WeMade Entertainment announced it is going to appoint Hoon NamGoong, the former CEO of CJ E&M Netmarble, as its new board director today.
After his appointment, NamChul Kim the president of WeMade and he are going to be inaugurated as co-CEO of WeMade on the 23rd of March.
His joining would expand WeMade’s smart games business to global market from China.
Mr. NamGoong had been a co-founder of Hangame and the ex-CEO of NHN USA and CJ E&M so far.
Sesi Soft has signed an agreement today to sell investors rights of online action game <Lost Saga> to WeMade Entertainment.
According to the agreement, WeMade will be in charge of local service and overseas business. The game is in preparation for Chinese service following its Indonesian service which has attracted 70,000 concurrent users.
<Lost Saga> features 60+ characters and fast-paced, action-oriented game plays.
WeMade’s MMORPG <NED> replaced its game engine with CryENGINE 3 from CryENGINE 1.
WeMade had changed its engine to the CryENGINE 1 last 2009 along with altering the game systems. However as the development has taken longer than expected the expectation of gamers has increased so much that the CryENGINE 1 cannot bear it any more.
Besides it, new features of <NED> such as farming, mount, and flying combat have also required better environment effect, physical engine, and character animation. So WeMade has decided to change it after G-star 2011.
Thus the CryENGINE 3 would enable all the outdoors effects including change in weather and time for the farming system, diverse mounts and landscapes, and the physical engine for wreckable objects.
“At the early stage of the development the CryENGINE 1 was good enough, but now it became hard to satisfy the heightened expectation of the gamers. We are looking forward to upgrading the farming system and the characters with the new engine,” said an official of WeMade.
By the way, <NED>’s CBT scheduled within early next year seems to be delayed as well.
So far only a few Korean games including <Arche Age>, <Cabal 2>, and <Tour Golf Online> have utilized CryENGINE 3.
We had the survey at GStar 2011 with the total of 496 gamers.
Best Booth
The most visited booth was Blizzard. 67% replied that they come to GStar2011 for visiting Blizzard booth. Nexon is 2nd by 66%, very close to 1st. (NCsoft 56%, Neowiz 53%, NHN 45%)
Apparently big 3 titles, SC2:HotS/Diablo3/WOW, plus Blizzard DOTA were as hot as they could get in Korea during GStar2011.
Cyphers, AOS game from Nexon, was the booth that 33% spectators visit first because of the game coupon. Blizzard was 21% and NCsoft was 8%.
The most favorite booth to visit was Blizzard booth by 27.4%. On the other hand, the worst booth to visit was also Blizzard booth because people needed to wait for a long hours to experience games. Nexon was 2nd by 15% and also for the worst by 38% because people struggle to receive a game coupon.
Best Game
The most favorite game of GStar2011 is Diablo3 by 48% and SC2:HotS by 36%. Lineage Eternal was 3rd by 32%. Other competitors were Cyphers and Guild War2. The game people play the most during GStar2011 was online FPS Dizzel from Neowiz Games by 20%. Neowiz prepared well to have many computers with Dizzel. SC2:HotS was 2nd by 19%.
The game people like the most after they are playing were Dibalo3. Especially, 79.1% ,34 out of 43, like the game after they were playing. Kingdom Under Fire 2 and SC2:HotS were the games people like as well.
Other Games
Among social, mobile, web games, people like Homerun Battle 2 for iOS from Com2uS, Rhythm Scandal from Wemade Entertainment.
Giveaways
There were many Giveaways in each booth mostly from in-game items, mug, mouse etc. The most preferable was an in-game item coupon for Cyphers. The giveaways that people don’t like was Guild War 2 paper bag from NCsoft.
SooKil Seo the ex-CEO of Wemade Entertainment becomes CEO of Nowcom, the publisher of online racing game <Tales Runner>.
Saint International, which is founded by SooKil Seo, acquires 21.8% of total shares, the management ship and becomes the major shareholder of Nowcom. The company acquire Nowcom at US$1,500 million.
SooKil Seo worked at SK C&C plan department as a director. Later on, he was CEO of Actozsoft and Wemade Entertainment as well. He led the international business as well as new business at Wemade Entertainment.
Mr.Seo told that Nowcom has grown continuously with various business platforms. He will use Afreeca TV, the largest personal internet media in Korea, as a social media platform to expand it globally as well as make it available in mobile devices. He added “Nowcom will have more broad types of games and expand the company internationally.”
