Interview: David Hoffman on CABAL Online and the Business of OGPlanet

By Steven Crews | March 28, 2008 | | Filed under: Events, Interviews

The MMO Gamer: This is something I’ve often wondered:

When East Asian games come to the West, how do you find American players reacting to the cash shop? Along with free to play, there seems to be a stigma attached to the whole notion of-eBay and IGE aside-paying real money for “imaginary items.”

David Hoffman: We have other titles that we’ve brought across, and we do support them with in-game items that characters can accumulate without buying anything. CABAL’s going to be no different. You don’t have to pay in order to go from level 1 to 170. You don’t have to pay to participate in raids, you don’t have to pay to get the epic armor, to get a fast motorcycle-anything of that nature will be free.

We’re not going to disrupt the balance by having some players that can buy things to give them an advantage. What we’re going to offer is the ability for players to buy items that give them the ability to reach their goal quicker.

You asked me how gamers react to it; I was surprised that, genuinely, gamers embrace it. They tend to love to do it, they buy items, it’s not much money, and most of the items that we charge for we try to price very competitively.

Gamers seem to prefer doing it, it’s almost like we’re giving a chance to people who don’t have a disposable income, who can’t pay on a monthly basis 15, 20, 25 dollars to play a game, plus buy it in a store, and buy the expansions and all that other stuff, we’re giving them a way for younger players to take some of their allowance and spend some of it on this game, if they want.

The MMO Gamer: What do you believe the prospects are for OGPlanet in the coming years? Are you planning on releasing additional titles in the North American market along the lines of CABAL?

David Hoffman: We are planning on releasing additional titles, we want to grow. Our ultimate goal is to become the gaming portal to go to for quality, free MMO titles. In order for us to do that, we do have to have a large portfolio of games of expanded genres, and they also have to be quality.

We have a pretty aggressive growth schedule, and we’re on target, which is great. As far as the potential for free to play MMOs, honestly, I think it’s huge. And we’re in a unique position because we’re paying attention to what North American consumers like, we’re paying attention to what our community asks for, not just in CABAL, but in all of our games.

Even with our most recent updates, we did special items for the Super Bowl, we did special items for NASCAR, supporting your team colors, that kind of thing, and it was very successful.

I don’t see any of the other Korean publishers doing anything remotely like this. We’ve already partnered with nVidia, we’re talking about partnering with other large companies that will help us become number one. That’s the goal.

As far as the second part of the question, we are going to release titles, but we don’t want to cannibalize our current market share. So, if we’re looking at another MMORPG it has to be different than CABAL. It has to be set maybe in a different universe, or a different timeframe, or a different genre…

Even though CABAL crosses over into science fiction in a Blade Runner sort of way, maybe we’ll look at something that’s more outer space oriented, or something along those lines. So, we don’t want to cannibalize.

With that said, there are lots of genres to explore. We are looking at other MMORPGS, there have been successful 2D ones that have come out and done very well-without naming titles I think you know who I mean. We’re looking at racing, we’re looking at first person shooters, more sports, there’s a variety. Our golf game has done phenomenally well for us. So, we’re definitely looking at expanding.

The MMO Gamer: Thank you very much for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you more in the future.

David Hoffman: Thank you, Steve. I really appreciate your time and effort here.