A giant in multiplayer gaming in the East, Nexon’s accessible-to-all MMOs have garnered considerable success here in the US. Worlds in Motion recently visited the singular, stylish sidescrolling MapleStory world, and we have the upcoming American launch of the multiplayer racing game KartRider to look forward too, too. Already one of the top-selling online games in the world on the heels of its success in the Asian market with millions of users, rumor has it that we could see an open beta in America as soon as early October.

We asked Nexon America’s Min Kim about KartRider’s appeal. “I think it’s really a global type of product,” he explains. “It’s a racing game; a lot of people say the art style is ‘very Asian,’ but it’s really very universal. It also spans across various age groups. The thing about it is, a lot of people have grown up playing these console-style games. It’s definitely not hardcore; it’s more of a casual experience where people can socialize and race, and I don’t think they’ve been given that opportunity before.”

That traditional console-style gameplay combined with multiplayer elements is one of the things we noticed about MapleStory, whose 2D world is lush with the fervor of its community. We asked Kim what role that community element might play in KartRider. “The community factor drives all of our products,” Kim says. “That same element that drives MapleStory drives Kartrider. There’s no real single-player experience; you could play by yourself in MapleStory, but a lot of is creating social experiences.”

Building a Community
He continues, “I’m finding that these days, for a lot of the teenagers and people playing, it’s now a different experience when you are in the game, and visually in the same place with others. On top of that, what adds community to it is the competition and the customization -- the ability to be unique and create your virtual identity. So you can represent who you are and communicate that.”

MapleStory takes socialization seriously – one of the things we found on our trip inside was that there is even a system by which characters in the MapleStory world can get married. “We thought our players really needed that,” says Kim. “One player has met her real-life husband on MapleStory; there are a lot of people finding people they have things in common with, they’re getting closer relationships. Of course, not everyone that gets a MapleStory marriage is in love, but it’s a fun type of way to be close within the game.”

A Unique Look
When we think of virtual worlds these days, everybody thinks 3D – but MapleStory distinguishes itself through brightly-colored and uniquely designed 2D graphics for that console-style feel Kim refers to. “One reason MapleStory was successful is, when it first came out, it was at a time when lots of South Korean games were going 3D,” he recalls. “It’s not about pushing the graphics to the edge. They found that out a few years ago; we didn’t want it to look like everything else. When MapleStory came out, we wanted to make it different and turned it into a 2D game, and that was refreshing when everything else was 3D.

But what about KartRider? Kim explained how an accessible look helps make some of Nexon’s biggest games more appealing to a broader market. “KartRider is more like cel-rendered 3D racing, but the art style is very crisp and clean and inviting for both genders, and a lot of girls play it in Korea, too,” he says. MapleStory and KartRider both lend to that; they’re more skewed female than online games in the past. The demographics are something like 30-70, 20-80 female-male. There’re also a lot of girls playing MapleStory; I’m amazed to see that. Because the gaming market in the states is different than the Korean market, and there’s a new generation of gamers, things are balancing; gaming is second nature to the new generation.”

Bringing in the Girls
How to continue this trend toward balancing the audience and attracting more female players? “One of the things is, we try to make as many points of socialization as possible and we’re constantly figuring out how to make it easier to communicate with each other,” Kim explains. “I think when we make games it depends on the genre, but with games like MapleStory and KartRider, we’re trying to net as many people as possible, so we concentrate on fun and community and that social factor -- and we definitely want to get both sexes involved. Part of that is, also, if you have girls in the game, the boys are gonna wanna play too.”

Are there specifics involved in getting girls in the game? “I don’t think we ever try to make a game boy or girl-centric, but I think there are fun features that lend themselves to both genders,” Kim says. “Everyone can appreciate the type of games we make. It’s the genre as well; whether or not we think it is female-centric to begin with, certain games are more male centric – for example, if we open a soccer game, we know it will be more guys than girls, but for MapleStory and KartRider, I think we knew there would be a lot of females playing. In Korea we heavily marketed to the female audience.”

Elaborating on the universal appeal, Kim pegs one of the biggest trends in online multiplayer gaming and online social worlds. “Also, it is a casual game – but these are gamers that don’t know they’re gamers,” he says, “so there are girls in there who wouldn’t classify themselves as gamers but are on there for hours. When MapleStory came out, we ran a poll asking how many MMOs the users had played in the past. I can’t remember the specifics, but it was like only one third had played one, a third had played two or more, but a third had never played an MMO before, or even knew what an MMO was. So it was that a lot of people were bringing their friends in.”

Getting Local
With so many localized versions of MapleStory, a lot of specifics need to be customized. How will KartRider’s appeal be tailored to the US market? “Every game is different, but what we are learning in MapleStory is that people here really like customization, so we will try to create content that works for the US market,” Kim explains. “The wedding system in MapleStory was designed in our LA office, because we wanted to make a wedding system that would make sense in the Western audience. They had an Asian version that we tweaked. So as we release KartRider in the states, it is more of a universal product – it’s just racing with cartoons. But as we roll things out and add more cars, we might try to look at the market and see what fits better.”

One way that MapleStory gets audience-specific is with holidays and events. “If you look in MapleStory during Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas, there are events they wouldn’t be running in Korea and vice versa, that are culturally centered. We will try to run events in the game that speak to the local audience.”

Making it Big in the Market
Nexon’s also had big success with the multiplayer dance-off Audition; it’s one of the most successful online games in the world, holding the number two slot in China, and it’s playable in the States right now. We asked Kim to explain Nexon’s magic touch, and how working in the Eastern market first might provide beneficial experiences for the North American market. One thing Kim says has been helpful is getting experiences with microtransactions – a new revenue model for many current online games in the West, but something Nexon’s games have been working with since the late nineties. “It’s not something you can just create a formula for,” he says. “We had the benefit of running a lot of products early on, and taking those learnings and translating them into better gaming experiences.”

“We’ve definitely had the benefit of time, as well as a great player base, that we’ve learned a lot from,” he adds. “Not just from game to game, but through the life of the game by listening to what the customer is looking for, so a lot has changed from the days that we opened them. The other difference, I think, between us and others is that I think a lot of people want to do this whole microtransactions-and-free-to-play thing, and these business models – we’ve had the benefit of time to figure out how to do this, but many people develop games they think will be fun, but they don’t keep the business model in mind, or they don’t understand the business model. That’s gotten a few companies in trouble in Korea. And a lot of companies do that, and they will continue to do that – have a game concept that at the end of the day, they’re like, ‘how do I make money off this?’”

Securing distribution deals for pre-paid cards also works very well in terms of monetizing the game content and increasing accessibility. “We’ll be getting very wide distribution for the prepaid cards,” Kim says. “When we first launched the product, everyone needed a credit card to fully enjoy the content. What that did is it basically curbed potential players who wanted customizability, because more than half were 13 to early 20s, so without that payment vehicle they couldn’t fully participate.”

Fun at the Core
But for Kim, the business model is step two. “In terms of our products doing well, it’s that our games are very fun, and I think that’s the core to all games that are going to be successful in terms of the business model we’re in,” he says. “It’s one of the most competitive markets out there, because we’re selling free. So unless your game is good, nobody’s going to play it. There are a lot of free games, so your game really has to be very good. And once the game concept is good, then you build the business model around it. So those business models never took off because the games weren’t fun. We all understand we're working with a hit-driven market and we're fortunate. I think in Korea, there are only four products that have broken the 200,000 concurrent user level. Three of those games are ours.”

Nexon also stays successful by balancing the expertise of experience with the input of the users – teams check the user forums regularly to take a pulse on player experience. How do they keep them engaged? “A lot of thought is put into how we can make this better for the players,” Kim says. “A lot of the items in-game are very creative, so even in our commercialization we have an in game store where a player can sell items to other players in the game. Most games have trade between users, but we found players wanted to open a store -- which is fun for them -- and price items in the store, and facilitate the process. Little things like that -- I think we inspect our game and say, ‘how do we make this easier to do?’”

Looking Ahead
Nexon’s games also keep things fresh with new content introduced constantly, and KartRider will follow the same pattern. “I think within the open beta there will be different releases,” he says. “We’ll start, for example, with a fixed number of maps and then as time progresses, we’ll add new maps. All our games patch monthly, and KartRider will patch even more frequently than that, maybe every two weeks or potentially even weekly. So there will be new content for players; that’s a critical thing for a business model. We say that our business is more like a soap opera, versus a movie release. Where a console product makes all its money in the first few weeks and a huge launch, our games last 3-7 years -- so who will play that long unless you’re updating content?”

There are more announcements just on the horizon for Nexon – keep your eyes peeled for KartRider, and stay tuned to the upcoming DigitalLife event in New York on September 27th for some more news. Until then, the residents of Nexon’s long-lived game suite are looking forward to the events of the holiday season, new every year -- and keeping them coming back.