own estimation, we think GStar 2008 was a good opportunity for domestic game businesses to combine with foreign businesses. We tried to improve the quality with a drastic redesign of the B2B shell." Previous B2B shells were mainly composed of rigid meeting rooms. To make a more active and engaging B2B space, transformed the shell into a showcase. KOGIA created the B2B shell to be a real marketplace where business people can also buy and sell technologies as well as content.

It is time now to prepare for GStar 2009. It is urgent and important to accurately recognize the weakness of the Korean game industry and to lay out a scheme to improve it. Seo pointed out three important things that the Korean game industry should pay attention to.

First, the industry should breed skillful game developers. There is always a lack of game developers in the Korean game industry because every game company wants to hire people with a lot of experience in the field. It is frequent to poach an expert game developer who is working in another game company. KOGIA is managing a game academy to raise more skillful developers. Seo claimed that the most important part of their educational process is to teach students to make creative games. Seo emphasized that the only way to compete with foreign games is to develop unique and creative games. It is more desperate for small-scale game companies because a portfolio with creative games will appeal more to other companies when they try to merge.

Second, it is important to support the weak mobile game industry. Currently, the Korean mobile game market is only a 220 billion won industry. While the online game market is growing at the rate of 26% every year, the mobile game market is almost at a standstill. Furthermore, except for three major companies - Com2uS, Nexon Mobile, and Gamevil - all companies are small. KOGIA also supports these small mobile game companies by providing concrete education support and game contests.

Third, the Korean game industry should focus on console games and arcade games which Korea has missed out on until now. But it doesn't mean that Korea has to change its main field from online games to consoles and arcades. Seo laid his finger on the recent trend of multi-platform game development. With this kind of technological improvement in the near future, we will be able to enjoy many online games on a console or arcade and vice versa.

Therefore, this is the right time for Korea to pay attention to the console and arcade game market.