We've all marveled at the horror stories coming out of Korea, and lately China, about MMORPG addiction, but now it seems that the world's most advanced digital entertainment consumers are succumbing to a new more unlikely compulsion - mobile gaming. According to Korean news site, Donga.com:
"14 million out of 37 million cell phone subscribers in Korea play mobile games. To put it another way, four out of every 10 people are mobile gamers. More specifically, 2.3 million play mobile games everyday, accounting for 6.2 percent of the total cell phone subscribers, including 15 percent of cell phone users in their teens and twenties."
The story provides the example of one gamer, a university student named Lee, who now owns two cell phones, one for calling and one for gaming - immediately and ironically negating the whole point of mobile games: to cut down on the amount of gadgets you carry around with you.
The problem perhaps, is one of quality. In the west, mobile games still aren't actually good enough to elicit this kind of devotion, but in Korea, there are some really fascinating location-based and augmented reality games, as well as sprawling RPG adventures. They're just asking for trouble.
As for the first mobile gaming related death, that is actually far more likely to happen in Europe where the process of actually downloading a Java title can be as stressful as moving home, getting divorced or being attacked by bears.
