Daegu Game and Webtoon Content Companies Thrive... 2 of 9 Regional Employment-Friendly Companies Are Game Firms

Angel Games Achieves 10 Billion KRW Revenue with Mobile Game 'Tower of God M'

J-Shah Signs Character Licensing Agreement with BGF Retail CU

Daegu Contents Business Center.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] It has been revealed that the customized support policies promoted by Daegu City are clearly driving the growth of local content companies in games, characters, webtoons, and more.

Daegu City has been implementing tailored support projects according to the stages of ‘creation-startup-growth’ for content companies by opening the Content Korea Lab in 2015, the Content Enterprise Support Center in 2020, and the Daegu Content Business Center in December last year.

The content leading company development policy, promoted based on the Daegu Content Business Center, is receiving positive evaluations from local content companies.

The content leading company development policy is a Daegu-type small and strong enterprise fostering policy promoted by Daegu City to help local content companies successfully settle in the market and grow into global companies by providing long-term support for product research and development, investment attraction, overseas expansion, and more to resident companies within the Daegu Content Business Center.

Character production specialist company J-Shah Co., Ltd. (CEO Shim Young-min), currently residing in the Daegu Content Business Center, signed a character licensing contract worth approximately 100 million KRW with BGF Retail (CU) this year and also concluded an SNS content contract with Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance.

Additionally, it has established itself as a representative local content company by showing the most remarkable achievements, such as participating in a solo exhibition and hosting a pop-up store at Hong Kong’s Harbour City and Taiwan’s Mitsukoshi Gallery.

BP Co., Ltd. (CEO Kwon Ki-dong) is expected to increase sales by more than 50% compared to last year by securing 50 new clients this year based on its coding education content.

With the demand for non-face-to-face education programs expected to increase further, the company plans to lead the coding education market with step-by-step customized education from infants to adults.

Mobile game company Angel Games Co., Ltd. (CEO Park Ji-hoon) also recorded total sales of 36 billion KRW by producing ‘Lord of Dice (2016?2018)’ and ‘Hero Cantare (2018?2019)’ based on Daegu City’s content production support.

This year, it is showing remarkable growth by releasing the mobile game ‘Tower of God M,’ which recorded sales of 11 billion KRW as of the end of June. Recently, it relocated to a new headquarters in Suseong-gu Alpha City, laying the foundation to grow into a global game company and looking forward to a second heyday.

Among the nine ‘2022 Employment-Friendly Companies’ announced by Daegu City, two are game companies, KOG Co., Ltd. and Angel Games Co., Ltd., indicating that the local content industry continues to grow steadily centered on game companies in areas such as webtoons, characters, and solutions.

Moreover, as drama production based on webtoons and web novels and character businesses are actively carried out recently, Daegu City aims to create another success story like the 2020 terrestrial drama adaptation of Park Si-in’s webtoon work ‘Would You Like to Have Dinner Together?’

Daegu City plans to strengthen metaverse content production, the combination of culture and ABB (AI, Big Data, Blockchain), one-person media industry, and web content education support in line with the rapid changes in the content industry environment due to the spread of advanced technologies such as the metaverse and ABB.

It also plans to focus on discovering excellent local content creators and nurturing specialized personnel in advanced cultural content through specialized education.

Park Hee-jun, Director of the Daegu City Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, said, “Recently, the content industry is based on the ‘creator economy,’ where anyone can become a creator and generate profits based on their creations,” adding, “Daegu City will continue customized support projects so that startups can be established based on creators’ ideas and grow into global leading companies.”