Biggest-ever G-Star to host game industry's top players

From left, G-star organizer Kang Shin-chul and Joo Sung-pil, the head of Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency, take questions at the press event for G-Star 2023 in Coex, southern Seoul, on Thursday.

This year's G-Star game festival will be its biggest ever in terms of the number of booths set up, the event's organizer Kang Shin-chul said Thursday.

There will be 3,250 booths at Busan's Bexco convention hall from Nov. 16 to 19, a 10 percent increase from last year's 2,947.

That also beats the previous record-breaking 3,208 booths in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Major game and tech companies such as Google Play, NCSoft, Krafton, Netmarble, SmilgateRPG and Epic Games will take part, though Nexon will skip this year's G-Star as it wants to focus on developing new games.

Pre-registration for the business-to-consumer (B2C) sections and business-to-business (B2B) sections was sold out by June. It’s the first time that registration for B2B sections sold out before August, according to the organizing committee.

Following last year, the main sponsor of G-Star 2023 will be game publisher Wedmade, which will open 200 booths in the B2C section and 30 booths in the B2B sections.

The company will host a variety of events around the southern port city in collaboration with the committee.

G-Star’s main conference event, G-Con, will consist of 38 sections. Guest speakers include Sony Interactive Entertainment’s former CEO Shuhei Yoshida, former Weekly Jump manga magazine editor Kazuhiko Torishima, Wemade CEO Jang Hyun-guk and Ha Jung-woo, the head of AI Innovation and Naver Cloud.

G-Star will also feature this year its first “Subculture Game Festival.” Subculture refers to games that feature Japanese anime-style girl characters.

The esports events “FC Online and “FC Mobile,” co-hosted by publishers Nexon Korea and Electronic Arts, will be held at Bexco Auditorium.

Admissions for festival visitors will be available only through online pre-registration from Oct. 17 due to heightened safety concerns in the wake of several recent public stabbings and last year's deadly crowd crush in Seoul.

The number of total tickets available was not revealed.

“We did not reveal the total number of tickets because it can elevate worries about sellouts, or a particular event could become crowded,” said Lee Kang-yeol, the director of the Korea Association of Game Industry, at the press event held in Coex, southern Seoul, on Thursday.

“We will open up admissions as much as possible, so we anticipate there will be no serious issues except for weekend events.”

Personal belongings, including cosplay items, that threaten public safety will be banned, and security at venues will be beefed up.

“Specific guidelines for inspections of personal belongings will be announced at a later date,” according to the committee.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]