Survival Project ? The Rhetoric of Gaming

Survival Project is a South Korean real-time online action game developed by IO Entertainment and published by Hanbitsoft in 2001. The game resembles arcade games, with various features of RPG added. (e.g. items, game currency, trade, guilds) Games are played in ?room?s, in which 1~16 players choose their characters and participate in games of various modes including battle mode, quest mode, and community mode. The most striking feature of Survival Project is its control interface. Users can use A,S,D,R, and space bar to run, short-range attack, long-range attack, cast magic, and defense, respectively. Thus, it is vastly different from most of RPGs where attack or magic is done by clicking. Users must aim right distance, angle and time to hit the opponent, and this provides gamers with experience of console-based arcade games. Also, each character has different ways of attack, and different numerical values of attack damage, attack speed, maximum speed, acceleration, and rotating speed, adding more weight to gamers? control. Thus Survival Project is considered one of the first attempts to add console-game features to online games.

Survival Project was born in the middle of online game boom in Korea. Korean online game market had grown exponentially since the release of NEXUS: The Kingdom of Winds by NEXON in1996. In 1998, Starcraft 1 and Lineage were released, transforming gaming into a new way of life for Koreans. In year 2001 Crazy Arcade(NEXON) and Survival Project were released, opening an era of online arcade games. It is very important to note that online arcade games broadened the gamer spectrum from late 10s~early 20s male enthusiasts to ordinary men and women of all age. While conventional games such as lineage and Starcraft were based on grand synopsis with somewhat gloomy graphics, Survival Project chose a light, pastel-tone graphics with cartoonish characters. Also, the game incorporated ?community mode? in which gamers could chat and play with each other. Most of all, the website for the game served as a space where gamers could share game episodes and self-created contents such as screenshots, self-made strategies, novels, and fan arts. The game also supported guild system in which gamers could bond with others and form an intimate group. Such endeavors made Survival Project an easily approachable game, and the number of concurrent players increased dramatically as gamers found their alternative identity within the gaming community.

After reaching its climax in 2005~2006, Survival Project has been in constant decline, mainly due to lack of content update and chase by new games with advanced graphics and interfaces. The decline was triggered by inappropriate events in which users could gain game currency and items more easily during the event periods. Such events could increase the concurrent users for a short period of time, but in the long resulted in corruption of game economy by causing inflation. It was widely criticized that the administrators were falsely trying to make up for lack of content updates with such events, and it eventually pushed out conventional users whose items depreciated due to inflation.

Survival Project does not take a place in Smithsonian exhibition. However, it has greatly contributed to the diversification of interface of online games and creation of healthy online game community, and hence deserves 7/10. Poor management and somewhat problematic profit model led to the downfall, and the game is scheduled for service termination in late 2012. However, its impact on the interface and online community will last long, as well as reminiscence of its gamers.

References

http://www.spgame.com/

http://www.ioenter.com/

http://blog.naver.com/cyber13510?Redirect=Log&logNo=130106668171

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