The evolution of Shift Up mirrors the paths taken by many Asian gaming companies. Starting from mobile development, the company expanded to other platforms, transitioning from local hits to producing AAA products for a global audience.
The history of Shift Up is closely linked to MMORPGs—a genre that significantly shaped the development of the South Korean gaming market. Local gamers have historically preferred predominantly free-to-play games for PC (and later for mobile devices) such as Lineage, MapleStory, or Blade & Soul.
Kim Hyung-tae, an experienced artist, worked as the art director on Blade & Soul. In the early 2000s, he was responsible for character design in the RPG series Magna Carta, but outside of South Korea, his name was virtually unknown.
After working on Blade & Soul for eight years, Kim decided to leave NCSoft shortly after its release. In short, the reason was general fatigue and unfulfilled ambitions. Kim wanted to create new games that reflected his artistic style, but he was daunted by the prospect of dedicating another decade to another MMORPG.
“NCSoft’s pipeline was geared towards blockbusters, and I was weighed down by such long development timelines,” the developer noted.
Instead, he planned to create a mobile game with his preferred stylized graphics and a much smaller scope. With this goal in mind, Kim founded Shift Up in December 2013, which in 11 years progressed from a small studio to a public company with global ambitions.