Nexon chief stresses artistry in video games

The head of South Korea’s top online game firm Nexon said Tuesday game developers should come up with creative and fun games, warning against the fear of making mistakes.

“The fear of making mistakes is the enemy of innovation and it is the enemy of great art,” said Owen Mahoney, chief executive of the Tokyo-headquartered game firm, lashing out at fast-follower strategies widely deployed by Facebook game developers and mobile game developers.

“To build great games that capture our imagination, imagination of future generations as art is a proper destination of our game industry,” he added. 

He made the remarks at the game company’s annual Nexon Developers Conference, which kicked off in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday.

Participants including individual developers and those from small game companies flocked to Nexon’s Pangyo office early Tuesday morning to participate in pre-events including the hands-on experience event for virtual reality headsets Oculus Rift and Gear VR.

The 21-year-old game company started the conference with its own developers in 2007 but opened the doors to other developers in 2011, aiming to provide a venue for market players to share ideas and nurture the Korean game industry.

The number of presentation and discussion sessions held at the conference, which used to be 33 initially, has now grown to more than 100, and around 20,000 participants including game developers and industry officials are expected to join the three-day conference this year.

The subjects dealt in each session range from game design and programming to visual arts and marketing.

Some of the speakers at the conference include Michael Antonov, cofounder of virtual reality device maker Oculus, and Chon Kil-nam, a professor emeritus at KAIST.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)