Korean gaming giants racing for metaverse win

Have you ever wondered what the metaverse really is? So far, the consensus is that it's a virtual world that can accommodate pretty much every social aspect of the real world, including an economy and multi-layered relationships.

In which case, the metaverse isn't really a new idea. So many role-playing games, most notably MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) have already realized the concept of the virtual world in their own ways. That may explain why so many Korean gaming companies are moving into the metaverse business. 

PLAY TOGETHER, ASIA'S 2ND-MOST POPULAR METAVERSE

In the Korean metaverse industry, it is Haegin, a Seoul-based startup founded in 2017, that has been seeing the most success. Haegin's metaverse game Play Together has recorded 130 million downloads globally since its launch in April 2021.

According to data analytics firm Sensor Tower, Play Together is the second most played metaverse game in the Asian and United States markets, surpassed only by Roblox. Its daily active users (DAU) surpassed 4 million earlier this year. 

Haegin created a virtual world by incorporating social features into different mini-games. Users in its metaverse can play, attend classes, shop, and party. Play Together provides easy-to-play games such as running and stealing crowns, whose users compete with one another. There are also survival games: in Hot Potato, players have to pass a bomb to others and run away in limited time. 

It also has several non-competitive contents where users can enjoy the virtual world while camping, cooking and fishing through their avatar.

Haegin is expanding the metaverse platform to the entertainment business. Play Together has held a few metaverse concerts with Genie Music, a streaming platform under telecom giant KT Corp. that have drawn in tens of thousands of users.

COM2US WITH $773 MILLION INVESTMENT

Com2uS Corp., one of the big names in Korean gaming, plans to burn up about 1 trillion won ($773 million) to power its new metaverse platform due to launch in the first quarter of next year.

Com2uS hatched the plan last April with its subsidiary Com2verse. The company would open office-type metaverse services for companies and institutions to first build a B2B business model. The goal is to expand the commercial services to general users, with their own ecosystem, by the third quarter of next year. Com2uS will launch a pilot operation internally this year.  

The Com2uS metaverse's vision can be summed up as "reality, but more." The company wants to build a virtual world that resembles the real world's megacities. To this end, it has recruited Yoo Hyun-joon, an architecture professor at Hongik University, as its chief creative officer.

"We want to introduce a new world that is similar to reality, but transcends its limits," said Song Jae-joon, CEO of Com2uS. The company suggests an example: the main character of a superhero film to be released next month in the real world flies alongside the virtual Eiffel Tower to promote the movie in the metaverse world. 

Com2uS also plans to issue  citizenship to metaverse platform users to create the structure of a virtual society. Its metaverse would have its own policies and economic system.

"The only companies that can develop a complete metaverse service are the gaming companies that have been developing 3D MMORPGs. We have the technology and infrastructure to accommodate millions of users. In fact, we've already been doing this for years with our hit series," Song said.

He also noted that most MMORPGs have a decentralized ecosystem, making them familiar with maintaining a virtual socio-economic structure.

NEXON, KRAFTON ALSO SEEK WAYS

Other gaming giants are also joining the race to conquer the virtual world. Krafton Inc. recently announced "Project Migaloo," its first plan to form a metaverse service with a create-to-earn (C2E) ecosystem.

Krafton has teamed up with NaverZ, a metaverse company under Korean internet conglomerate Naver Corp., to launch a creator-centered virtual space named Persistent World. The platform would have a value chain in which creators, brands and influencers can create and distribute their own metaverse contents. The project is expected to go live in 2023.

Nexon is developing services that can be used in conjunction with the metaverse. One of Nexon's global hits, Maple Story, has over 274 million characters to date — almost equivalent to the population of Indonesia.

Nexon sees its Project MOD to be one of the company's key services in the metaverse business. Project MOD is a development tool kit that allows users to make metaverse games, event spaces and other contents. Nexon plans to add an e-commerce feature to this tool kit to establish a link between the virtual and the real worlds.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com