Digital Hallyu 2.0: Transnationalization of Local Digital Games
Digital Hallyu 2.0: Transnationalization of Local Digital Games
This chapter maps out the growth of locally based digital games. In the twenty-first century, the New Korean Wave has been expanding with the rapid growth of digital culture, in particular with online gaming. The rapid growth of the Korean digital game industry, including online gaming, and its export into the Western market have raised a fundamental question of whether digital culture has changed the nature of the Korean Wave, from a regionally focused intracultural flow to include a Western-focused contraflow. The chapter attempts to discuss the ways in which local online games, in particular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), have advanced contraflow. In addition, it discusses a changing trend in the digital game sector, which has been occurring due to both the increasing role of China's game industries and the emergence of mobile gaming in the smartphone era. It also maps out the process by which Korean online games are appropriated for Western game users in a form of “glocalization”in both content and structure. Finally, the chapter articulates whether this new trend can diminish an asymmetrical cultural flow between the West and the East.
Keywords: New Korean Wave, digital games, digital culture, online gamine, MMORPGs, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, cultural flow
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