'Game of Thrones' RPG will launch in West first because 'Asian gamers finish games too fast'

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'Game of Thrones' RPG will launch in West first because 'Asian gamers finish games too fast'

Published: 18 Nov. 2024, 19:08 Updated: 19 Nov. 2024, 15:58

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

A screenshot from Netmarble's upcoming title Game of Thrones: Kingsroad [NETMARBLE]

Netmarble's highly anticipated “Game of Thrones” video game will roll out in the West before it comes to Asia — because Asian gamers finish games too fast, the Korean developers say.

“Asian gamers tend to consume content faster,” said Netmarble Division Director Moon Jun-ki, who is in charge of the company’s action role-playing games (RPG) in an interview during the G-Star 2024 gaming convention at the Bexco convention center in Busan on Thursday. “So we plan to launch in the West first.”

Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, based on the show's fourth season, is an open-world RPG set to support both single and multiplayer modes. The developers did not specify the release date of the game nor the length of the single-player content.

Netmarble Division Director Moon Jun-ki and Executive Producer Jang Hyun-il [NETMARBLE]

“We plan to launch in the West first, make any changes to the game, and release in the [Asian] region soon after,” Moon said. That should give comparatively slower Western players a decent head start, allowing them to finish the title before too many competitors across the globe have plowed through it and spoiled the material.

Of course, that's not the only reason: “Game of Thrones” and its source material, George R.R. Martin's “A Song of Ice and Fire,” are also more popular in the West. And developers said it will very much retain the HBO series' violent and explicit tone, in an effort to engage its fans. Many working on the title are proud aficionados of the show as well as its prequel, “House of the Dragon.”

“We prioritized what the fans would want to see,” Moon said. “We think the fans want to explore the open world with the characters they know.”

A screenshot from Netmarble's upcoming title Game of Thrones: Kingsroad [NETMARBLE]

To that end, the game is gory. It includes many “bloody and sexual scenes” that were deemed too mature for G-Star's show floor, Moon said; the demo shown to attendees involved fighting White Walkers, rather than humans.

“The story of the main characters might be different from the original story, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feel like a ‘Game of Thrones’ story,” said Executive Producer Jang Hyun-il

“Game of Thrones has its violent and sexual nature to it, and we are trying to incorporate that nature in the main scenario.”

Game of Thrones: Kingsroad is being developed using Unreal Engine 5 by Netmarble Neo and is set to support mobile and desktop environments with other platforms to be added in the future. Demo gameplay at the G-Star was available on both Windows and Mac rigs. Despite being a crossplay mobile game, Kingsroad developers emphasized that the title supports “full manual controls,” as opposed to the automatic controls seen in many of its other titles. Netmarble is not known for its single-player games, but its most recent hit was one, and it plans to utilize its experience developing Solo Leveling: Arise here.

Much like Martin's elusive “Winds of Winter,” however, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad doesn't have a release date yet, though Jang says it is “70 percent complete.”

“But there are still wonky aspects,” he caveated. “We are continuously polishing those bits.”

BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]