Jake Song

Created Lineage. Moved to Texas to simulate development a US subsidiary called NCsoft Austin. Jake Song's IMG interview

Lineage now has more subscribers than Ultima Online, Everquest™ and Asheron’s Call combined, most of them in Korea. To compare, EverQuest (1999) has not even reached 500,000 subscriptions. Analysts have come up with many ways to explain the difference in magnitude of these numbers. Many suggest that Korea has a thriving multiplayer computer game culture (a ban on some Japanese imports up until 1998 has been cited for delayed growth in its video game console market). Others point to the difference in subscription models: Most Korean gamers play at PC bangs that pay for their own subscriptions.