Hangame is a popular South Korean online game

Online game

An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...

 portal operated by NHN Corporation. Launched in December 1999, Hangame offers casual, first-person shooter, MMORPG

MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

s, sports, and other genres. With over 24 million members and a peak concurrent user base of 240,000 in South Korea, it is the country's largest game portal. Hangame also has affiliates in Japan (Hangame Japan), China (Ourgame) and the United States (ijji

Ijji

ijji , is a free multiplayer game portal website operated by the Irvine-based internet company NHN USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of South Korean NHN Corporation. NHN also has game portals in Korea , Japan, and China...

). It also offers channeling and publishing services for many popular online games.

History

Hangame was launched in December 1999 as the online game service of Hangame Communications, which changed its name to NHN in September 2001. In 2000, Hangame entered the Japanese online market with Hangame, Japan. The following year, Hangame became an online game publisher

Video game publisher

A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....

. In 2003, Hangame began offering mobile game

Mobile game

A mobile game is a video game played on a mobile phone, smartphone, PDA, tablet computer or portable media player. This does not include games played on handheld video game systems such as Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable....

s. In 2004, it moved into the Chinese market with Ourgame, a joint venture company with Sea Rainbow Holdings Corp. In 2007, it entered the U.S. market with the launch of the English service ijji.com.

Features

Hangame provides both casual titles, like board games and card games, as well as hard-core games like first-person shooters and massively multi-player online role-playing games. All games offer the use of avatars

Avatar (computing)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

and community services, allowing players to interact with each other. Many games also offer in-game items -- such as clothing, armor, weapons, etc. -- that can be purchased for a small fee. Hangame offers both for-fee and free-to-play games.

External links

Chosun Ilbo, "GoGoXing Opens Public Service on the 17th," January 16, 2008 (in Korean). http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=105&oid=023&aid=0000303715

Monitoring, "Hangame Evolves into Customized Game Portal," January 14, 2008 (in Korean). http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=101&oid=008&aid=0000875290

Dong-A Ilbo, "'Tales Runner' Achieves 15,000 Concurrent Users," December 31, 2007 (in Korean). http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=105&oid=020&aid=0000447052

Eye News 24, "NHN's 2008 Project: 'We Aim to Reach the Top in Game Distribution'" (in Korean). http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=105&oid=031&aid=0000122472