Leveling the competition

It began humbly enough, with a sprite-happy online role-playing game based on a Korean comic book by Myung Jing Lee. Broadly influenced by Norse mythology, the game featured archetypal sword-and-sorcery characters such as the Wizard, Knight and Rogue. Its graphics resembled elaborate dioramas populated by gingerbread cutouts of anime-ish characters, down to their lily pool eyes and cotton candy cheeks. The game was called Ragnarok, a reference to the Norse term for The Apocalypse or End of Days, and it couldn’t have been more misleading. Ragnarok wasn’t the end, it marked the beginning – the beginning for Ragnarok’s publishers, Level Up! Games (LU), and the beginning of the massive multiplayer online game revolution in the country.

Flash forward three years, two games and a dozen challengers later, and the gaming company that started it all is taking bold steps to reinforce its status as the premier gaming company in the country. For 2006, LU plans to release not one, not two, but three of the most coveted and prestigious game titles on the market: the MMORPG Rising Force Online (RF for short), the MMOFPS Gunz Online and Casual Sports game Freestyle (admittedly, the Level Up! seal of approval can only help the games’ cache).

It can be a stifling, suffocating challenge for the company many gamers still and always will associate with Ragnarok Online (almost as if Ragnarok Inc. brought us Level Up!). It’s a legacy LU COO, Ben Colayco, admits can be a cross as much as a cudgel. "I think one of the biggest challenges is that every time we launch a new game everybody expects it to be, like, bigger than Ragnarok. I’ve always said – if you look back at all my comments ever since we first started – it’ll be really hard to bring in a game that is going to be bigger than Ragnarok."

At the end of last year alone, RO boasted a subscription base of 6.8 million, with CCUs (concurrent users – the barometer for any online game’s true worth) peaking at 57,000. It’s this success, he points out with a bemused smile, that other gaming companies fortunate enough to license RO in Southeast Asia have tried to surpass, only to come crashing down from the lofty heights of Midgard. "They’ve tried launching other games," he says wryly. "They can never hold a candle to that thing."

LU hopes its latest MMORPG, Rising Force Online, doesn’t share the same fate. Because it shares the same genre lineage as RO, RF has perhaps the most to prove, and gain. Developed by Korean-based CCR Inc. (the original design team behind what was to become the Casual turn-based hit, Gunbound), RF is the first LU MMORPG to venture outside the tried and tested realms of magic and fantasy, gravitating more toward science fiction and the underground cyberpunk movement, more mech than myth. It also eschews the patented formula of wholesome, moppety characters and lighthearted game play soldered by RO and its kid sister, ROSE Online (both from Gravity Entertainment) in favor of a darker, grittier tone. According to Colayco, it was RF’s radical digression from their existing MMORPG titles that made the game all the more appealing. "Ragnarok is kind of the fun MMORPG, where you play to hang out. RF lends itself more to role-playing, for a little more hardcore kind of player."

Most MMORPGs emphasize the cooperative aspect of online gaming for high-level questing and instancing. RF conspicuously encourages racial exclusivity. Inspired, it seems, by mech-gendered animes such as Gundam and Lodoss, RF allows players to choose from one of three sides: the tech-deifying Bellato Union, the mystical and arcane Holy Alliance Cora, and the cybernetically advanced Accretian Empire, to which their loyalty must abide and endure over all others. "The cool thing is, each race is so segregated that if you run into another race you can’t even chat. It’s really intense."

"The way they built RF is really brilliant," he enthuses, his voice ratcheting up like a kid bragging about his new remote control car. "It has a built-in system where the player with the most kills on the other race and the most points for killing boss monsters becomes, like, the president, right, and that guy changes every day (we’re going to change it to every three days). You get to pick your vice patriarchs and you’re the only guy who can chat with the other races, so when you have a war you’re the one who can actually strike a deal with the other race."

Colayco pauses for a moment, as if caught off guard by his oblivious display of exuberance. "I’m sorry for going into detail," he says sheepishly. "But this is one of those things where you have to explain, ‘This is the game, this is why we chose it.’"

With Gunz, LU is heading farther out of its comfort zone. The MMOFPS genre, while one of the fastest growing hybrid genres in Asia, has yet to displace Counter Strike in the crosshairs of most gamers, nor has it been tapped by any of the major local publishers. In many ways, it’s like the RO of its genre, and for the first time in its existence, LU is playing the unfamiliar role of underdog. Challenging CS’ dominance can be as fatal as a head shot, but Gunz at least, has the pedigree for it.

Gunz Online is perhaps the strongest of the MMOFPS titles (War Rock, Vital Sign, Outpost) to come out of Korea, despite being developed by an obscure, fledgling company, Maiet Entertainment, whose only previous credit was the 2002 space fighter, Ace Saga. In Korea, Gunz has spawned a spirited and vocal community of online gamers which has extended to the Philippines, where the international edition has become a cult hit even before LU’s acquisition. It’s biggest selling point is the use of the Wachowski Brothers’ pioneering "bullet time" animation from The Matrix Trilogy, which allows players to execute Neo-esque stunt work such as wall climbs and somersaults in slow motion.

Underlining Gunz’s impeccable game credentials, Colayco emphasizes the importance of working with developers the company feels comfortable with. "When it came down to picking Gunz, from a content perspective it really rocked, but when we came down and met the developer we got a really good vibe with those guys (Maiet Entertainment)."

Over the years, he says, LU has become increasingly selective about the developers it deals with. As the Level Up! brand name has grown in stature, developers have looked to exploit the company by overpricing their games (sometimes even before they’re finished) and undercutting LU’s reputation by arguing that the company’s success would only overwhelm their products.

With Freestyle, a three-on-three cell-animated, streetball-infused online basketball game from JC Entertainment (Rush Online, Redmoon), there are no such concerns. "Freestyle was easy; it was a no-brainer," shrugs Colayco. "Plus, it’s like a hip-hop kind of flavored game which goes really well with the company culture and philosophy."

In a country where homemade basketball rims hang like signposts on every corner, and where the school-and-sneakers syndicate has pushed 3v3 half-court basketball as a sport onto itself, Colayco is understandably buoyant about Freestyle’s chances of taking the Casual game market to the rim. "I think – my prediction is – Freestyle is gonna be huge, huge, huge." He repeats the words with the cool, casual self-assuredness of a laidback surfer talking up his next wave (in fact, Colayco’s frequent and unsparing use of the words, "dude," "cool," and "awesome," makes you want to check behind his office door to see if there isn’t a surfboard stashed behind it).

Even for a company as iconic as LU, bringing in three games can be risky, both internally, for LU’s current family of games, as well as externally, in terms of a crowding game market. Certainly, the market four years ago was not as sturdy or competitive as it is today. When RO debuted, it was to a barren game frontier. And for the vast commercial territory the industry has staked out since, LU has no one to blame, or thank, but itself. This year alone, two game publishers – e-Games with three and netGames with two – have released multiple titles for both MMORPG and Casual.

Colayco admits the prospect of over-saturating the market is a concern, as it should be for any game publisher, but only if the publishers take a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog approach. "We welcome competitors that grow the market, not so much the ones that just want to take a piece of the existing pie because it just makes things harder for everybody."

In fact, Colayco credits the widened playing field for helping Level Up! well, level up. "Actually, without the competition, we wouldn’t work so hard, I think. If we were the only company, I doubt that a lot of our services would have ever gotten cleaned up, or we’d do things a lot more efficiently, admits Colayco. "Now that there’s lot more competition I’m sure everyone’s service level has picked up a notch. And you just have to be a lot smarter, you gotta move faster, and do things right."

LU gamers worrying about the new titles taking their parents’ eyes away from their favorite child can rest easy, Colayco says. He promises LU will continue to market its existing titles as zealously as it always has. "We want to keep the existing community really happy. The reason we bring in new content is not to migrate those people over but to grow the market." LU recently released the latest patch for RO, Einbroch, which enhances the value of alchemists and blacksmiths tenfold, and plans on adding a new planet, Eldeon, to the ROSE universe sometime this year. Still under development is perhaps the most anticipated MMORPG in Southeast Asia, Ragnarok II, which was recently previewed at the Tokyo game convention and which Colayco says LU has already test-run.

"Really, Ragnarok is a solid product, and we have a really good relationship with Gravity, so they’ve promised us more updates, every three months. We’re still having the big tournaments, so there’s really nothing to worry about when it comes to the existing community."

Even as he gushes at the prospects of LU’s new games, Colayco can’t help but look back at their humble start three years ago. "(We) exploded with Ragnarok, you know. We’re the Ragnarok company... Although I definitely recognize that that was the original game that started it all, and has the biggest community, I’m betting on the fact the new offerings grow the market so we’re not talking to the same people all of the time, and it means that the gamers are growing and the interest for video games in general is bigger."

You’d think the head of the country’s biggest gaming company, having snatched up three of the foremost games in the market, would be angling for that next big franchise to add to his belt. Not so. It’s not the diamond everyone else wants that interests him; it’s the piece of coal that might one day be that diamond. "For us the biggest challenge is finding games that could become potential Ragnaroks that no one is talking about, which is what Ragnarok was. Nobody believed in that, including myself, that it would be so big... That is like, a personal quest, to find another hidden gem just to prove what we can do. We’ll find that," he declares, resolutely.

Somewhere, a small little game is waiting for its chance. And if Level Up! has anything to say about it, it will be huge. Huge, huge, huge.