Here is an interesting article talking about the state of the video games market in Korea, and the effects of gaming in society. This market is set to undergo MASSIVE change in the coming years, with offline gaming losing ground to social/group/online gaming:

The Korea Herald: Unlocking the positive potential of video games

According to […] the official report of the Korean game industry, […] revenues totaled 5.14 trillion won in 2007, a 31 percent drop from 7.45 trillion won in 2006. The sharp drop was caused by the drastic shrink of the arcade game sector, whose revenue plummeted from 3.3 trillion won in 2006 to a mere 87 billion won in 2007 [Korea, where a market size can be divided 40 in a year…].

In contrast, online games enjoyed solid revenue growth of 26 percent, from 1.78 trillion won in 2006 to 2.24 trillion won in 2007. Mobile games posted healthy growth of 5 percent, with income totaling 252 billion won in 2007.

(((Video games create more self-efficacy…)))

Regarding the positive effect of computer games on personal behavior, […] playing online games enhances users’ “self-efficacy” and leadership. Self-efficacy is an educational psychology term that means capability in performing actions needed to attain certain goals. It is critical to distinguish between self-esteem and self-efficacy. Self-esteem is a sense of sense-worth or self-respect, whereas self-efficacy is one’s ability to produce effects. […]

(((…and teach you how to be a “leader”)))

When people become a leader in games they learn how to manage and control a number of team members. Those leaders actually perform a similar role as they would in reality in terms of organizational management and strategic challenges. Whether it is online or offline, the way we cooperate as a team to solve a problem basically shares the same modes of activity. […] higher game leadership actually presented higher offline leadership, leading us to the conclusion that “virtual leaders are real leaders.”

Link

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 4:08 am and is filed under asia, gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.