Kwon Joon-mo, newly elected Chairman of Korea Association of Game Industry (KAOGI), shared one of his main goals as he spoke at the press conference on April 4, 2007.
Chairman Kwon has also been an executive director at Nexon Mobile Corporation since 2006. When he was thrown a question about how he was going to manage two households at once, he simply said: "I do not see Nexon and the Association separately. They are closely related, because Nexon is a corporation that contributes to the association. Whenever I was struck with a problem at Nexon, I always solved the problems for the best interests of the association rather than a private company's perspective. I will continue to do so and I wish the other companies, the members, will do the same for the growth of the game industry."
The gaming industry was rather like junk food to Korean society until today. People in general normally have not supported the industry for its negative connotations. Parents in general, who are the most population of adults, rather want their children to stay away from games, coming up with numerous negative reasons to their children.
They think that gaming is like gambling, or gaming is another form of stupid box that consumes the time and energy of children, or that gaming makes one to be violent and perverted. Numerous youngsters who seek games as part of their sports mostly use shareware to download games and play rather than buying the original copy.
The mobile games industry has also not been doing so hot. When it comes for people to pay to download games on their cell phones, people get reluctant to spend 500 won to download new game content on their mobile phones.
Then the Ocean Story scandal, called Bada Iyagi in Korean, did not help to change people's ideas at all. The game encouraged illegal gambling and its sexual content literally brought down the entire gaming industry. People's respect towards the industry hit its worst degree. "The most important project of ours is to divert people's prejudice from the gaming industry,"
Chairman Kwon continued: "I recently heard that one of our employees at the development was rejected by his mother-in-law and couldn't get married just because he was working at a game company. I could tell how far people's respect had gone down and was humiliated by such prejudice."
The Ministry of Information and Communication sought bright prospects in the gaming business. It is noted as a strategic business by the Ministry of Culture. People should consider how the game industry will contribute to the economic growth of our country, rather than criticizing how the gaming industry will corrupt every single soul in the country.
In order to do so, the association will focus on developing non-sexual and non-violent games and build more local clinics to give a hand to addicted players.
Vision 2010 of Game Korea is to have 1000 companies as members, export 10 million dollars worth of domestic products overseas, employ 86,000 employees and increase the market size to 10 million dollars. "Our three main objectives for this year are to meet collaboration between the gaming industries, establish a base for industry growth, and improve gaming culture."
Chairman Kwon stated. To meet the goals, KAOGI will strengthen the relationship between associations by setting up a committee and having sports meetings of the business, develop new technology and support to research, create a wholesome game culture, support branching overseas business, and release the restriction of laws to give more free will to the association and corporations when it comes to the decision.
It is expected that the association and the gaming corporations still have the long way to go until the gaming industry will no longer be called junk food. But it is assured that they will take every step necessary to break out of the shell.
