The Channel | 2008

JANUARY08

THE CHANNEL

INTERVIEW

MEANDMYAVATAR

Avatars are “video game like” cartoon representations - digital puppets if you will - of people that are used in virtual

chat worlds and environments, and on mobile phones as screen savers. Differing from how users are identified inside

traditional chat programs where users have only text identification or perhaps a small picture of the face of the users,

or cartoon representation. Avatars are actual “virtual robots” which are usually three-dimensional, have form,

clothing, haircuts, etc. One of the most popular avatar sites in South Korea is Neowiz’s “SayClub” that has over 20

million subscribers, which is over 40% of the total population of Korea. In SayClub, the avatar initially comes only with

underwear. The user has to then outfit the avatar to fit the kind of persona that user wants his/her avatar to reflect in

its virtual world. Some want their avatars to resemble their real world appearance. However, more often the avatar

can gain attributes - a dark haired person to be blonde for example or an overweight person to be slim - and of course

wear clothes that the real user might not be able to afford. Each additional item of clothing or accessory needs to be

purchased and then dressed upon the avatar. As these kinds of environments grow, they soon gain a vast range of

content such as clothing from the major brands and up to premium fashion designers like Gucci. It is not uncommon

for South Koreans heavily into virtual worlds to spend more on the accessories and clothing of their avatar than their

real wardrobe. An estimate by Daewoo Securities on the value of the avatar market in South Korea was $114m in 2004.

VIRTUAL FRIENDS

The virtual world and social networking site Cyworld facilitates the forming of new friendships through its “Becoming

Buddies” feature, which is a creative human relationship management system. Becoming Buddies allows sharing of

information, pictures, blogs etc as well as bonding in friendship. Forming friendships and then building human

relationships is a core element of Cyworld. South Korean teenagers measure how popular they are by how many

friends link to their Cyworld home pages. However, even more, once you have two out of every five members of the

population in your virtual world, the whole economy takes notice. Every brand and company wants a presence inside

Cyworld. Today all significant South Korean businesses already maintain a presence inside Cyworld. It is no longer a

question of “should” Coca Cola or Nike or Ford find marketing tools to join MySpace. In Korea, every consumer brand

has to be inside Cyworld. 30,000 businesses, offer over 500,000 items of digital content for sale already.

listened to, not really watched. But

if something worth watching

happens, you can watch it.

Then there are certain specific

peaks. At lunchtime, cellphone-TV

viewers often use their phones to

catch up on a favourite soap opera,

and schedule their lunch break to

allow for that. A particular use is

the bathroom – we can take the

little TV to the bathroom and not

interrupt our viewing. There is

significant use by kids as their

"private" digital TV option. When

mother is watching Desperate

Housewives on the main plasma

TV of the household, the kids can

go to their room, use the digital

tuner on the phone, and watch their

show without disturbing mom's

viewing.

How are broadcasters and

programme makers adapting

to more TV viewing on mobiles?

They are still only experimenting

and trying to learn. Obviously the

new peak watching times will alter

the work of scheduling. Also totally

new content types, various user-

generated TV and video content

will play an ever larger part in the

equation. But it’s too early to say yet.

Are people still watching TV on

the big screen at home?

I'm certain that the majority of TV

viewing will be on larger screens

than our mobile phones for many

years, perhaps decades to come –

on the big projection screen, the big

plasma screen, the normal LCD TV

screen, the PC/laptop screen, on

dedicated DVD players with much

larger screens than pocketable

mobile phone TV screens. But there

are plenty of instances and places

and cases where we won't have

access to our primary TV viewing

option, and then the fact that soon

everybody will have a TV tuner in

their pocket at all times on their

phones, will mean that we all will

consume a part of our daily TV use

on the phone.

Out of a population of 48m, 42%

maintain a blogsite and 14m

play multiplayer online games

– what does that say about

South Korean society?

I think blogging is a universal

interest and aspiration. American

blogging went from half a million

bloggers in 2003 to over 80m today.

But the point is that South Korea

was first to have blogging go into

the mainstream. They released a

movie where the main plot was

about a teenager girl blogging, back

in 2001, when even in Silicon Valley

blogging was only for the die-hard

geeks.

The multiplayer gaming is

perhaps more a point that may

have some Korean exceptional

cultural interests. The South Korean

videogamers regularly take a vast

collection of the gold medals in the

various cybergames world

championships. In Korea there is a

big culture around gaming, with

dedicated TV channels. Top gamers

are big celebrities with a massive

fan following.

I do see in some of my nephews

and nieces similar interests in

gaming - rather play multiplayer

games than watch TV for example.

But will it become as big as in

Korea – we have to see.

Why has South Korea

embraced digital convergence

in such a big way?

I'd say the biggest single cause was

the government's pro-active role in

driving this change. South Korea

looked at Japan, and wanted to

leapfrog Japan and find its own

▼

From

chapter

3 of “Digital

Korea” by Tomi

Ahonen and Jim

O’Reilly, 2007