The Korea Creative Content Agency is making headway in helping small and medium-sized Korean game companies expand to the global market with its Game Global Service Platform Plus project.

While previous years saw KOCCA assigning selected gaming companies with service companies to help them reach the global market, the agency reorganized the project last year to allow gaming companies to directly choose the service that they need from open market platform GSP Plus.

Successful applicants are given up to 300 million won worth of points that they can use in the platform to connect with the necessary companies. So far, 127 services, consisting of 51 that help with marketing, 50 that help with games localization and 26 that assist with infrastructure of games, are available.

All Korean games are eligible to apply for the project, whose applications open twice a year.

GSP Plus has been well received by the gaming companies that participated in the project last year.

“If it weren’t for GSP Plus, we would not have been able to release the game in the West. Because of GSP Plus, we were able to market our product globally, which had visible results,” said CEO Shin Hye-sung who developed indie game “Secret Cat Forest.”

Secret Cat Forest recently launched in the US and other English- speaking countries, generating nine times more revenue in the global market than in Korea.

The project was also helpful for individual developers like Hong Mi-nam that developed “DOOR: Inner Child.”

“While going global is necessary, as a one-person company, I faced many difficulties because there was a lot to take care of. Through GSP Plus, I was able to use the translation service to get support for a total of 19 different languages,” Hong said.

Meanwhile, KOCCA announced last month through series of YouTube videos that it will support up to 50 gaming companies this year with a 5.5 billion-won budget, which is 1.3 billion won more than last year.

“For the game industry to continually grow, a platform where small and medium-sized companies can go global is needed,” said KOCCA game department head Kim Hyuk-soo. “We will continue to listen to the industry to create projects that can actually help the companies.”

By Lim Jang-won (ljw@heraldcorp.com)