Neowiz Games

Company History

Neowiz Games is one of the many online game publishers in South Korea. It has its own game portal, Pmang, where 41 games are being serviced.

Pmang started rather late compared to other leading game companies in Korea, such as NCSoft or Nexon.. However, it publishes and services diverse online games of various genres, from hit online sport games to web board games.

Neowiz Games possesses two in-house development studios: Thingsoft and Pentavision.
The former jointly developd EA Sports ^TM FIFA online with Electronic Arts. while the latter introduced Neowiz Games to the PSP platform with their title "DJMax portable" .

In 2007, Neowiz Games separated from Neowiz Corporation and became another entity, along with four other subsidiaries of Neowiz.
Neowiz launched its online game portal site Pmang in August 2003 and in November the same year, the number of visitors was quite significant. The first game to be serviced was Special Force, for which the beta test began in February 2004. In 2006, it had a 12% 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’.

In 2005, 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.
In January 2006, Neowiz announced its entry into the Japanese game market and in February, it entered into contract with EA for the co-development and publishing of online games, thus marking the start of its international expansion.

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

Executive Management

Board of Directors

• Sang-youb Lee- Chief Executive Officer
  • School of Education, Konkuk University
  • Managing Director, OneClick (Japan)
  • Head of Business Department, GameOn (Japan)
  • CEO, GameOn (Japan)
  • CEO, Neowiz Games

• Kye-hyun Cho - Director
  • M.S in Management Engineering, KAIST,
  • Management engineering, Doctoral courses, KAIST,
  • Director, Kinonet
  • BU head, Sayclub, Neowiz
  • BU head, Publishing business, Neowiz Games

• Ji-soo Moon - Director
  • Business School, Seoul National University
  • MA in Business, Seoul National University
  • Head of Business Support Group, Neowiz
  • CEO, Neowiz INS
  • Chief Strategy Officer, Neowiz Games

• Hyun-kuk Chang, Director
  • Business School, Seoul National University
  • MS in Management Engineering, KAIST
  • Nexon
  • Medison
  • Neowiz
  • Managing Director, Neowiz Bugs
  • Chief Financial Officer, Neowiz Games

Outside Directors

• Dae-woo Moon - Chair, Audit Committee
  • Business School, Seoul National University
  • Partner, Accounting firm Cham

• In-bum Lee - Member, Audit Committee
  • MBA, MIT Sloan
  • Managing Director, Asia Paper Company

• Tae-woong Park - Member, Audit Committee
  • Business School, Seoul National University
  • Vice President, Open Cyber University

Neowiz Games Overseas

China - Neowiz Games China

Established in September 2007, the Chinese branch office of Neowiz Games is located in Shanghai. This office was first established in order to respond to the growing demand of online games in China. Close to 20 people, both Korean and Chinese, are working at the Shanghai office in relation to business development and online game development. The Chinese branch mainly deals with graphic and design work involved in the making of games.

Japan - Game On

The work for the establishment of a branch office in Japan started in May 2003, with Neowiz Games overtaking iFactory, a Japanese internet service company. Neowiz Japan launched Sayclub Japan, a service providing chatting as well as individual ‘mini-homepages’ and blogs. In 2006, Neowiz Japan started providing online game services as well, with the game R2Beat, a music rhythm action game. In 2007, Neowiz Games and Game On, an online game company among the top three in Japan, became strategic partners and Neowiz Games started in 2008 to operate its business through Game On.

USA - Neowiz Games Inc.

Neowiz Games decided at the beginning of 2008 to establish a branch office in the United States. Located at the Silicon Valley, Neowiz US will service online games and web based games directly to the US market. It will also look over the development business of Hidden Path Entertainment (HPE), a local developer and a partner of Neowiz Games.

Games

Arcade/Action

Duel Gate
Developer: Pentavision. Genre: Hybrid Action Strategy
Action-based tactical game with Trading Card Game (TCG) features. The game involves collecting the numerous cards to be used strategically in the game. The basic moves, such as ordering units, using spells and making the characters move, can be executed without using the mouse.

Perfect KO
Developer: Thingsoft. Genre: MMO Action
Action fighting game. This online battle game is possible individually as well as in teams and implements various types of martial arts, such as Kung-Fu, Karate and Tae-Kwon-Do. The fun can be found in the various moves, such as dodging, combinations, team fighting, and in the strategic maps to use well in order to avoid attack from the NPCs.

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': Pentavision 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.

RPG

Warlord
Developer: Thingsoft. 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

Slugger
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.

External links

• NEOWIZ Corp. official website
• NEOWIZ Games Corp 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 March- 24 March 2007

Notes and references

ko:네오위즈