Here comes a Christmas greeting from Seoul! I hope you enjoy the Christmas with many hard gifts under the tree. In Korea, Christmas has developed into a couple’s holiday (compare with Valentine’s Day) which differs pretty much from the Western family oriented way of celebrating.

However, not all guys have the fortunate possibility to spend the night with a girl and the alternative is often to play computer games. The standard answer for someone who does not have a girlfriend when asked about Christmas is usually “I’ll go to PC bang”. PC bangs are Internet cafés available all over Korea and it is a sort of a joke to say that you will do something else than dating.

Of course, this is something many game companies try to make business out of. For example, online games like Granado Espada, Rohan, Seal Online and Yul Yul Gang Ho are all providing special Christmas events. Some chose to provide gifts for finding Christmas trees while others just decorate the world in Christmas style. Yul Yul Gang Ho is maybe the most extreme since they put a drunken Rudolf into the game and he turns into a monster and the person that kills him receive a special item. Welcome to Christmas 2.0…

A Korean gaming news website published results of a survey among young internet users. The survey has been conducted by two websites www.Puppyred.com and www.ontooniverse.com among 86.000 surfers aged 8-13. Puppyred.com is something like Second Life for children, whereas Ontooniverse.com is a website of a cable TV program comparable to Cartoon Network. Despite a likely bias in the survey population some of the results are fascinating and frightening at the same time.

Approximately 62% of the participants use the internet 1-2 hours a day. This may not sound a lot to you but in Korea even young school children return from school around 6 p.m. or even later. Subtracting time for having dinner and eventual homework these two hours represent probably 80%-90% of their free time during one day. This is underlined by the fact that 92% surf from home. What do the kids do online on their virtual playground? Well the same thing we used to do on real playgrounds, i.e. playing (39% play online games) and meeting friends (27% work on their “Minihompi” or visit their friends’ “Minihompis”). In connection to that it is not surprising that CyWorld is the second most popular website (29%) just after naver (57%).

This trend underlines the appearance of a truly digital youth. However in Korea it gets an almost dangerous dimension which ultimately will further increase problems like internet addiction. On the other hand this early embrace of the internet and its virtual worlds is a good explanation why Koreans usually are regarded as tech savvy, which enhances the development of new services and businesses in the TMT sector.

Lately gaming has received significant attention as an emerging multi billion dollar business. PricewaterhouseCoopers expects the video game industry in Asia/Pacific which is the largest market to grow by 10% annually from 11.7 billion USD in 2006 to 18.8 billion USD by 2011 excluding spending on hardware and possible revenues from in-game advertising. So although being a fun sector it offers promising business opportunities. From the 8^th until 11^th of November the third edition of GStar games exhibition took place in Ilsan a satellite city of Seoul. Since I live in Ilsan and the fair ground is just a five minutes walk away I from my place, I seized the opportunity and had a look at it last Friday.

Unfortunately still exhibitors as well as audience had a strong Korean bias, with no major Western game company being present on GStar. Because of cultural factors and differences in the way people play there is no global gaming community yet (besides a few examples like World of Warcraft). But according to key note speaker Gordon Walton from Bioware, especially the Western younger generation is attracted by Asian style games and content. Moreover he stated that factors like the high number of developers, massive competition among those and strong demand will make Asia the leading region for game development in the future.

Besides that I had a close look on mobile games. Although lagging behind 8-9 years in terms of graphics, Koreans do use their mobile for gaming. Especially when using public transportation it is a good way to spend the time. One feature which could make mobile gaming attractive for business is that also girls are using their mobile for playing. With 3G phones it will open new business opportunities in the fields of advertisement related and multiplayer mobile gaming. And Korean users are once again likely to be the leading early adopters in the world.