RE: Réf. : RE: [MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM*** s

Damion Schubert damion at ninjaneering.com
Thu Jul 25 14:01:30 CEST 2002


>From John Buehler:
>> John Buehler wrote:
 
>>> Recall that we have a pretty ugly barrier to entry for
>>> socialization - the inability to talk.  I don't know what
>>> Koreans use to talk to each other, but I suspect that it's
>>> either painful to enter it as text or they use English.  That
>>> is, their barrier may be greater than in cultures that fit the
>>> ISO-LATIN 1 'culture'.

I don't know exactly what the language font for Korean is, but if
you go into any Korean Lineage server, you'll see a lot of symbols
above the heads of characters which aren't latin Characters by any
stretch of the imagination.

NCSoft and EverQuest are currently going through quite an ugly
process to make EQ display Korean as well. They certainly aren't
playing in English, and in fact, the current belief is that
unlocalized games don't do well in Korea at all.

>   http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea.html

> It was an interesting read and only goes to support my theory that
> players want to communicate verbally.  Well, South Korean players,
> anyway.  The South Koreans are very social players and they like
> to play together in the same room.  As you mention, groups of
> players tend to take over an Internet cafe in order to play
> Lineage as a group and they don't message each other - they yell
> at each other.  This is a model that I've speculated on for
> American gamers so that we can socialize effectively during
> gameplay, but we're a different society.  It might just be a bad
> idea for Americans.

It's a different culture.  The people that I've talked to who work
over there say that the primary reason people play in these cafes is
because the homes are so small that you can't fit a computer space
in easily.  This would, however, argue contrary to what the article
says about most homes in Korea being on broadband.

I've been told by many people that any designer worth his salt needs
to really go over there and visit these rooms to understand the
phenomenon.  If I ever get to, I'll be sure to file a report to
y'all. =)
 

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