ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, online games have become a major youth leisure activity, with a market value that now exceeds both the music and film sectors.While western game developers and publishers, such as Electronic Arts (EA) and Blizzard Entertainment, have expanded their global reach, game developers in Korea, including NEXON, NCsoft, andWemade, have also become important contributors to the global game market.This includes the lucrative massively multiplayer online role-play game (MMORPGs) market. As a result of Korea’s success in this industry, many other countries and game corporations have become keenly interested in emulating their development systems. While there are a number of factors contributing to Korea’s success in this industry, as in
many other countries that rely on neoliberal logics for economic development, the Korean government has played a key role. In general, the Korean government has provided support for measures intended to harness market forces, and out-sourced more government services, in addition to reducing industrial and government costs by emphasizing, in some cases, citizen self-help instead of reliance on government services (Jeannotte 2010). In terms of the online game industry, neoliberal economic logics have meant extensive institutional and economic support for its development. In a very general sense, the Korean gaming industry case is similar to many other countries in which government support for industry is paralleled by decreases in some social supports for citizens. But upon closer inspection, the story diverges from many other analyses of neoliberalism
and science and technology. Not only has the Korean government advanced new policies as part of its efforts to make information technology (IT) a centerpiece of the national economy, it has also done so because of the importance of gaming for youth culture in Korea. Co-existing with this social value is that many parents and some government officials have become anxious about the content of online games and their appropriateness for youth because of the possibility of gaming-related addictions. Addiction is not simply a metaphor for particular relationships to online games, as it is in some societies; in Korean society, it refers to a specific medical condition and a social relationship. One set of government responses has been to regulate the use of these games.
