I’ve been wondering for some time if i was going to make this post, because i know it won’t change IMC ways of business, but i just hope i make some players come to their senses and realize what’s going on.
I’m not going to talk about much in-game problems because the source of them is not developer fault but executive instead.
English isn’t my mother language so there may be typos or wrong spelling, but it’s not so bad to the point you can’t understand.
Understanding how eastern market see players:
When you look at at these oriental games that are brought to the west, you notice one thing: they’re eye candy. The main appeal to the buyer is aways good looks. It’s not only game industry that works that way in Korea, diva/idol pop bands and TV shows also appeal to beauty and good looks instead of intellectual content and the sort. This has created a mindless public that gives no importance to in-depth content and other qualities that are the most important here in the west. The companies know that people will buy their product by impulse, and it doesn’t matter if they regret later because the profit was calculated in short terms. That’s why these companies release new games all the time, and never stick to just a couple. I could mention here many examples of these: TERA, ArcheAge, Blade & Soul, Black Desert and so on.
When you look at things that way, the way of making a game is directly affected by this ideology, because they give no importance to programming and monetizing. The game just has to look beautiful and appealing to the potential buyer. This caused IMC and other companies to prioritize designers, artists and the sort instead of skeptical programmers. The game engine is poor and has little room for long term development, which we can notice at all these beta issues that still persist while launching.
Another important factor to notice is how punishment works in Korea. Koreans have their phone numbers linked to their SSN numbers so only one number is allowed per citizen, and most games use two-step authentication. This makes things a lot easier for online punishing, and game companies totally skip anti-cheat and hacking acknowledgements because players are too afraid to cheat and lose the permission to play that game forever. When these games are brought to western market, they are aways full of exploits and vulnerabilities because korean developers made it just for the east.
The opacity of the company can’t hide it’s ideals.
I’ve worked in big companies of many kind, and i kinda figured out some patterns that usually reveal what “boss” wants.
First, when the CEO or lead developer never engages in dialogue with community, it means that are not really worried about feedback, this may be because they plan to use cheap marketing tactics or because that specific game is just a little cog in their company and they don’t have time for it. Instead, they hire a team of community managers that will “filter” the most important feedback and give proper answers for the playerbase. These community managers often don’t understand much about game design or programming, and give a whole different message to their bosses, resulting in many half-measures and lack of new content.
There is also a huge pressure from chief and associates for scheduled goals, such as launch day, and this forces developers to look for coding shortcuts and low testing, resulting in 0-day chaos, bad servers and low optimization. Community members are also afraid off bringing some topics to the table because they know it would only put their job in risk, Julie is an example of this.
The monetizing meta.
Capitalism works in a way that everyday there are new ways to make money. There is also a “meta” in the game business and only a few companies are aware of it. The rest of them are doomed to fail and lower the standard of game quality, and that’s why i hate them so much.
The term “free” in no ways mean that the game shoudn’t be AAA quality. I personally give this credit to Blizzard and Riot Games. They figured out very soon that the profit from F2P can be overwhelming bigger than P2P, and we could say they are currently the richest and most loved gaming companies right now.
Conclusion.
Given the previous thoughts i can affirm that IMC is one of those low-standard gaming industries. Tree of Savior targeted the old Ragnarok and overall otaku community with an extremely beauty appealing game, and everyone fell for it. The CEO’s plan is to get the maximum profit with minimum effort, just like the previous game they made, Granado Espada.
The current game market is reaching a really high standard and there is no room for people with such cheap tactics. If i could advise IMC, i would say they should have launched this game 5 to 10 years ago, because it can’t survive in the present.
I won’t be surprised if they delete this, but it doesn’t matter because it will be posted on reddit too.
Thanks for reading.