Kim Hyeong-tae, CEO of Shift Up. Photo = Move up
[데일리한국 장정우 기자] Kim Hyeong-tae, CEO of Shift Up, is a first-generation illustrator in Korea and has participated in the development of numerous games, leaving a mark on users. He featured several works in “Genesis 2: The Tempest”, “Genesis 3”, “Magnacarta” and “Blade & Soul” and formed a strong fandom with his unique painting style.
When he was at the peak of his career as the art director of Blade & Soul, he chose a new entrepreneurial challenge and founded Shift Up in 2013. I was directly responsible for the illustrations of the main characters of the first game “Destiny Child”, which was released after 2 years and 6 months of development. This game ranked first in game sales in Korea’s two largest app markets (Google Play and Apple App Store) highlighting “Live 2D” technology that adds animation effects to 2D illustrations.
Focus on developing AAA game IPs
Shift Up didn’t stop at Destiny Child’s success and started discovering new intellectual property (IP) rights. We were aiming for an IP that had a high level of development difficulty and could showcase genres and technologies that didn’t exist before. In this context, in 2019, “Project Nike” (currently “Goddess of Victory: Nike”) and the console game “Project Eve” (currently “Stellar Blade”) were released at the same time. At the time, it was unusual for a home developer to release a game that combined “subculture” and “shooting” (gun battle) elements, or for a home developer to attempt a console game.
CEO Kim chose a difficult path, saying, “If you only make commercially acceptable games, even if you can easily grow and make money right now, it won’t last long.” As a result, both games released at the time became titles that attracted industry attention.
Goddess of Victory: Nike, released in November 2022, ranked high in mobile game sales in various regions, including Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Even after last month’s update, it landed in the top 10 of mobile game sales charts in Korea and Japan, setting the stage for long-term box office success.
Stella Blade, scheduled for release on April 26, is aiming for success in the global market. The first video released at the “State of Play” showcase of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a leading console gaming company, has registered more than 1 million views.
This game signed a distribution contract with SIE for “PlayStation 5” in November last year, becoming the first domestic game to join Sony’s “Second Party” partner (exclusive release on a specific platform with investment and support). Pre-orders began on the 7th of this month and was a box office success, ranking ▲1st in pre-orders at the PlayStation Korea Store ▲2nd in pre-orders at the PlayStation North American Store ▲2nd in Amazon PlayStation 5 Bestsellers in the United States ▲third in sales for PlayStation 5 on Amazon Japan.
In the gaming industry, where the pace of change is relatively fast, CEO Kim’s continued success through never-before-attempted difficult challenges demonstrates his will and ability.
Grow to KRW 2 trillion in enterprise value
Based on its achievements so far, Shift Up is receiving recognition from global companies beyond Korea. It was reported that a subsidiary of Tencent bought a 4.1% stake in Wemade’s Shift Up for 80 billion won in October last year, pegging the enterprise value at 2 trillion won. Growth has doubled in a year from about 1 trillion won valued by IMM Investment and Smilegate Investment in 2022, and has grown about 10 times since Line Games sold its shares in 2020.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment visited Shift Up twice in September and November 2022 and signed a business agreement (MOU) to join the global support force. Shift Up is also pursuing an initial public offering (IPO) selecting JP Morgan as lead co-underwriter this year, following Korea Investment & Securities and NH Investment & Securities in May last year.
Shift Up invests in technology and talent
Shift Up’s success in challenging new fields is believed to be due to its investments in technology and talent. In 2021, 90% of sales were invested in research and development costs.
Internally we have installed a studio capable of performing performance capture by introducing 3D scanning equipment and even equipped with a system capable of producing more graphic assets. Based on this, we intend to showcase the graphics and actions of Stella Blade.
CEO Kim believes that human resources capabilities are the top priority for excellent content and industry-leading cutting-edge technologies and is recruiting staff in line with the company’s growth rate. Experts in each field are appointed “C-level” (head) personnel, and current C-level members Vice President Kyung-lip Min (CSO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Hyeong-bok Lee, In-sang Cho (Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)) and Chief Design Officer (CDO) Sung-rae Cho. Last year we hired Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ahn Jae-woo, a listing expert.
Additionally, an artificial intelligence (AI)-related organization was created and team leader Kim Tae-hoon, a Silicon Valley developer, was recruited. He is a former developer at the global artificial intelligence company “Open AI” and participated in the development of “Chat GPT”.
In the future, Shift Up plans to strengthen its technology and expertise in the field of game artificial intelligence. By developing the artificial intelligence of all game characters and non-player characters (NPCs) we create, we will aim to provide a realistic and immersive game environment and improve the quality of the game.
Investment in future talent cannot be overlooked. We are pursuing industrial-academic cooperation with excellent engineering students, and in March last year, we collaborated with POSTECH to establish an “off-campus” location where graduate credits are recognized for the first time in Korea. We are also working on short- and long-term internship projects with KAIST.
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