Nexon has emerged as a company to watch in the recent gaming market. The South Koreans have been spreading their wings for a little over half a decade with projects developed for consoles, PC, and mobile like ARC Raiders, The Finals, or The First Descendant. While Nexon has had equal measures of successes and failures, and recognizes that the pressure from game publishers is greater, its CEO, Yong-hyun Park, is clear that the future lies in creating games based exclusively on what players want, not what generates revenue.
According to Park, the game evaluation process at Nexon Games diverges from traditional market analysis and financial forecasts. This decision is partly due to the lack of precedents in the development of certain types of games in South Korea, leading the company to adopt a more intuitive approach. “When it comes to titles like Blue Archive or The First Descendant, neither my company nor I had previous experience, which leads us to move forward without clear forecasts,” explained to Automaton. This decision comes after signing a financial report of 2.9 billion dollars, partly thanks to the looter shooter as mentioned before.
Despite the high production costs, which can exceed 70 million dollars, Park argues that market data is often unreliable. Instead, the company has decided to prioritize “user opinions above all else” as a more solid indicator of success. “In the past, working based on desired profits worked well, but with rising costs, mistakes in the numbers can accumulate and break a game on its release. If you think about it that way, focusing on user feedback is the most reliable method at this time,” he pointed out.
The CEO of Nexon Games also highlighted the importance of testing games during development and gathering user feedback. Although these opinions do not provide precise metrics on downloads or purchases, they allow developers to know if players will enjoy their product and if they will want to play it again. “We choose to believe in this and move forward,” affirmed Park, emphasizing user satisfaction as the key to success. This user-focused approach marks a new direction for Nexon Games, as the company navigates a more complex and competitive development landscape.
The creators of Dave the Diver part ways with Nexon
One of the studios that will follow this new philosophy of Nexon is Mintrocket. The independent studio, which managed to sell more than 3 million copies of Dave the Diver, announced last September its separation from Nexon, publisher of all their games. However, even though they will operate as a truly independent team, Nexon will continue to provide financial support to the studio.
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