In a recent interview, Pearl Abyss North America CEO Jeonghee Jin revealed that the developer’s focus is now less of a single genre. Upcoming projects, such as Crimson Desert or DokeV, are intended to demonstrate that networking communities can also work outside of MMORPGs.
Why does Pearl Abyss want to move away from the MMORPG? According to Pearl Abyss North America CEO Jeonghee Jin and her interview with GamesIndustry.biz (via gamesindustry.biz), younger generations are not interested in just one genre, but several.
Most kids play some shooters, but sometimes a strategy game or an MMORPG. I see this pattern often. This requires game companies to be smarter, and depending on who your target audience is, you also need different monetization or business strategies.
Jeonghee Jin, CEO of Pearl Abyss North America, interviewed by Brendan Sinclair, gamesindustry.biz
Thus, different genres hold the opportunity to use other business practices, such as DLCs. So it’s not surprising that the likes of Pearl Abyss are keen to jump on the bandwagon and expand their portfolios into other genres.
What projects did you talk about? On the one hand, it was about Crimson Desert, the former successor to Black Desert – an MMORPG, which according to the manufacturer, with 20 million players, should be one of the largest MMORPGs in the world (via Steam). According to mmo-population.com criteria, it is one of the TOP 20 of all MMOs (via mmo-population.com).
Crimson Desert was originally intended to inherit Black Desert Online. However, it has been clear since 2023 at the latest that Crimson Desert will not be an MMORPG and will not be located in the same world as its namesake. CEO Joenghee Jin confirmed this again in an interview.
Watch a trailer for Crimson Desert here.
Crimson Desert shows the crazy open world in the gameplay trailer
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The other project, which the CEO of Pearl Abyss North America discussed in the interview, goes by the unusual name DokeV. Similar to Pokémon, the player should be able to capture and use creatures in a supposedly open world. While it’s also not meant to be an MMORPG, there will be the ability to compete against each other.
The name comes from Korean mythology. According to CEO Joenghee Jin, DokeV derives from “Dokkaebi”, which means “mythical impostors of Korean folklore”. The CEO compares these mythical scammers to “goblins”.
The CEO admitted that she was initially skeptical about the choice of name, since English titles are usually used for Korean games in the West.
Check out a music video for DokeV here.
New MMO DokeV relies on music video like LoL – goes viral on YouTube
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CEO says: Communities exist both online and offline
How does Pearl Abyss intend to engage the community? According to CEO Joenghee Jin, Crimson Desert is still a single-player game. But you still want to stay in touch with the community. So the CEO of Pearl Abyss North America says it’s communities “[…] both online and offline”.
She explains that DLCs, sequels, major expansions and regular updates can be done in a similar way to the principle of weekly updates from MMORPGs, such as the in-house Black Desert Online – but only a little more slowly.
Pearl Abyss would like to use the experiences from said MMORPG for progressive support of their games and for contact with the community.
DokeV, on the other hand, was created out of the developers’ desire to play the MMO with their children while allowing more of their own culture to flow into it. The MMO should already appeal to the players at home and already generate a sense of community there while it is being expanded to include MMO elements.
What do you think? Is the future direction of Pearl Abyss wise and business models like the gacha system in Genshin Impact, for example, the future? Write about it in our comments.