Look, let's be honest: Smilegate has been making quite a splash overseas lately, particularly in Japan with last year's release of Chaos Zero Nightmare and other titles. They are actively expanding their global touchpoints by showing up at international shindigs like Anime Expo and the Tokyo Game Show. Given that Japan remains one of the premier gaming markets on the planet, Smilegate is doubling down on its Japanese expansion for Tokyo Game Show 2026—following up on last year's efforts by bringing Dead Account: Two Blue Flames and Miraeshi: The Invisible Future to the floor. To find out what exactly Smilegate is focusing on to firmly plant its flag in Japanese soil, we sat down with Baek Young-hoon, the CBO heading up Smilegate Megaport, right there at the venue.

When I first came on board as the head of Megaport, my plate was mostly full of mobile game publishing. Critics used to say Smilegate's mobile success started and stopped with Epic Seven, but recently we have been flexing our publishing muscles and delivering solid results with Lord Nine, Chaos Zero Nightmare, and Eclipse. Becoming CBO doesn't mean a seismic shift where I suddenly micromanage every single department overnight. I plan to keep the existing Megaport and STOVE platform operations running smoothly while gradually shaping my role over time.

Rather than clinging rigidly to the term subculture, I prefer looking at it through the broader lens of an animation boom. That is not to say we are putting all our eggs in one specific genre basket, but we do expect animation-adjacent games, including subculture titles, to make up over half of our core portfolio in the next two to three years. The market itself has grown exponentially, so we intend to sniff out promising opportunities in this space and keep scouting talent internally.

Back in the day, Epic Seven pulled in massive numbers in the West, but our revenue slice from Japan was practically a rounding error. However, Chaos Zero Nightmare turned heads by climbing into the top tier for both revenue and player counts in Japan. Granted, the absolute figures might look modest compared to other blockbuster giants, but we believe we have successfully carved out a stable foothold in Japan. Armed with that momentum, rolling out Dead Account and Miraeshi should yield some genuinely meaningful results. Japan is a market that demands persistent cultivation, and as we continuously learn what makes local players tick, things are steadily looking up.

Sure, business revenue matters, but at the end of the day, revenue is just a lagging indicator. The single most critical leading metric we watch is player retention. If those numbers stay robust, it opens the door for much more aggressive marketing strategies. When you stack those loyal fanbases layer upon layer, you unlock the potential to expand existing IPs into full-blown franchises. Japanese players, in particular, tend to harbor fierce, enduring brand loyalty once a game strikes a chord with them, making player retention infinitely more vital.

Japan has a notoriously high barrier to entry, but once you build trust with the local player base, it is one of the top gaming markets globally where you can sustain a long-term relationship. Twenty years ago when I first started working in Japan, Korean companies weren't exactly treated like royalty, but the atmosphere has changed drastically since then.

Drawing on the battle scars and experience I've gathered from working in Japan for a long time, my job is to accurately pinpoint what Japanese consumers actually crave and reflect those insights directly into our products. I want to closely manage our fanbase and their expectations so players can kick back and enjoy our games without hitting any irritating snags.

Let's be clear: having a Japanese IP attached to your game is by no means a golden ticket to guaranteed success. In an era where mobile marketing costs keep spiraling upward, borrowing a well-known IP certainly offers a massive leg-up in marketing and conceptual framing. On the flip side, you run into plenty of stubborn, real-world hurdles—like meticulous oversight from the original creators. Rather than blindly multiplying our Japanese IP ventures, we will carefully weigh various factors like growth potential, revenue-share structures, and how naturally the IP fits the game before making any moves.

Teaming up with local publishers often turns into an uphill battle because the clash in corporate work cultures is way worse than people expect, making smooth communication and solid results rare. Rather than relying on third-party publishers, it is much more effective for a Korean developer to self-publish while drawing on either original or local IPs. Of course, every approach has its trade-offs. Tapping into a local IP helps cushion the blow of initial user skepticism, but dealing with the original copyright holder severely clips your wings when it comes to live-service operational freedom. Meanwhile, original new titles like Miraeshi demand an agonizingly long time and a hefty marketing budget to build initial brand recognition and rally a fanbase. However, once things stabilize, you gain the massive perk of high service flexibility, allowing you to rapidly deploy online and offline events tailored precisely to what the players are shouting for.

The absolute cardinal rule was whether their world-building and character design could genuinely resonate with players. For Dead Account, we were convinced that its quirky premise—dealing with private data left behind on someone else's smartphone—would click well with the Japanese audience, complemented by the relatively light, accessible aesthetic modern Japanese gamers adore. As for Miraeshi, art director Bloodla's signature character designs and art style gave us absolute confidence that if we executed it in top-tier quality, we could easily satisfy the fans.

What stood out this year was a massive drop in participation from Chinese developers, contrasted by a fierce, undeniable commitment from Korean companies looking to conquer the global stage. Major Japanese corporations were busy staking claims on flagship titles, while Korean outfits leaned heavily into subculture offerings. Beyond that, there weren't many jaw-dropping, colossal blockbusters on display, and games tethered strictly to mobile-only platforms have practically vanished. Even indie developers have made an aggressive, clear-cut migration away from mobile or handhelds straight onto PC platforms.

It boils down to staying laser-focused on our customers and fans. In the past, we sometimes fell into the trap of making whatever game we felt like making or prioritizing whatever made development easiest. Nowadays, when we prep a new title, we explicitly ban vague demographic targets like 'males in their 20s and 30s' and internally push our teams to deeply dissect the granular tastes of players and the exact games they are currently playing.

It is crucial to constantly chew over what our existing fans actually want and deliver on those expectations. For Japanese gamers, who tend to lean a bit on the conservative side, serving up fresh yet comfortably familiar concepts is our unique differentiator and core strategy. The recent success of Eclipse: The Awakening is a direct reflection of this philosophy in action.

To be frank, because Chaos Zero Nightmare didn't quite hit its initial aggressive targets, we haven't drastically ballooned our headcount, though we have steadily grown to a mid-sized team in the teens. As for release dates, Dead Account: Two Blue Flames is tracking to drop a bit earlier, but it still has to clear our final internal test runs so nothing is locked in stone yet. We are currently aiming for a summer release next year for Miraeshi, and we plan to weaponize player feedback gathered through playtests to polish both titles to a shine.

We don't have a concrete master plan carved in stone just yet, but I do believe we need to execute our offline merchandise business a lot more systematically. While leaning on Chaos Zero Nightmare alone might feel a tad light, if Miraeshi hits it out of the park, we are toying with the idea of merging them for a joint offline event. If things pan out swimmingly down the road, we would love to explore turning Miraeshi into an anime adaptation or actively empowering user-generated content, but honestly, it is still way too early to draw up specific blueprints.

On the publishing front, we pitch ourselves as the company that invests the absolute deepest effort into understanding the market and player trends. Developers don't just need cash; they desperately need a publisher's capability to read the room, understand consumers, and hand down sharp marketing guidance. We firmly believe we hold a rock-solid competitive edge in that arena. Plus, building win-win collaborative models with indie creators has been paying off handsomely.

We are pitching this exact model and a distraction-free development environment to independent indie studios as well. We plan to keep the partnership train rolling through second-party investments, and our internal studio developers are also actively supported by breaking down the siloed operational tasks that used to divide each corporate branch.

We recently kicked our indie game publishing efforts into high gear through STOVE. Simply tapping developers on the shoulder and telling them to list their games on our platform isn't going to cut it or create a genuine win-win. Smilegate is stepping up to share the financial risk and aggressively foot the promotional bill so developers can successfully herd players onto both Steam and STOVE.

For Japanese indie developers who find the mere thought of launching on Steam overwhelming, we are seriously engineering frictionless, technical pathways to make linking up with STOVE a breeze. We are grinding away across multiple fronts to ensure that word-of-mouth spreads about STOVE actually moving the needle, bringing top-tier games flocking to the platform.