Interviews

Interview: Gamevil's Charley Shim tells us about iPhone RPG Zenonia

Classic action-RPG could get new features via SDK 3.0 following initial release

Interview: Gamevil's Charley Shim tells us about iPhone RPG Zenonia
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As iPhone gains more hardcore gaming cred by the day, there's one genre more than any other that can bulk up any handheld's appeal: role-playing.

RPGs are a staple of the gamer diet and none look to satisfy more than Gamevil's upcoming Zenonia. This classic 2D RPG promises the charm of an old skool game with all the modern trappings that come with a shiny new iPhone game.

Up until now, RPGs haven't gone down well on iPhone and Zenonia faces tough challenges: controls, pricing, and delivering a fresh experience. We spoke with Charley Shim, Head of Global Business Division for Gamevil to get insight on how the game will overcome these issues when it releases to the App Store in the coming months.

Pocket Gamer: What have you taken away from those role-playing games that have already appeared on iPhone? What do you think failed in those titles, and how will Zenonia improve upon them?

Charley Shim: As you mentioned the total amount of role-playing games is smaller compared to other categories on the App Store, but we believe that the potential of growth is huge. In Korea, RPG is now one of the most popular categories on the carrier deck and is extremely competitive.

We were fortunate enough that Zenonia was the best-selling RPG last year in Korea, and after studying other games launched on the App Store we've gained confidence that Zenonia might have a chance to succeed. Since the title was brought over straight from Korea, actually we didn't study other titles that much.

What's the greatest thing that differentiates Zenonia from competing role-playing games?

Zenonia is a classic action-RPG: anime-style graphics, epic storyline, numerous quests, various skills and items, and huge scale are the key differentiators. The iPhone/iPod touch is a great gaming device, but doesn't have all the great titles like Zelda from Nintendo.

We believe that this title will bring nostalgia to all the gamers who use to play back in the days on the older consoles, and also excite the gamers who are playing right now on their Nintendo DS, too.

What have been the challenges in converting a traditional mobile title into a touch-enabled iPhone/iPod touch adaptation?

The touch feature was one of the largest challenges when converting to the iPhone/iPod touch. There are three things that we kept in mind when converting to the touch interface: how intuitive it is, how accurate it is, and how it responds.

The user interface has to be as intuitive as possible so that the users can easily be absorbed into the game and not be distracted by looking up other help menus. The control has to be accurate as possible so that users don't have to look at the control keys and can stay focused on the main screen.

Finally, it is very important to show that the users have pressed the key after the user presses the button, which can be easily done by using sounds, vibrations or graphical effects.

Explain the reasons behind opting for a directional pad for movements versus other control schemes like tilting the handset or touching anywhere on the screen.

Every game has a control that fits the best for its gameplay. We think that the sweeping control is the best control for Flight Control, and the tilting is the best for Doodle Jump.

In the same way, we've spent a lot of time to find the best control for Zenonia and came to a conclusion that the D-pad is the perfect fit since it was intuitive and simple.

Zenonia is an action-RPG game where timing is critical for your character during combat. Imagine you had to tilt the game while fighting with other characters. Also, Zenonia is a game that requires people to play for an extremely long time.

We wanted the users to hold the device and simply move only their thumbs instead of having to touch all over the screen. As simple as it may look, we've played around with several different sizes and types of D-pads that our developers made, and came to a conclusion that the current D-pad is the best.

Just like some cellphones have better D-pads than others, every D-pad is not the same on the iPhone/iPod touch. We tried to make ours the best.

Zenonia will deliver 40+ hours of gameplay. How do you find the balance between offering the gamer a lengthy experience and at the same time ensuring that they can pick up and play in short bites?

Play time depends on the aptitude of the player. For some players it will take up to 60 hours, but for some players, the game can be cleared within 15 hours. Our fastest internal QA tester cleared the game within 15 hours, since he already knew the whole story from playing the Korean version.

Balancing depends on whom you are targeting. Casual gamers may want pick up and play, but RPG gamers usually want a lengthy experience. It's still a phone at the same time, so we also enabled the game to save the progress easily even when playing short sessions.

How do you approach mobile role-playing to ensure that there's strong storytelling without throwing wall after wall of text at the gamer? On the flip side, how do you ensure that the opposite doesn't occur and the game isn't a mindless dungeon crawler?

Every RPG needs strong storytelling, and this is critical factor of success or failure. The question is rather how you keep the users focused on the story.

Zenonia is a quest-based game where you have to read the dialogue and story so that you understand what to do next. We've also tried to visualize the story as much as possible instead of delivering in plain text.

Also, unlike most games, certain decisions that the users make within the game will change their own destiny.

Western-developed role-playing games have become increasingly more popular than their Japanese and Korean counterparts. Do you believe that Zenonia can gain a following when gamers are trending toward these games?

Just like different countries have different cultures, gaming is the same and the App Store also looks very different for each country. But the world is becoming smaller and the history of video games is not that long compared to other industries.

Differences of best-sellers in books are huge, but it isn't that big when it comes to video games. Our game may not be successful in every territory, but in general we believe that good games can succeed almost everywhere.

At what price will Zenonia be available when it releases to the App Store?

Pricing is a difficult issue that we've been thinking about for a long time. We believe that every title has its right price and are still trying to find that for Zenonia.

Are there any plans for updates post-release? Is any consideration being made for expanding the game's content through updates?

We don't have plans to modify the gameplay itself, but have plans to assist user communities so that they can fully enjoy the game. Also, we're looking into the iPhone/iPod touch 3.0 API to see if we could implement the rest of the features from the original game.

Thanks to Charley for taking the time to answer our questions!
Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.