Korean Government Opens U.S. MMO Promotion Site

Not-for-profit South Korean government-funded IT globalization firm the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) today launched an online games portal featuring a number of MMO games previously unavailable to American consumers to help advocate for their country's game titles. The site, Game&Game, officially launched today with a grand total of seventeen Korean-developed online games available for download at no cost, including 3D fantasy action MMO SilkRoad Online, flight sim MMORPG Space Cowboy, and new titles Neo Baseball, Blitz 1941 and War Rock. KIPA, designer of the portal, is a not-for-profit company established by Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication, and is entirely funded by the South Korean authorities. In a press release issued today, game&game stated that each title on the portal is a fully-functional game presented in a Beta state, and that the titles available will frequently rotate, as the agency tries to promote Korean titles in the U.S. The most prominent Korean MMO firm currently trading in the U.S. is NCSoft, which operates City Of Heroes and the Korean-developed Lineage II, but the games promoted by KIPA are from smaller developers that would not otherwise get notice in North America. "Some game players recently discovered our site as it was beta and are talking about the excitement of the games," said KIPA Digital Contents consultant Steven Kwak in the press release. "We are looking forward to the continued feedback we receive about our games from North American game players."