earticle

영어

Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, is often referred to the global consumption of Korean popular culture products such as music, movies, television dramas and video games. Despite the fact that video games in South Korea account for more than half of contents export (Korea Creative Contents Agency) and are expected to generate US$1.9 billion annually by 2020 (Statista), their localization and spread have received far less attention than other Korean pop culture artefacts. To a certain extent, the interactive, non-linear and multi-textual natures of video games can explain why it is usually more difficult to localize Korean videos games into overseas markets than other popular culture artefacts. This presentation will first provide an overview of the Korean video game industry and its roles in spreading hallyu, then outline a typical workflow for the localization of video games and explore the difficulties and challenges in the localization of video games with the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Pearl Abyss’ ‘Black Desert’ used as a case study.