Online Game Companies Research Articles

Online game bot detection based on party-play log analysis

As online games become popular and the boundary between virtual and real economies blurs, cheating in games has proliferated in volume and method. In this paper, we propose a framework for user behavior analysis for bot detection in online games. Specifically, we focus on party play which reflects the social activities among gamers: in a Massively Multi-user Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), party play is a major activity that game bots exploit to keep their characters safe and facilitate the acquisition of cyber assets in a fashion very different from that of normal humans. Through a comprehensive statistical analysis of user behaviors in game activity logs, we establish threshold levels for the activities that allow us to identify game bots. Based on this, we also build a knowledge base of detection rules, which are generic. We apply our rule reasoner to AION, a popular online game serviced by NCsoft, Inc., a leading online game company based in Korea.

Audit Method for Personal Information Protection in On-line Games

Illegal game players' hacking and propagation of malignant code in online game exposes privacy of online game customers. So, online game companies have to support the standardized systems and operations of customers' privacies. Since online game companies implement authentication of information protection, which focuses on assets or physical, systemic security, they need a more professional system that is related to protection of individual privacy. We analyzed the individual information protection system, which includes ISO27001, ISMS of KISA, GMITS, ePrivacy, online game privacy protection guide, and BS10012. Using the suggested systems, we proposed the systemic tools that measure the level of individual information protection, which includes process and check items of each phase.

Internationalisation of the Korean online game industry: exemplified through the case of NCsoft

Companies from Korea have become leading actors in the rapidly growing global online game market, being a knowledge and creativity intensive industry. The development of the industry raises a number of questions of the internationalisation process of companies in the intersection of creative- and technology-intensive industries. Co-evolution with user groups also requires interpretation and linkages to knowledge of local user preferences, creating additional challenges in the internationalisation strategy, through the product-service interaction. This paper explores the internationalisation efforts of the Korean online game industry through a case study of the country’s leading online game company.

Chatting Pattern Based Game BOT Detection: Do They Talk Like Us?

Among the various security threats in online games, the use of game bots is the most serious problem. Previous studies on game bot detection have proposed many methods to find out discriminable behaviors of bots from humans based on the fact that a bot`s playing pattern is different from that of a human. In this paper, we look at the chatting data that reflects gamers` communication patterns and propose a communication pattern analysis framework for online game bot detection. In massive multi-user online role playing games (MMORPGs), game bots use chatting message in a different way from normal users. We derive four features; a network feature, a descriptive feature, a diversity feature and a text feature. To measure the diversity of communication patterns, we propose lightly summarized indices, which are computationally inexpensive and intuitive. For text features, we derive lexical, syntactic and semantic features from chatting contents using text mining techniques. To build the learning model for game bot detection, we test and compare three classification models: the random forest, logistic regression and lazy learning. We apply the proposed framework to AION operated by NCsoft, a leading online game company in Korea. As a result of our experiments, we found that the random forest outperforms the logistic regression and lazy learning. The model that employs the entire feature sets gives the highest performance with a precision value of 0.893 and a recall value of 0.965.

Global Marketing Strategies of Online Game Companies: The Case of Korean Companies' Localization in Japan

본 연구의 목적은 한국의 온라인 게임업체들이 사업 성공을 위해 해외시장에서 마케팅전략을 어떻게 현지화(localization) 했는가를 살펴보는 데 있다. 이를 위해 일본에 진출한 한국의 대표적 게임회사들(엔씨소프트, 넥슨, NHN)을 대상으로, 현지에서의 퍼블리셔로서의 전략과 게임 및 커뮤니케이션의 수정 여부를 사례를 통해 살펴보고, 이에 대한 명제를 도출하였다. 이들은 공통적으로 해외에서 퍼블리셔의 역할을 증대시키면서 종합 포털로 자리잡는 전략을 사용했으며, 서비스하는 주요 게임의 종류에 따라 서로 다른 마케팅 전략을 구사하고 있다. 이들은 전반적으로 마케팅 전략의 현지화에 노력했으며, 특히 커뮤니케이션 활동의 현지화에 주력했다. 이러한 현지화는 문화콘텐츠 산업인 게임이 해외시장에서 성공하기 위해 필수적으로 수행되어야 하는 것으로 나타났다.

온라인 게임 기업의 제품 다원화를 위한 제휴 전략 진화에 관한 연구

본 연구는 새롭게 탄생한 온라인 게임 기업이 시장 성장주기(도입기-성장기-성숙기)에 따라 어떻게 다원화 전략을 행하여 왔는가를 자원기반이론과 진화이론의 관점에서 실증적 사례 분석을 통해 그 역사적 진행 과정을 체계적으로 분석하였다. 초기 온라인 게임 기업들은 진입 조건(장르, 기술력, 이용자특성)에 따라 다른 전략(기술역량기반, 서비스역량기반)을 통해 성장하였다. 이후 성장기에 이들 기업들은 제품 다원화를 위해 자원기반(기술기반전략, 서비스기반전략)에 따라 경로의존적 제휴 전략(보완적, 대체적 제휴)을 수행하여왔다. 그러나 성숙기에 이들 기업들은 기존 경로의존적 전략을 뛰어넘어 이용가능한 모든 자원 역량을 동원하는 통합 전략을 자연적으로 선택함으로서 시장 성장주기에 탄력적으로 적응하였다. 이러한 분석 결과는 진화이론과 자원기반이론을 복합적으로 적용하여 새롭게 탄생한 산업에서 시장의 단계별 성장주기에 따라 온라인 게임 기업의 제휴 전략 패턴이 어떻게 자기조직화 하고 있는지 분석함으로써 새로운 산업적, 정책적, 이론적 모델이 요구되고 있음을 제시하고 있다.

Characterizing Online Games

Online games are a rapidly growing Internet application. In order to run a successful online game, game companies and game infrastructure providers must properly manage game workloads and content so that they can maximize player satisfaction while minimizing their own costs. Toward this end, this paper provides a comprehensive, long-term analysis of several popular online games and their players using one of the richest data sets available for online games.

Analysis of the talent exodus in the Chinese online game labour market

The Chinese online game industry is facing a scarcity of talented professionals and talent mobility. How to recruit and retain talented employees is a tough question that each game company has to face. Presently, most companies adopt high investment in R&D and monetary reward for solving the problem. In this paper, the authors aim to identify factors that contribute to the talent exodus. With the qualitative approaches, the authors aim to find the reasons why employees of different levels leave their working place. In the findings, the authors point out that monetary reward, training, employee involvement and motivation at work are the critical factors for the loss of talented staff and for the adjustment and implementation of the organisation's human resource management strategies. At the end of this paper, some recommendations are put forward in terms of the disadvantages of HR systems of the Chinese online game companies.

Applying 6-Sigma methodology in constructing the overall quality performance evaluation model — an example of internet game industry

In respect with the growing fast development of Internet the Internet Game has become the most growing industry at present time. In one year, there are less one million units PC computer sold in Taiwan area but there are over one million people bought “Paradise” game card. The CPU giant – Intel takes 20 years to achieve the gross margin of 50% but a Korean online game company NC soft takes only 2 years to achieve the gross margin of 60%. Although in 2001 the economic growth rate of Taiwan is down to 1%-2% but the growth rate of 2001 of on-line game company, Orange, is up to 116%. In seeing the success of NC soft and Game Orange, Owing to the success of NC soft and Game Orange’s “Paradise” game, it brings the Internet game industry to a prosperous and competitive status, therefore if a business company wants to grasp the growth turning point in this industry she must build up her capability to develop an excellent Internet game product, but to develop an excellent Internet game it needs to proceed the measurement and analysis on the customer satisfaction for the quality of game’s scenario and content’s vision and sound of game. Base on the foregoing motives we apply the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology of 6-Sigma, and focus on the customer satisfaction of content’s sound effect and visual effect for specific company’s Internet game proceed the define, measure, analyze, improve and control. At first, we define the related performance index and the questionnaire items for the related sound and vision effect characteristics and applying the 5 equal scale of Richet to proceed the questionnaire measurement, and then we analyzed the data collected from the questionnaires retrieved. At the beginning, we develop the significance of importance of customer motive and satisfaction level on sound and image effect by the quality function deployment and use them to calculate the importance index of every sound and image quality characteristics, and then build up the quality matrix by using the index value of importance and satisfaction. At final, use the difference of the importance value minus the satisfaction value as the overall satisfaction index to build up the quality performance control chart. In the respect of improvement, at first we focus on the abnormal sound and image quality characteristics that located outside the control chart, deploy them by the cause-effect diagram to find out the key corrective actions for improvement; at final, on the respect of control, we re-do the questionnaire survey and applying the method mentioned above for building up the quality performance control chart to verify the effectiveness of action execution. By using the easy and comprehensive evaluation and improvement model provided by the article, the industry business can quickly and effectively evaluate and analyze the bad and good quality of the sound and image of their Internet game, and under the reasonable condition to effectively improve the quality of sound and image to promote the overall customer satisfaction and by providing them for industry’s reference to increase the value added and quality competition of new product.