Game Boss interview: Nexon CEO preaches focus on players, not monetization

Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney thinks that mobile game publishers lost sight of what was good for players when they turned up the crank on monetization in the past seven years. That helped mobile gaming rocket to the top of the entire industry, growing to $46 billion in 2017, but it also soured a lot of players on excessive monetization practices.

Mahoney is working with developers like Cliff Bleszinski (head of Boss Key Productions, maker of LawBreakers) and others to make games with fun gameplay and live operations that serve players long after a game has shipped. Nexon is in search of more games like the free-to-play title Dungeon Fighter Online, a multiplayer PC beat-’em-up game which has generated more than $8 billion in revenue in the past decade. (That’s more than the box office receipts for the Star Wars movies over time, Mahoney noted). And Mahoney wants game developers to lose their Hollywood envy and focus on games with unforgettable gameplay.