South Korea’s video gaming giant Nexon is eyeing global success with its new open world mobile role-playing game “Durango: Wild Lands” as it pioneers a new genre in mobile gaming with hopes of enticing mobile gamers in both Asia and the West.
“Durango: Wild Lands” is slated to officially open for play in Korea from Jan. 25 via Google Play and the Apple App Store, and arrive in global markets including North America within this year, according to Nexon.
The upcoming mobile game was developed for 5 1/2 years by Nexon’s in-house development studio What!Studio under the leadership of Lee Eun-seok, who previously directed the development of 2004’s “Mabinogi.”
As “Durango” prepares for its official debut in Korea, Nexon expressed hopes that the mobile game would garner popularity worldwide, winning over players in not only Asia but in North America, Europe and South America.
“Our goal is to make ‘Durango’ a globally successful game -- one that goes beyond the limits of Asia to the rest of the world,” said Lee Eun-seok, head producer of Nexon’s What!Studio during the game’s media showcase event held in Seoul on Tuesday.
Lee Eun-seok, Head Producer at Nexon’s What!Studio behind the development of the new open world mobile MMORPG “Durango: Wild Lands” (Nexon Korea)
Nexon is also betting high hopes that the new mobile game will remain in service for the next 10 years in the least, becoming one of the firm’s long-running game titles.
The game’s global reception has been positive so far. Nexon has been offering a beta version of “Durango” in 14 countries since July, and as of now, it has garnered more than 2.8 million downloads from interested players in 152 countries.
“Durango: Wild Lands” is a sandbox massively multiplayer online role-playing game for mobile devices set in a primitive alternate universe inhabited by dinosaurs. Players domesticate the dinosaurs, build their own tools and villages and take on different occupations.
It differs starkly from the countless Korean-made MMORPGS where players in a fantasy medieval universe fight one another with magical powers and weapons, Nexon said.
Though it will first operate the game with separate servers for each country, its eventual goal is to have a single server covering all countries, as it wants to bring worldwide users into one, connected gameplay universe.
By Sohn Ji-young (
jys@heraldcorp.com)
