GAMEVIL Europe CEO David Mohr, who will be speaking at White Nights Moscow 2015, answered some of our questions regarding the work of the Korean giant.
Hi! We all know GAMEVIL as one of the few Asian companies (along with Square Enix) whose games are popular in the West, despite the fact that their visual style does not adapt to the tastes of American and European gamers. But you are most likely changing something in the games. Could you tell me in more detail what exactly?
David Mohr
Hi! Look, we try to make it [when localizing] as if the games were written in the language [into which they are translated]. That’s why we spend a lot of time and effort translating in-game text. For example, we can change the names of characters or even the name of the game for a particular region. We also change phrases based on local cultural peculiarities. We also adapt in-game sales and events for the countries we serve: the time of each event is selected based on time zones. The same applies to seasonal themes.
In February of this year, Kingdom Under Fire Online: Age of Storm was announced. Even then we had a question, why resurrect a closed client MMO. Now the following question has been added to this question: when to wait?
In 2014, we achieved great success in publishing the role-playing game Kritika. We were interested in working with DRAGONFLY studio, whose experience in development has more than 20 years, and the games are of very high quality. Why did you want to work with her? It’s simple, we wanted to publish Age of Storm on mobile platforms. Speaking of the novelty, as in the case of the published Kritika, players can safely expect the same high quality graphics and an excellent story. Here, by the way, I want to note that we are also going to release Devilian from Ginno Games and Archeage from XL Games as part of the expansion of our portfolio of projects ported from PC to mobile.
The two areas in which you work are role-playing action games and sports projects. How did it happen, and have you tried to work in other niches?
Gamevil is famous for hardcore role-playing games like Zenonia and sports titles like Baseball Superstars. In other words, these are the niches that we understand. Anyway, we consider all game genres when it comes to expanding our portfolio. I want to note that earlier we also released casual games. For example, one of our popular titles – Dungeon Link – is a role-playing puzzle that balances between hardcore and casual gaming. In general, we are always open to suggestions and consider publishing games with an intriguing story, high-quality graphics and any other unique feature.
At one time, your purchase of Com2uS made a lot of noise. Could you comment on how the interaction between the companies is arranged now, to what extent GAMEVIL and Com2uS work independently of each other?
Like GAMEVIL, Com2uS has been a leading Seoul publisher for about ten years, and also has a global reach. Our goal is to ensure the quality of mobile games for users around the world. Therefore, it was completely logical for us to acquire another company with similar goals. As for interaction, despite the fact that we work closely with each other (we even share an office in Los Angeles with each other), we serve our games separately.
Thanks for the interview!
You will be able to learn about the latest trends in the gaming industry first-hand, personally meet and discuss working issues with leading companies in the game development and publishing market at White Nights Moscow 2015, which will be held on October 13-14.