Neowiz Games

Neowiz Games (Korean: 네오위즈게임즈) is an online game publisher in South Korea, with its own game portal, Pmang, publishing and servicing 41 diverse games of various genres, from sport to web board games.

Neowiz Games possesses two in-house development studios, Neowiz Games Studio and Pentavision. The former jointly developed EA Sports FIFA online with Electronic Arts^[2] and the latter introduced Neowiz Games to the PSP platform with their title "DJMax portable".^[3]

History

Neowiz launched Pmang rather late compared to other leading game companies in Korea, such as NCSoft or Nexon.^[4] That was in August 2003, and in November the same year, the number of visitors was significant.^[5] The first game serviced was Special Force, for which the beta test began in February 2004. In 2006, it had a 12 percent market share with 11 million registered users.

In June 2004, the company started the beta test of the school action adventure game “Yogurting”, which in December was exported to the Japanese ‘Gungho Entertainment’.

The following year, Neowiz entered into strategic partnership with over eight studios, including Thingsoft, which later developed Warlord and Perfect KO, and Pentavision, developer of Duel Gate and S4 League. Both later became Neowiz Games' own development studios. Thingsoft left Neowiz Games in 2010 to become an independent online game development studio.

In January 2006, Neowiz announced its entry into the Japanese game market and in February, it contracted with EA for the co-development and publishing of online games, thus marking the start of its international expansion.^[6]

In 2007, Neowiz Games separated from Neowiz Corporation and became another entity, along with four other subsidiaries of Neowiz.

Neowiz Games has also run the Magic Tree program since January 2008 as part of a corporate social responsibility program.

Neowiz Games Overseas

Neowiz Games China was established in September 2007 and is located in Shanghai. Close to 20 people, Korean and Chinese, are employed in business development and online game development, mainly in graphic and design work. In Japan, Neowiz Games took over iFactory, a Japanese internet service company, in May 2003. Neowiz Japan launched Sayclub Japanto provide chat and individual ‘mini-homepages’ and blogs. In 2006, Neowiz Japan began providing online game services, with a music rhythm action game R2Beat. In 2007, Neowiz Games and Game On, an online game company among the top three in Japan, became partners. In 2008 Neowiz Games began to operate its business through Game On. A branch office was opened in 2008 in the Silicon Valley of the USA to service online/web based games directly to the US market, and to oversee the development business of Hidden Path Entertainment (HPE), a Bellevue, WA based developer and a partner of Neowiz Games.

Games

Among the arcade/action games are "Duel Gate" (developed by Pentavision) and "Perfect KO" (developed by Neowiz Games Studio). The first is an action-based tactical game with Trading Card Game (TCG) features. The second is an action fighting game, available individually or as teams, involving various types of martial art.

FPS/TPS

A.V.A

Developer: RedDuck. Genre: FPS
Military action FPS game with realistic fight. A.V.A was created by implementing Unreal Engine 3's highly advanced technology.

Crossfire
Developer: Smilegate. Genre: FPS
Military action FPS game. Developed by Smilegate, a company known for its FPS games, Crossfire the realistic features make space for a fierce war between mercenary corporations. It provides the most basic and important characteristics of an online FPS game, including realistic hit impact, a strategic battle map and existing units and weapons. Players can fully customize their characters and enjoy the game through various modes (team match, clan match, death match and tutorial mode). Crossfire is also known for taking in account the opinions of the players since its development stage and for offering the opportunity of a ghost match with invisible enemies.

S4League
Developer': Formerly - Pentavision/Now - GameOn Studio (Separate S4 Team from Pentavision and merged with Japanese Team) Genre: TPS
A fusion genre TPS Game with action. The title of the game comes from the 4 S words defining this game: ‘stylish’ for the style of the game, 'eSper' because it draws a supernatural world, ‘shooting’ for the type of game and ‘sports’ for the basic rules of this game.

Battlefield Online

Developer: Neowiz Games, EA Digital Illusion CE. Genre: FPS
Military action FPS game, remake of Battlefield 2. Unlike Battlefield 2, Battlefield Online supports max 100 players' battles.

RPG

Warlord
Developer: Neowiz Games Studio. Genre: Action RPG
‘1 vs. mass’ hardcore slashing on a single battle field. Despite the new genre, strong initial combat impact, skills, combinations and new items are the elements of motivation, with wide scope on both Western and Eastern world views.

Sports/Racing

Dugout Heroes
Developer: Wisecat. Genre: Sports
Online baseball game with cute characters and detailed action and animation. The speed and realistic baseball tactics and strategies provide the same pleasure and fun as in a real game. Being the only baseball game using mouse clicks, players find it easier to control.

Mobile

Tap Sonic
Developer: Neowiz Internet Genre:Rhythm
A spin-off of Pentavision's DJMax series, this is a similar iOS/Android game where the player slides his or her fingers to notes according to music. The game uses a in-app pay system to obtain additional songs. Unlike DJMAX however, many songs here are licensed Korean pop, with DJMAX originals downloadable through in-app purchases.

External links

• Official website
• Pmang Game Portal
• Yogurting Gungho Entertainment

Further reading

1. A Study on Global Digital Content Industry: Game by the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency in Korean
2. IRG Technology, Media and Telecommunications and Life Sciences Weekly Market Review Week of 18–24 March 2007

Notes and references