In March of last year, with the confirmation of re-hosting Busan for the next eight years of ‘G-Star,’ the largest international game exhibition in Korea, Busan Mayor Park Hyung-joon announced the ‘Game Changer in Busan’ vision before the opening ceremony of G-Star to be held offline for the first time in two years. announced.
Busan Mayor Hyung-Jun Park announced his ambition to develop Busan into a world-class game industry city and a world-class game culture city through the announcement of the vision for ‘Game Changer in Busan’, which was held at the BEXCO Press Center on the afternoon of November 17th.
On this day, Mayor Park Hyung-jun presented the Busan-type game industry development vision ‘Game Changer in Busan’, which is ▲Building a scale-up environment for game companies ▲ Making Busan a holy place for indie developers ▲Spurring the attraction of offshore companies to Busan ▲Straightening of corporate support platforms ▲Linking with local industry Cultivating creative talents in game contents ▲G-Star will invest KRW 276.9 billion in three strategic 12 tasks, including creating a fun game festival centering on G-Star and spreading a healthy game culture.
■ Establishment of scale-up environment for game companies
First, we will promote mid- to long-term support so that game companies with high growth potential can cross the so-called ‘Death Valley’ to establish a stable foundation and grow into middle-class companies. To this end, the ‘Bostar All-in-One Package’, the nation’s first customized support system in the game field, will be introduced. It plans to discover excellent game contents and provide up to KRW 1 billion for 3 years, and activate support for the production of games based on new technologies such as metaverse, block chain, and AI so that the local game industry ecosystem can be expanded stably.
■ Busan as a holy place for indie developers!
‘Busan Indie Connect Studio’, an incubating facility for indie game developers established in Centum District 1 this year, will be operated in earnest, and an indie game support system will be established to actively support investment and consulting. In the long term, it plans to build a ‘Busan Indie Connect Lab’ in the Unicorn Tower on the Hanjin CY site, which is being pursued for completion in 2027, to support excellent indie game developers at home and abroad so that they can stay in Busan at a low cost and work freely.
■ Accelerating the attraction of offshore companies to Busan
Companies that have moved to Busan to attract offshore companies, such as mid-to-large companies in the metropolitan area, where competition is fierce, will receive consulting and support up to KRW 1 billion in areas the company desires, such as employee retraining. In addition, in line with the digital nomad era, we plan to operate a residence exclusively for employees.
■ Significantly strengthened the corporate support platform
The 18-story ‘Game Convergence Space’ in Centum District 1 will be completed by 2025 to serve as a double carriage for the cultural contents complex and the corporate support platform. In addition, in addition to the 51.4 billion won of the game content fund established so far, it plans to raise it to 130 billion won by 2026 to support the start-up and growth of game content companies.
■ Cultivation of creative talents in game contents linked with local and industrial studies
In order to attract excellent manpower, long-term service mileage for more than two years will be introduced and a stable employment environment will be created for mid- and high-end game developers to stay in Busan, such as supporting the increase in labor costs for skilled game developers. In addition, it plans to increase the effectiveness of the industry-academic field training program through expert filtering and operate an internship program by matching with local companies.
■ Creating a fun game festival centering on G-Star and spreading a healthy game culture
We will transform G-Star into a healthy and popular festival in which various citizens participate, such as ‘South by Southwest (SWSW)’ in the United States, a large-scale festival that combines play and business. In addition to the main event venue, BEXCO, we plan to provide sub-exhibition halls throughout Busan to provide abundant entertainment not only to event participants, but also to ordinary citizens and tourists. In addition, it operates various programs in line with the latest trends, such as planned exhibitions that combine games and art, camping, and festivals.
At the same time, the ‘Future Lab’ is created where you can materialize your imagination and experiment with it to help you learn the correct game usage culture through principle education. In addition, by holding a family-oriented game culture festival, it is planned to improve the negative perception of games enjoyed by more than 70% of the public, and to provide a platform for all generations to participate and communicate through games.
Busan Mayor Park Hyung-joon said, “In the last 17th National Assembly, I proposed the Game Industry Promotion Act, and I heard the voices of the game industry even during my mayor’s time as mayor, but also re-hosted G-Star for 8 years, the first local professional club in Korea to be affiliated with the e-sports professional league, Busan. We still have a special will to foster the game industry, such as attracting them,” he said. We will do our best so that this ‘game changer in Busan’ policy can become a real game changer that will change the future of the Busan economy by nurturing the game industry.”
