The country’s largest game exhibition “Game Show and Trade, All Round 2022” (G-Star) was opened on Nov. 17 at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, or BEXCO.
By Yoo Yeon Gyeong
Photos = Yoo Yeon Gyeong
Busan
The global game expo “Game Show and Trade, All Round 2022” (G-Star) on Nov. 17 was opened at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center (BEXCO) to highlight the past, present and future of the video game industry.
To run through Nov. 20, the 18th G-Star is being hosted by the Korea Association of Game Industry (K-Games) and jointly supervised by the expo’s organizing committee and Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency.
A combined 987 companies from 43 countries are participating this year at 2,947 booths, or over double the number in last year’s scaled-down expo.
Wemade, Nexon Korea, Netmarble, Kakao Games, Krafton, Inven, Erugo World, Redbrick, Samsung Electronics and Epic Games are among the companies running booths at Exhibition Center 1. Flint Games and Neowiz have booths on the third floor of Exhibition Center 2.
Visitors on Nov. 17 gather in front of Exhibition Center 1 at BEXCO on the opening day of the nation’s largest game expo G-Star.
The booths at this year’s Busan Indie Connect (BIC) Festival and G-Star X BIC Showcase are on the third floor of Exhibition Center 2. Another exhibition will showcase about 40 outstanding indie games from both home and abroad.
The expo will be livestreamed on G-Star TV from Nov. 17-20 on twitch.tv/gstar. Events offered by major booths will be aired live and videos screened to introduce new games. Games produced on-site by the organizers such as YeorotG, Booth Time Attack, 21st Century Games and DadatG will also be livestreamed.
Outdoor exhibition booths and food truck zones have been resumed after being suspended over the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To evenly distribute the number of people in and out of the exhibition centers, the G-Star warm-up stage featuring arcade game and photo event zones and a photo wall will also run outdoors.
The tournament G-Star Cup 2022 LOL (League of Legends) Invitational from Nov. 19-20 will be held at Busan E-sports Arena in the city’s Seomyeon area.
Wemade, the main sponsor of this year’s event, will run outdoor booths until Nov. 20 at Haeundae Event Plaza in the city’s Haeundae region. Nexon Korea will hold a “kick-off festival” at the BEXCO auditorium.
Visitors on Nov. 17 pack Exhibition Center 1 of BEXCO to attend the country’s largest game exhibition G-Star.
Dungeon & Fighter Mobile, developed by Nexon affiliate Neople, on Nov. 16 at BEXCO won the top prize of the presidential award at this year’s Korea Game Awards.
The awards organizers said, “Inheriting the long-running Dungeon & Fighter, Dungeon & Fighter Mobile exceeded the boundaries of a mobile platform to create a game at the level of new intellectual property,” adding, “Its user-friendly designs in the mobile environment also had a positive impact on the development of the Korean game industry.”
Game developers from Nexon and its affiliates won six awards including the top honor and those for excellence and technical creativity.
Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and run by K-Games, the awards are the nation’s top honors of the year for domestically made games.
dusrud21@korea.kr
