Interview with Kim Sang Jin, Director General for Gyeonggi Content Agency, on South Korea’s stance in the gaming market and PlayX4

While attending PlayX4 2024, GamingTrend had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with Kim Sang Jin, the Director General for the Gyeonggi Content Agency. Some of the topics we discussed include Korea’s current standing in the gaming market, how the Gyeonggi Content Agency helps to foster a healthy environment in the games industry, and the growth trends of PlayX4 over the last few years.

GamingTrend: What are the next steps you think Korea should take in the gaming market? I know that you said you were interested in steps towards console games, could you elaborate on that too?

Kim Sang Jin: PlayX4 event aims to allow SME (small and medium sized enterprise) developers to reach the global stage. PlayX4 allows them to meet with a foreign audience, and many companies are getting help exposing their games world wide. The South Korean gaming industry is facing a slight downturn overall since after COVID ended, many people went on more trips and played fewer games. That led to fewer games being released nowadays, so the market is facing a slight downturn. Since then, we have been considering policies to revive the industry. Gyeonggi Content Agency does not support big game companies, so we are considering what we can do to support them.

On the other hand, we are also considering what we can do to support the SME developers. The SME developers could go through the big game companies to get help with publishing and other matters, and through that the big game companies could have a variety of games on their list, that could help both companies. We also provide support for transferring to a different platform, for the console game part. For example, our agency can support PC and mobile games on various platforms. However, there’s a problem: we cannot be very certain which platform will be very popular and which will go down. So, we are focusing on something other than a specific platform but providing an environment to help the games turn into console games.

GamingTrend: You mentioned that the gaming industry is suffering from a dip after COVID. What do you believe PlayX4’s strongest elements are that allow it to deal with this dip and persevere?

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Kim Sang Jin: There are many reasons behind the gaming industry’s downturn, but PlayX4’s goal is to find followers for SME developers, which is critical for their success and the success of big companies. These big companies could learn about small game companies and find good games. They could publish the games and work on diversifying their portfolios. One company that received support is HiDea, developer of Cats&Soup, which Neowiz purchased for twenty billion Korean won. Its game has about seven hundred million downloads, and it got accepted in the Chinese market and started its service there. Likewise, the big gaming companies can find these SME developers, find good games, and diversify portfolios, creating a lively and healthy gaming cycle.

GamingTrend: To wrap up, how has PlayX4 grown since you first started working on it?

Kim Sang Jin: It has been growing ever since, and the budget for PlayX4 has been continuously increasing. However, COVID-19 occurred in the middle, so the data before 2019 can be disregarded. So, aside from those data, the event restarted two years ago, and then there was another PlayX4 that was hosted last year. Compared to the one that happened a year before, visitor numbers increased by more than 20 percent. The fact that foreign media like you came here can signify that this event has grown greatly.

Massive thanks to Kim Sang Jin for sitting down for the interview, as well as Aving news for organizing it.

 

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