Thailand's largest online game distributor rented a movie theatre at Siam Paragon to use as the venue to introduce its new game. Executive director Pramoth Sudjitporn told several hundred people present - gamers, Internet game shop owners, and the media - that Asia Soft would spend more than Bt100 million on releasing and publicising Granado Espada over the next six months.

The budget, he said, included the cost of licensing, servers and systems, localisation (such as Thai soundtracks), advertising and promotions.

"We established our highest-ever marketing budget because we'd like to create a new phenomenon in the market," Pramoth said.

Besides television commercials, magazine and radio ads, Asia Soft has joined with major websites to co-promote Granado Espada, also known as GE. It is also implementing a campaign called "Wrap the town" by putting up billboards and posters at Internet cafes and public areas throughout the country including subways and train stations.

Alex Kim, chief executive of Hanbitsoft, the South Korea-based game-publishing company which licenses the GE game, told The Nation yesterday that Thailand was the third country in the world after South Korea and Japan to witness the launch of the GE game. This is because of the readiness of the local distributor Asia Soft.

"The Thai market accounts for half of the Southeast Asian online game market," said Kim, adding the target was for the new game to become as popular as Ragnarak which has attracted over one million players.

Hak Kyu Kim, creator of both Ragnarok and GE and who also presided over yesterday's launch, said that in response to input from Asia Soft and local gamers, he had created a new Muay Thai character in the GE game as a special present to Thai gamers.

Pramoth said his target was for the GE game to attract half of Thailand's online gamers which currently total somewhere between 1.5 million to 2 million. He added that the local online game market was worth an estimated Bt1 billion to Bt1.2 billion and that Asia Soft expected to retain its 70 per cent share of the market.

Although the market growth has so far been flat this year due to the launch of many free online games, Pramoth said it had great potential to expand in the future.

"We have three times more population than Taiwan but our game market is three times smaller. This is because adults here are not playing games," he said.

"If the game market expands like the music market to which 30 million people tune in, in-game advertising rates will become more expensive than TVCs [commercials] on Channels 3 or 7," he said.

Despite the high introduction cost, Asia Soft won't charge more than market rates for its new GE game, he said. Fees range from Bt28 for five hours to Bt888 for 90 days. The GE's beta launch began yesterday at 5pm.

According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, GE is an Age of Exploration fantasy MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). Set in a detailed fictional game-world that mirrors the 17th century and the European colonists' forays into the New World, the game allows players to explore the new-found continent of Granado Espada in a hunt for treasure, adventure, and fame.

Asia Soft announced that GE was the first online game to use the same team of Thai interpreters who provide voice-overs for foreign movies.

Pichaya Changsorn

The Nation