Korean Gaming Company Taking It Down a Notch

Road uniform concept sketch.

It sounds like the Korea Professional Baseball League may be getting a ninth team, this one in the city of Changwon.

As in Japan, baseball teams in South Korea are typically owned by corporations. Intriguingly, one corporation bidding for the rights to the proposed Changwon franchise is NCSoft, a leading publisher of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, including the popular Lineage and Guild Wars series of games.

NCSoft’s corporate motto is “make people’s life more fun.” But when does more fun become too much fun? That question was raised in a US District Court last summer, when a former customer sued NCSoft for negligence, arguing that their game Lineage II was “too addictive.” The plaintiff claimed that he was “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.”

Video gaming is a plausible competitive sport in Korea, and perhaps NCSoft sees some nefarious synergies between publishing video games and running a baseball team. More likely, they’re just looking to do some good old-fashioned advertising.

Fear not, innocent denizens of Changwon: there is no way baseball will ever be as life-wreckingly fun as massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. Baseball has a far more wholesome and more moderate fun-ness.