[GAME MASTER]Blog Games at Naver

Korea has one of the most advanced blog interfaces in the world. A blog (short for “web log”) isn’t just a place where people write messages. In fact, blogs have evolved from simple Web boards to include a bunch of other functions, such as skins, photo albums and jukeboxes.
One of the more recent innovations involves games. If you have a blog on Naver, which is one of the biggest portal sites in Korea, you can go into a gameshop and, for less than two dollars, purchase a game, which is then added to the menu bar. They are mostly arcade games, from your traditional “Shanghai Mah Jong” and “Tetris” to stacking up penguins or shooting bad guys at a Western bar.
One of the most addictive aspects of these games is not that they are fun, but that the game saves the scores of those people who played it through your blog. In other words, if you go to any big game portal and play there, you really don’t know who your competitors are. But here, you are competing with your friends, which makes it more challenging.
There are several different types of games you can choose from. The first is puzzle and board games. Most of them are developed by NHN, which is the company that runs Naver, but they follow the basic format of most board games. “Bling Bling,” for instance, is like “Tetris,” but with jelly-like blobs instead of cubes.
Arcade games are a little more original and cute. In “Kko Kko,” a game in which you are a white hen with a basket on your head, you get to run around trying to catch eggs that fall out of the air.
“Milk Jju Jju” is a game about squeezing milk out of a cow. The udders swell up and you have to click on them to release a squirt of milk. Too much squirting, however, will make that nipple go dry and pop. The same goes if the udder is too full. Other features include strawberries, chocolate and bananas that float around, which produces strawberry, chocolate, and banana milk. There is also a cat, which you have to bonk on the head before it steals the bottles of milk you’ve filled.
The other categories are shooting games, action games and sports games. “Speaking Truth When Drunk” is one that is truly Korean: You are a drunk guy who tries to teeter along the street without falling over. If you fall off the sidewalk, you throw up.
In another game, “100th Birthday,” you are a witch who tries to blow out the candles on a huge cake. When she sneezes, however, a frog leaps out and flies into the air instead of a gust of wind. This game has been particularly popular, for reasons unknown, and even made its way to a television show, where celebrities took turns to see who could blow out more candles.
Although the games are very simple and some take up a lot of your time ― as do most solitaire games ― having a new feature on your blog can be an incentive for more people to visit. And even if no one else plays, you can, so it’s worth the money.

by Wohn Dong-hee