Gravity

Gravity is the name of the South Korean company responsible for creating the Ragnarok Online MMORPG from the original Manhwa of the same name.

History

In January 2002, Korean news outlet ETNews noted that Gravity had received offers for investment of 20-30 times their share price. This was due to the company among others being seen as good investment vehicles due to them having relatively low operating costs after development of the online games had concluded. They also noted Gravity "were not budging".

In February 2002, Korean outlet Donga announced that Samsung would be investing development funds in Ragnarok Online and Gravity, and would be helping Gravity to commercialise the game. They stated this was because Gravity was struggling to turn its existing playerbase of 35,000 players into a viable commercial proposition. Samsung previously had commercialised the MMORPG games "Cheonsangbi" from developer High1 and "Muhon" from developer Use Dream, through the investment of 1 billion won to each, which became successful. No mention was made of the purchase of Gravity in the press conference.

The piece also stated that 5 years prior, Samsung had established a programme called "soft membership" in which they reached out to support college student software developers, due to their extensive background in the software business. One recipient of this programme was Gravity co-founder Hakkyu Kim.

On 16 April 2002, Gravity installed Byeong-gon Jeong, a former Samsung manager, to become CEO, replacing Hakkyu Kim. The cited reasons for this manoeuvre were that the company required a manager with professional management skills and who was able to develop strategic relationships and Kim was put in a role as "Development Director". Gravity also stated at this time "There will be no change in the relationship with Samsung Electronics and Sunny YNK, with whom we have signed a marketing partnership, and we will establish a closer cooperation system in the marketing area." The vice president at the time, Seung-Hun Jeon stated " We will actively invest in game developers like 'Ragnarok' who have development capabilities but are struggling due to lack of development funds [...] It is not limited to online games, but to all game industries from PC, console, and mobile games."

On May 2 2002, ETNews provided a profile of Jeong, outlining his background in Samsung and his priorities, stating that they wanted to double the size of Ragnarok Online around characters and dungeons. He also outlined his desire to expand the game's system around guilds.