Trendsetters: The 10 Most Significant Games
8/26/2008 6:16 PM | 9 Comments | Page 10 of 10
Steve Kent
Status: Getting a jump start on the Game of the Year arguing!
Lineage(NCSoft, Online MMO, 1998)
Traditionally, the game industry has divided the world into three markets -- North America, Europe and Japan. The European market included Europe, Africa, Australia and all of Asia except Japan. In short, South Korea was never considered a hotbed of gaming.
With this in mind, it is somewhat understandable that the industry paid more attention to
Ultima Online (released in September, 1997) and
EverQuest (released in March, 1999) when it came to massively multi-player games. Who could have predicted that a game released by a South Korean company in 1998 would eclipse both games in popularity?
While
Ultima Online eventually racked up 250,000 paid subscriptions and
EverQuest topped out at about 450,000 eventually reached 3 million subscribers proving that MMOs could indeed succeed on a massive scale.
The popularity of
Lineage has changed the way video and computer game executives view the world. Southeast Asia, once considered little more than an offshoot of other markets, is now both a target market and a global exporter of games. Though
Lineage never caught on in the United States, other NCsoft games such as
City of Heroes and
Guild Wars have impressive sales.
Lineage's subscription records have since been eclipsed by
World of Warcraft. If there is one company that has benefited from
Lineage's success, however, it is Blizzard. Blizzard sold over 4.5 million copies of
StarCraft in South Korea, and
World of Warcraft has enjoyed major success in China and South Korea as well.
What do you think the most significant games are? Log in and let us know in the comments!
