2024 Korea Game Awards, 'Nahonrep' vs 'Purdy' vs 'Seubeul' Three-Way Battle

Nahonrep, Attention on Whether It Will Regain Honor in Mobile Games

As interest rises in the upcoming ‘2024 Korea Game Awards’ to be held next month, industry attention is focused on which platform?mobile or console?the Grand Prize winner will be selected from.

According to industry sources on the 12th, the leading candidates for this year’s awards include Netmarble’s Na Honjaman Level Up: Arise, Nexon’s First Descendant, and Shift Up’s Stella Blade.

In particular, the mobile game sector had almost monopolized the Grand Prize from 2018 through last year, but lost its position when Neowiz won the Grand Prize with a PC/console game last year. This year, attention is on whether Netmarble’s Na Honjaman Level Up: Arise can restore the pride of the mobile platform.

This game is based on a domestic webtoon and was officially released in 174 countries worldwide, achieving number one in downloads in 141 countries and number one in revenue in 21 countries, marking a major success. It also surpassed 20 million downloads within two weeks, continuing its strong performance in the global market. Until now, there have been no successful cases of webtoon-based games, and Na Honjaman Level Up is the only example of a game using a Korean webtoon that has achieved remarkable results globally.

Nexon’s First Descendant and Shift Up’s Stella Blade are leading contenders in the console game category aiming for the Grand Prize. First Descendant is a multi-platform root shooter game that ranked number one in global sales early after launch and recorded over 220,000 concurrent users on Steam, enjoying commercial success. Its strengths include the challenging root shooter genre and support for multiple platforms such as PC and PlayStation.

Stella Blade was released as a PlayStation 5 exclusive title and attracted global users by selling over one million copies in about two months. It achieved significant milestones such as ranking number one in sales in eight countries including the US, UK, and Japan immediately after release, and receiving a user score of 9.3 on the game review website ‘Metacritic’ during its first week.

An industry insider said, “This year’s Game Awards are difficult to predict because titles that have achieved success across various platforms such as PC, console, and mobile are competing. It is also a noteworthy point whether the mobile game, which won the Grand Prize for five consecutive years before last year’s award, can regain its honor once again.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.