Korean games, which had not received attention, pioneered the global game market with online games and grew into a proud cultural industry that generates enormous global sales of over 20 trillion won(USD 15.7 billion↑) a year and a trade surplus as a representative of the content industry. The reality is those small and medium-sized game companies have a dark shadow that is distorted and highly concentrated due to advertisements in the game market, which are difficult even to download, let alone sell.
However, even in this crisis era, where did the high value of indie games, which will be the future hope and beacon of the Korean game industry, come from?
In the 1990s, Jeu Media, the central Korean game industry’s major media, held the ‘Amateur Game Production and Scenario Contest with Korean game developers in 1999. At that time, the word ‘indie game’ did not exist at all, and it can be seen as the starting point of the Korean indie game contest under the name of ‘amateur game.’
Jeu media has continued every year ever since, and key players in the game industry at the time, such as Triggersoft, Sonnori, and CCR, participated as judges to discover and support Korean indie game developers.
Musik Jung, the development team leader of Triggersoft at the time and a professor at Gachon University’s Department of Game and Art, who also attended the ‘6th AGC Contest’ as a judge, said, “The efforts of Korean game industry workers to discover and support indie game developers are the foundation of the game industry. It has been going on with Jeu Media before it was formed and from the beginning of the Korean game industry in the 1990s.”
The Korea Game Developers Association held the 1st Korea Indie Game Contest in 2003 and has been making steady efforts to discover and support Korean indie game developers following the footsteps of Jeu Media. After the merger, the name was changed to the current GIGDC Global Indie Game Development Contest, and it has become a cradle for discovering Korean indie game developers, with more than 300 contests being submitted yearly.
Suppose GIGDC has played a role as a program that discovers and supports Korean indie game developers, including middle and high school students and college students. In that case, BIC Festival is Korea’s leading indie game festival beyond Busan. It has established itself as a venue for global indie game festivals that create exchanges.
In addition, Indie Gamecraft the Festa, co-hosted by Seongnam Industry Promotion Agency and Korea Mobile Game Association, was held successfully a while ago and created a new festival ground for indie game developers in the metropolitan area and indie games as a hybrid festival with offline exhibitions in Garosu-gil, a hot place. Burning Beaver, which proved another possibility of ‘Burning Beaver‘, Seoul Economic Promotion Agency (SBA) and Neowiz jointly sponsored Indie Game Show (BICS), Smile that continues its original intention of pure support for indie by establishing a platform for mutual growth, not competition. In addition to IndieGo, Gate’s indie game creation contest, Out of Index (OOI), an experimental game festival that focuses more on game makers rather than marketability and popularity, and Indie Seminars run by the Korea Indie Game Association, new events supporting indies are held. Programs are being added every year.
Most first-generation game developers, such as Makgoya, Mirinae, Family Production, Sonnori, and Triggersoft, which opened the game development industry in Korea in the 1990s, were pure indie who started developing games because they liked games. The sincere efforts of a Korean game developer who sprouted as an indie to sow the seeds again and bear fruit may be natural.
However, if it were not for the many hidden helpers in the Korean game industry who sincerely support indie games, and if it were not for the sincere efforts of the entire industry for Korean indie games, which are difficult to achieve without anyone recognizing them, Korea in the current severe crisis There is a high possibility that the lineage of games will disappear except for large companies.
Forthcoming events supporting indie game developers will continue in the future, based on the symbiosis and harmonious ecosystem of the Korean game industry based on significant companies and indies, ‘Cat and Soup,’ ‘Skull,’ ‘My Oasis, etc. The new history of proud K-indie games that are attracting attention will continue in the future.
#The beginning of indie games, and we support the Republic of Korea that will continue its values
