Outplay: South Korea a huge opportunity for UK devs

South Korea represents a huge opportunity and good value for UK developers looking at expanding into emerging territories, says Outplay CEO Doug Hare.

The Dundee-based developer has just burst into the Asia market with its hit mobile game Bubble Blaze, which will now be available through South Korea messaging app KakaoTalk, which holds over 100 million users.

Despite already garnering millions of downloads for the app, Hare said South Korea represented a huge opportunity for the developer to expand its operations, as there was plenty of room for growth in the region.

“This is Outplay’s first time doing any form of language translation never mind cultural localisation so it’s going to be an interesting and valuable learning experience,” he said.

“Needless to say subsequent territory specific versions of Bubble Blaze will be a lot easier to make now that we’ve done it once.”

Hare said he couldn’t envisage there wouldn’t be room for other UK developers to release their titles in the region, and it would help them become familiar with launching a game in new territories and adapt to the challenges of localisation.

He added that the company had taken a decent time and technical effort to support the Asia market with the title, making a few changes to the core game and user interface to better fit with South Korean tastes and expectations.

Hare advised that other developers looking to expand into new markets should speak with companies from the region first to find out the best platforms to release on and what is expected from local consumers.

“We’ve only done it once so it’s not like we have lots of experience but once you’ve decided on a country that interests you I would definitely recommend speaking with a number of companies from that territory with a good track record of working with Western developers,” he said.

“Some of the markets, especially on Android, are pretty byzantine and trying to do it all yourself from afar could be a bit of a nightmare.”