I understand that b1ll I have been here almost 2 years and my Korean is still terrible! Though writing/reading was the easiest to pick up.

Yeah I was surprised, Hangul is such a cake-walk, especially if you've tried learning Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji before. It can be learned in a weekend, then about two weeks to get used to seeing the individual Hangul together and being able to read at some speed. It's the grammar that's difficult. A Korean friend told me that basically if I speak Korean like how a baby talks in English, I'll be fine.

Flying out tomorrow, starting to get nervous. Hope I get some good weather in before rainy season starts.

not sure if I can make it. July is quite busy for me.
Anyway, how did you guys end up in Korea and what are you doing there? working for a big/small studio? freelance?

that's what I thought that Korean is one of easiest languages..!
so this plan is still ongoing? I live in Seoul as well. come here!

I'm sure it could be late June, no fixed date Kwramm
I'll be moving to Gimpo on the next few days papa, you should show me around, all those secret best places to eat in Seoul that only Koreans know about ;P

man so many Korean PCers - where are all the Chinese? We have Ubi, EA, 2K, Popcap, etc here in Shanghai...and there's not a single Polycounter here?? way to go China - I'm disappointed

I'm not currently working in the industry... most of the foreign population in Korea are teachers or military. There are always exceptions though...

I'm an English teacher because it was better pay/opportunity out of college where I could continue to work on portfolio and do some mods/indie games.

Plus I always thought working in another country and getting some culture in you would always make you more valuable as an artist. In my opinion of course...
I'll be heading back to the states in September and looking for a job then. Anyone got any leads hit me up ;).

Are any of you actually working in games here in Korea? I know some are freelance while they teach.

*edit* Good luck on getting to Korea Andreas! It is a major wow factor at first! Relish it.

Im still in games, Still as a freelancer.

And my Sun quit games almost 2 year ago. Her last studio was Reloaded ..

I am a half Korean-half African American but I was born and raised in Korea until 17 so I consider myself a Korean..... I miss Korea and all my friends there... It is good to see some Korean polycounters here...

G.I. baby? ;)

I work in game industry in Korea,
let's make it up

My Korean is functional Been here almost 3.5 years. Came over when I heard about it from my wife's friend. Wife had a job in Tokyo coming up, but she decided not to take it, and we got itchy to move out here anyway.

I've been working contract for the same company I worked at onsite in the States. It's a pretty large educational games and media company. I wear a lot of different hats though since our art department is relatively smaller. Haven't got to work on a games project in a while, been doing mostly pre-rendered stuff. I do 40 hrs at Public schools teaching English, and 32 hrs freelance for US a week Gotta pay down those loans somehow right?

Looking forward to this meetup guys, Had no idea how many people were actually here.
I wouldn't care to meet in Seoul. I'm in Busan, where the weather is so breeezy, and we could all have beers by the ocean, but Seoul has it's perks too. Mainly the choice in food

Originally Posted by Kwramm

man so many Korean PCers - where are all the Chinese? We have Ubi, EA, 2K, Popcap, etc here in Shanghai...and there's not a single Polycounter here?? way to go China - I'm disappointed

I'm still here I got a feeling there's not too many foreigners in the art departments in China, but I could be wrong.

Probably won't be able to make it to Korea though

papa how is it communicating with the Koreans in your studio?

and a friendly bump to see if there is any more interest.

Ok a date/location has been decided.

I drew names from a cup for locations between Seoul, Daegu, and Busan...
Busan won the location!

Date: Saturday, July 14th
Time: to be decided soon
Location: Busan, South Korea

We'll meet at an easy location near the KTX and take a taxi together or something...

Please post here or send me a PM if you are coming or thinking of coming.
It might be a small group so don't go and spend lots of $$$ for travel if you can't afford it. ;)

Originally Posted by Azreality

Ok a date/location has been decided.

I drew names from a cup for locations between Seoul, Daegu, and Busan...
Busan won the location!

Ah I won't be able to make it then, I'm much closer to Seoul.

What do you guys do if a game you want on Steam isn't available in Korea? I'm trying to get the FTP game Spiral Knights, but apparently it's not available here... is there a way around that?

VPN. Then buy the game via the steam webpage - or ask a relative to buy or gift it to you.
Another reason I love Steam - it's not too difficult to circumvent
Digital River (used be EA's Origin) banned my credit card for good using it from a blacklisted country (China). Now I have to wait till I'm back in Europe - gee thanks.

What is VPN? And will it complicate things seeing as it's a free-to-play game? I can't get it gifted that way. Is there not just a really good free I.P blocker out there where I can choose what region to be in? A lot of American videos are unavailable to me to, especially trailers for upcoming T.V. shows. :P

VPN aka Virtual Private Network makes things like Skype/Hulu/Youtube think you're in a different country. In China VPN is pretty much a must for westerners who don't want to be stuck with Chinese equivalents of youtube/twitter/facebook/etc. Also it often passes through the Great Chinese Firewall more quickly - thus faster speed.

(little irony here: VPNs are what enable Chinese game studios to make Facebook games in a country where Facebook is blocked)

As added benefit VPN lets you also access other country restricted websites easily. E.g. buy steam games which are available in the US only.

I use astrill.com which is super easy to set up and has endpoints in many countries (i.e. you can fake to be from Germany, UK, US, etc). It's also very fast. downside: it costs money. There are free services too, but I'm not sure how credible they are and how safe any account info is that you send over it.

can't make it. Any other time of the year but July / August are so super busy. I just can't make time for it. I heard Busan is really nice though...maybe next year

I understand Kwramm... many of us that are teachers here are on summer break so makes it much easier for us. That and most contracts start/end in September so many of us are going back home.

Hopefully I've spurred some interest in this area of Asian Polycount meetups... perhaps next year someone else can carry the torch and do something bigger/better. ;)

Azreality// I'm korean, so I have no comunicating problem hehe ,
I'm not able to make it then as well
come to Seoul come on lol
yeah, I have never been to Busan, so I'll go to Busan someday, not this time

Originally Posted by Kwramm

VPN aka Virtual Private Network makes things like Skype/Hulu/Youtube think you're in a different country. In China VPN is pretty much a must for westerners who don't want to be stuck with Chinese equivalents of youtube/twitter/facebook/etc. Also it often passes through the Great Chinese Firewall more quickly - thus faster speed.

(little irony here: VPNs are what enable Chinese game studios to make Facebook games in a country where Facebook is blocked)

As added benefit VPN lets you also access other country restricted websites easily. E.g. buy steam games which are available in the US only.

I use astrill.com which is super easy to set up and has endpoints in many countries (i.e. you can fake to be from Germany, UK, US, etc). It's also very fast. downside: it costs money. There are free services too, but I'm not sure how credible they are and how safe any account info is that you send over it.

Mucho thanks for the astrill info I signed up this morning.. I buy all my music off amazon and since Im in asia so much it wont bloody let me buy :/ .. this fixed it

What do you guys do for gaming here? Like buying hardware. Where would be the best place to buy consoles or handhelds? Is it better to buy online or offline? Is it better to import region-locked hardware in your experience?

In China: go to the dodgy hardware bazaar and bring a local to haggle for you. Or better: go to Media Markt! (I'm so damn happy they opened a store here!). Actually I hate shopping for hardware here because of the bazaar mentality and haggling involved. There's usually no warranty from the vendor and no return of merchandise. It's broken? FU!

For computers: I buy pre-assembled from a big vendor like Dell or Apple. I can return it. There's a warranty and I know what I get. Bought a Dell XPS here - runs like a champ! No problems with Apple stuff either. Same quality.
Or online (for parts): newegg.com.cn - like the US version. Haven't tried it though but it looks good.

I try to avoid local Chinese retailers (e.g. Yolo, Suning) - I've seen the sales people do dodgy things with the machines they have there.

Buying consoles is similar - gotta haggle. Got your choice of hacked (PS3, 360, Vita, Wii) or legit Japanese / Korean / Hong Kong. Hacked consoles are for some reason cheaper than legit ones. Games you buy pirated though. Trying to get legit games seems rather impossible here. Haven't seen a single game here that wasn't stolen.
One store offered me to add a 320gb hdd with pirated games for 70 euros if I buy a Wii.... Actually even on the PC getting legit games is difficult - gotta have a western credit card. Many Chinese ones do not work for online purchases from US stores (e.g. Steam).

If you're okay with pirating everything, get a hacked console. (other reason why hacked consoles are popular: They often have inofficial simplified Chinese translations for onscreen menues since no big manufacturer cares to do that. At best it's traditional Chinese for HK and Taiwan but many folks here cannot read this). Hacked consoles are great if you have no friends, or they all live in the wrong timezone or you just prefer to play alone. For MP you have to get a legit system to use XBox live or similar.

I only ever bought a Wii here though - hacked - because my GF's parents don't speak English. So they wanted something with simplified Chinese onscreen menus.

Alternative: You leave the wild east behind you and go to Hong Kong. Legit systems, legit games, almost no haggling - but also cracked and pirated if you want that. Plus the prices there are quite good!

Last alternative: I buy stuff in Europe on the annual trip home and get the tax back via Global-Refund.

How's Korea for hardware shopping? Is it an alternative for going to HK for legit stuff? I know they have tax-back too if you're not residing in Korea, which is neat.