Online game software "Lineage" maker NC Soft Corp. President Kim Taek-jin has been selected by Business Week as one of this year's Asian Stars, specifically 'Asia's Best and Brightest Entrepreneur' it ws reported Tuesday. Kim said producing gaming software without a sense of philosophy and knowledge of human science is impossible. He is currently reading poem of greatest Korean poets, including English versions of Youn Dong-ju's work that he finds intriguing.
"Reading books is my daily life. Stories about history, philosophy, legend, and psychology are needed to produce gaming software. A cool game cannot come out unless we understand about human beings," said Kim who thinks the real existence of human being belongs to his or her mental world, or in cyberspace, noting that reading books is passive while playing games is active in terms of desire. He continues that game of today is not a play for stimulus and reaction, but one that reflects interactions between humans and the world, and sometimes one can feel much more through the virtual situations in a game.
"The Internet will bloom in the field of games, not just searching for information. Games can include one's own philosophy or views on the world. Our strong point is dynamism to challenge anything that is possible in the future." Lineage players spend an average of 1.8 hours a day playing the game and in May, says Kim, 2.3 million Koreans, roughly one in 20, logged on to play it. However, Kim has yet to buy a PC for his home for fear of his child becomes to familiar with machines before people.
"A game should be a joy in daily life without destroying it," he said, who never forgets what he should be as a business owner of a venture start-up whose stock price increased from W500 to W236,000 per share.
He looks to hectic competition with Japan and the United Sates from this year. The company recorded revenue of W124.7 billion last year, of which domestic sales took almost 90%. "We sell directly domestically, but receive royalties from markets overseas. Our target royalty for this year is around W16 billion. Royalties are net profits, you know," says Kim who recalled the time when he started producing Lineage with only seven savvy engineers five years ago. Now 672 engineers work for him.
(Choi Bo-shik, congchi@chosun.com)
