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| · Contest Winners, G2S1 in May |
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5/9/2008 |
A couple of things have come up recently, so here's the scoop:
- The event winners for the Fishing Contest as well as the Promotional Video contests have been announced.
- G2S1 is confirmed to be coming in May, according to an interview held by Cody Bye of Ten Ton Hammer, with Nexon employee Ray Cheon. The interview can be seen here, or below:
Questions by Cody 'Micajah' Bye, Managing Editor
Answers by Ray Cheon, Product Manager and Senior Associate for Game Planning and Design for Nexon
When MapleStory was released on November 28, 2006, many North American industry journalists and critics wrote the game off saying that it was too childish and the graphics were sub-par. However, the game now sports millions of users and generates a massive amount of revenue for its development company, Nexon. Now Nexon has released their latest offering, Mabinogi, which is another venture into a world where anything is possible even if it means a simpler style of graphics. Even with a review already published about the game, Ten Ton Hammer’s Cody “Micajah” Bye sat down with Ray Cheon, Product Manager and Senior Associate for Game Planning and Design for Nexon, to get a few intimate details about the future of the game!
Ten Ton Hammer: Why did you decide to import Mabinogi into North America? Why choose an older game rather than one that may have better graphics / game play features?
Ray Cheon: Although Mabinogi has been released in other countries for a few years, it is extremely competitive in features and graphics when compared to the current offerings in the market. In fact, Mabinogi is very modern in its own way. It's updated at least once every month and based on old Celtic myth. Mabinogi is a very unique game. Unlike most MMORPGs out there, Mabinogi has tons of things to do other than just grinding for experience points. Mabinogi is not just about leveling up and killing monsters. It's more about getting into the storyline, experiencing a true fantasy life and sharing it with other players in a relaxed yet exciting environment.
Regarding the graphics of Mabinogi, we think the style is amazing. Most people that see it are very impressed at what we were able to achieve with the system specs. Often times, critics of free-to-play online games judge games on graphics alone. Something that they don't realize is that the business model directs us to create games that the majority of the installed PC base can access. Games that push the limits of today's graphic capabilities are great, but we are not in the graphics business. We are in the social experience business and the high end graphics market is limited in the way of delivering massive social experiences.
One testament to Mabinogi's rich features and graphics are our players. There were many Mabinogi fans in the US who already experienced Mabinogi through Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese versions. As soon as we released news about Mabinogi's launch in the US, we were flooded with forum threads and emails from Mabinogi fans.
Ten Ton Hammer: In general, Mabinogi is one of the best examples of quality localization on the MMOG market right now. How long was the localization process for Mabinogi? How did you insure a high level of quality in your translations?
Ray: It took us about nine months to localize Mabinogi. With our experience launching MapleStory and Audition, we made tremendous improvements in the quality of our localization process. Although we sometimes outsource a part of our localization, we make sure that in-house specialists have a final scrub of what goes out. Further, we excel because our localization specialists are not simply translators that speak English and Korean. They are truly fluent in English and North American culture. Beyond that, we tried our best to keep the translation fluid and accurate as possible by putting our best localization specialists on Mabinogi. It required time, a dictionary, a thesaurus, and constant supply of energy drinks!
Ten Ton Hammer: In your opinion, what's the best feature or game play mechanic in Mabinogi? Why?
Ray: This is a tough question because there's a lot I love about Mabinogi but I would have to point to its unique battle system. Mabinogi requires players and enemies to attack each other using a 'rock-paper-scissors' attack pattern in real time. Smash attacks top defense while a regular attack overcomes a smash attack – and of course, defense blocks a regular attack. You have to carefully observe your enemy's color & movement to strategically plan your next move.
We also have a great new feature coming out with our Animal Card system. In other games, you spawn your pets and your pets help you alongside your character. In Mabinogi, you have option to spawn your animal as a pet or you can play as the animal. Imagine yourself running around as a unicorn. It's pretty awesome!
Ten Ton Hammer: Now that the game has been officially released, what's next for the title? When will players begin hearing about the first free update, and what will that include?
Ray: I can't reveal too much information about our future updates but we are going to release Generation 2 Season 1 (G2S1) of Mabinogi in May. In this update, we are going to release Generation 2 Mainstream Quests, more maps, more dungeons, more items, more skills, and much more. Soon, we'll have plenty of details about G2 update on our website at http://mabinogi.nexon.net.
Ten Ton Hammer: Have you seen a large portion of your audience from MapleStory make the transition over to Mabinogi? Or are most of the players in Mabinogi new to Nexon games?
Ray: Mabinogi has brought many new players to Nexon and we really haven't seen too many MapleStory players move to Mabinogi. There were many fans in the US just waiting for us to launch Mabinogi. All of them signed up to play Mabinogi and their friends as well.
Ten Ton Hammer: What's next for Nexon? The company seems to have a fairly solid track record now established, will we be seeing any more titles in the near future?
Ray: Nexon has very ambitious plans for the rest of 2008 and the successful launch of Mabinogi should just be the start to an exciting year!
Ten Ton Hammer: Is there anything else you'd like to tell Ten Ton Hammer and your Mabinogi fans?
Ray: Thanks to Ten Ton Hammer for the interview and thanks to all of the Mabinogi fans out there for their support. We hope all of your readers get a chance to experience the fantasy life!
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