What impact will NC America have on titles that were handled by NCSOFT West? NC West is now a holding company that owns ArenaNet, the developer and publisher of the Guild Wars series. NC West is no longer engaged in any game publishing business. There’s no game business being handled by NC WEST anymore. I’d say we have a brother-sister relationship with ArenaNet, where we share information, challenges, and ideas, but other than that, we neither publish their games nor handle them.
NCSOFT is doing a major push at a time when many are facing significant market challenges. What factors make now the right time for expansion? The industry itself is going through one of the worst retractions ever. It’s heartbreaking. But that doesn’t mean gamers have stopped playing games. On the contrary, the industry is still growing on all fronts, PC, console, and mobile. Gaming is global, and there are many territories seeing growth. We have a huge fan base in Brazil, for instance, and there is massive growth in countries such as India, China, and the Middle East. I’ve seen ups and downs in the videogame industry. I
don’t think there’s any good or bad time for our business expansion. Each month, each year, new games come out, the market landscape changes, new devices launch, and there are new challenges. We have great titles to work on and we just keep moving on improving our live-service games and finding opportunities to reach more audiences and to make our players happy. For the past several years, NCSOFT has made a variety
of efforts to expand business in the West, not all of which were successful; but now we’re set to grow again. Not because this is the right time or the best time for expansion, but because we have to. Our players have been waiting for it. With some learnings from the past, and with better approaches to the market, I believe we can make it.
You’ve held previous leadership roles at Pearl Abyss LA and Kakao Games. How do your experiences at those companies inform your approach to leading NCSOFT in North America? What I’ve learned at previous companies and what still applies to my job at NC America comes down to a few things. Providing full support, energy, focus, and resources to our live ops and community is absolutely crucial to our success. We’re currently managing three live-service titles, and they have been going strong for a very long time. Respectively, from 9-20 years. Many companies cannot manage even one live-service title. The live-service game business is not easy. But we’re designed to handle these games and more in the future.
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Second, creating a creative and positive work
environment and culture and hiring excellent people who are passionate about videogames are huge factors at our growing studio. I cannot succeed unless I have a great team, and I’m grateful to have an excellent staff who works hard, loves their jobs, and is dedicated to our community, whether it’s our tech team in Austin, Texas, our producers, localization team, marketers, and community people here in Irvine.
How do you use your unique perspective to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western gaming cultures, especially when it comes to leadership and decision-making? In short, I communicate with many people globally. Sounds very simple, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. I think it helps that I speak both English and Korean and I can see the cultural divides and obstacles and try hard to solve the problems arising from cultural or market differences, sometimes before they even start. Listening to our developers’ goals, their dreams, and understanding the essence, the heart, of their projects makes a huge difference. At NC America, we’re on a mission to bring our
upcoming titles to the West, and that means ensuring our teams in Korea also know what we’re doing here in the US, what our goals are, and how we plan on reaching those goals. I try my best to make both teams in Korea and the US well-aligned. I pay close attention to how things are done in each division and when I find potential conflicts, misunderstanding or miscommunication between teams, I actively step in to improve those. By working on continuously improving the work process in the international work environment and regularly communicating our goals, plans, and results with the stakeholders, I can make sure the teams in Korea and the US are being transparent, in sync, and achieving the same goals: Creating great games for a global audience.
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