Block Valley 5
I met Min Ah-reum at Block Valley headquarters.
She was dressed in slacks, a linen shirt, and a long coat. As always, she looked stylish.
“It’s been a while.”
“Hello, Representative.”
We shook hands warmly.
There was something oddly pleasant about running into someone you knew overseas.
“How have you been?”
At my question, she answered with a faint air of complaint.
“Thanks to you, I’ve been so busy I can barely breathe. I haven’t even been able to go to the year-end parties or New Year gatherings.”
She had apparently been traveling all over the world in search of promising young designers.
She spoke not only English, but enough French, Italian, Spanish, and German to get by. If you wanted to lead a fashion business, that was the level you needed.
I introduced her to the founders of Block Valley.
“This is Min Ah-reum, CEO of MFW.”
“Hello, I’m Charles Griffin.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ken Utley.”
Unlike Charles and Ken, who greeted her with obvious warmth, Rufus only gave a slight bow before hurriedly making some excuse about being busy and slipping away.
Min Ah-reum looked a little taken aback, and Charles laughed.
“Please don’t mind him. He’s always been shy.”
Rufus was the type who was extremely self-conscious around strangers.
Still, in just a few days he’d become fairly comfortable with me, enough that we could talk naturally.
Min Ah-reum looked at the remaining two of us and said, “I’ve heard a lot about Block Valley. People keep praising it as the best game around.”
“Haha, not at all.”
“You’re too kind.”
Only recently, they’d been indie game developers. Now they were star developers who had turned into billionaires.
Looking at them, it really did seem like life could change in a single stroke.
After we’d talked long enough, Charles and Ken returned to their work, leaving just Dong-ho senior, Min Ah-reum, and me.
We switched comfortably into Korean.
“I’d heard you traveled to Europe a lot for business, but I never expected to find you in the U.S. of all places, especially Orange County.”
She sipped her coffee and said, “Luxury is still firmly rooted in Europe, but when it comes to contemporary brands that are sensitive to trends, the United States is ahead. In the case of Tri-Island and Cessley, they may be considered massstige brands for now, but I think with the right branding they can rise to prestige level.”
“…….”
Huh? What was she talking about?
Massstige? I’d never even heard that English word before.
Unlike me, who understood none of it, Dong-ho senior smiled and nodded as if everything made perfect sense.
“I see. That makes sense.”
“…….”
I would have bet my entire fortune that he hadn’t understood a word of it either.
As she continued, I learned that “massstige” was a blend of Mass and Prestige.
If I had to translate it loosely, it meant something like affordable luxury.
Recently, these massstige brands had been growing rapidly, and luxury houses were increasingly launching separate lines to secure loyal customers.
Since the subject had come up, she gave me a brief report on her work so far.
MFW had two main roles.
One was to invest early in promising up-and-coming brands; the other was to help them make the digital transition.
For a new brand, there was a long list of things to manage: production, distribution, inventory, and so on. That part could be solved fairly simply by adopting Snow Crash’s cloud services.
But brand promotion was another matter.
Building a brand image and getting it out to the public required more than just technical know-how and capital.
“You can’t become a good brand just by advertising more.”
For ordinary manufactured goods, price and function usually went hand in hand.
Luxury bicycles, luxury audio equipment, luxury cameras, luxury cars, and the like.
People paid tens of thousands of dollars for audio gear and hundreds of thousands for cars because they were better than cheaper products.
But with luxury clothes and bags, price had very little to do with function. What influenced the price most was the brand image.
The same bag could differ in price by more than ten times depending on which logo was stamped on it.
“The latest trend in promotion is online. The most important platform for that is Linstagram. There may be brands without a homepage, but there are no brands without a Linsta account.”
The reason was simple: it revolved around images. In the first place, the culture of showing off luxury and brand identity had emerged through Linstagram.
That was why most brands ran their own Linsta accounts and promoted their products directly.
According to her, these days brands created a Linsta account the moment they registered.
The problem was that Linstagram had become a battleground for fashion advertising. Excessive exposure was provoking consumers, and in some cases even damaging a brand’s image.
For that reason, one luxury brand had deleted a Linstagram account with three million followers overnight.
“Mm. The fashion world is complicated.”
At Dong-ho senior’s words, I nodded as if I understood.
This was exactly why fashion businesses had to be handled by people who actually knew the field, not by amateurs like me. I was lucky to have handed it over to Min Ah-reum.
Just as I was thinking that, she asked, “So, what’s this about? You didn’t ask to meet just to see my face, did you?”
“Ah! I’ve got a good proposal.”
At that, Min Ah-reum showed interest.
“What kind of proposal?”
“How about using the brands MFW has invested in to make a game for Block Valley?”
“…….”
She looked as if she had no idea what I was talking about.
A moment later, she asked for confirmation. “You want me to make a game?”
“Yes.”
“I told you before, didn’t I? I was going to build a fashion business in the metaverse.”
That was why the company was called MFW, for Metaverse Fashion Week.
Min Ah-reum looked slightly bewildered.
“Yes, but still…”
Well, she probably hadn’t imagined that the metaverse could include games.
I explained more concretely.
“Rather than thinking of it as a game, think of it as a kind of SNS promotion. You build the entire space to match the brand’s identity.”
She’d probably imagined fashion shows, fashion magazines, or TV commercials when I said promotion. If I said internet promotion, she would have thought of shopping mall partnerships, YouTube ads, or short-form video clips.
But from here on out, games were going to emerge as an important promotional platform too.
“Right now, teenage users are logging into Block Valley for more than an hour every day. In a few years, I expect more than half of American teens will be using it for three hours or more.”
That meant Block Valley was on track to become the most important platform for teenagers.
And making money on Block Valley wasn’t limited to game creation.
You could also earn by producing and selling clothes for avatars to wear. In fact, brands that specialized solely in avatar clothing were already beginning to appear.
“As you know, teenagers are highly sensitive to trends. If an avatar walks around in a certain brand’s clothes, wouldn’t that alone be strong promotion?”
Min Ah-reum asked carefully, “Is it really possible to promote a brand through a game?”
Dong-ho senior nodded.
“Well, it’s not impossible. The reason everyone knows brands like Colt, Winchester, Browning, Barrett, and Glock in countries where gun sales are illegal is thanks to FPS games.”
The comparison was a little strange, but it was true. You had to know which gun to use in which situation if you wanted to win.
Dong-ho senior added one more thing.
“But the most famous one is probably still the AK-47.”
“Ah! That’s a staple in FPS games.”
Pair that with Allah’s magic wand, hop into a pickup truck, and for a moment you could almost feel like a terrorist.
The problem, if there was one, was that there were almost no games featuring the K2, the rifle Korean teenagers would actually end up using later in real life.
The conversation had drifted a little, but I kept going.
“The biggest share of Block Valley users is teenagers. Just as they use Facenote or Linstagram to communicate with friends, they’re now meeting their friends inside games. They use avatars, game characters, to do it. For teenagers, avatars are a way to express their individuality. That’s why they’re willing to spend money decorating them.”
Dong-ho senior muttered, “Come to think of it, back in the day people used to collect chestnuts in SayWorld to decorate their avatars. One chestnut bundle cost a hundred won.”
Min Ah-reum looked surprised. “SayWorld…?”
I was just as surprised.
“How old is that?”
At our reactions, Dong-ho senior looked flustered.
“Why are you acting like that? You don’t know SayWorld?”
Min Ah-reum nodded.
“I’m not from that generation. Ah, but I do kind of know what it is.”
“That suddenly makes the generational gap feel enormous.”
Dong-ho senior said indignantly, “No, come on, it’s not that big a gap. I only played it for a little while when I was young.”
I pretended not to notice and kept explaining.
“You know that SkyPix performed at NightLight at the end of last year?”
“I saw the article.”
“They made twenty million dollars just from merch and item sales. Most of what sold was clothing and accessories.”
Teenagers don’t spare money for a star they love, and they don’t spare money when buying the brands they love either.
“So you mean not just promotion, but actually selling clothes and accessories too?”
“Exactly. Basic items can just be given away. To people who visit a certain number of times, complete missions, or hit a certain score threshold, for example. First you introduce the brand, then you start selling. The idea is to get them familiar with it first.”
“And for certain seasons, you’d release limited editions?”
“That’s right. Doesn’t it sound fun? Building a game space that fits a fashion brand’s concept, then selling clothing and accessories in it. If it’s a streetwear brand, they could skateboard or play street basketball. If it’s an outdoor brand, you could do virtual camping. And in QuickShaka’s case, surfing would fit nicely. Users would play the game and grow attached to the brand. Then wouldn’t they want to wear clothes from that brand, whether online or offline?”
Right now, she might have been thinking, What on earth is he talking about? But in two or three years, this would all be happening for real.
I could have just told her to do it, but whether someone was convinced or not made a huge difference in their motivation.
After a moment’s thought, Min Ah-reum nodded readily.
“Now that I think about it, that does sound like an interesting attempt. No one’s really tried branding through games, so it could even make the brand feel more trendy.”
“My guess is that not just mass brands and massstige brands like Nike, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, and Ralph Lauren, but even luxury houses will eventually create showrooms in Block Valley and sell items there.”
Min Ah-reum looked unconvinced.
“Surely not. Luxury brands are conservative, so I’d think they’d be reluctant to use that kind of approach.”
“Would they really?”
Of course, at first they were reluctant.
But once they saw other brands achieving huge success, they all rushed in later, one after another.
“It’s hard for a teenager to buy a million-won luxury coat in Cheongdam’s luxury shops with pocket money. But in Block Valley, they could easily afford an eighty-thousand-won luxury coat for their avatar, couldn’t they?”
In Gucci’s case, limited-edition bags released in Block Valley were even traded among users for prices higher than the real bags.
She nodded.
“Now that you put it that way, I can see it. If they see the avatar wearing it, they’ll want to buy the real thing too.”
For the brand, all they had to do was digitize products they’d already designed. The cost was negligible, and they didn’t need to worry about inventory or distribution.
They’d be creating an entirely new source of revenue while also securing future customers. There was no reason not to do it.
“But how do we make a game like that? I’ve never done anything like it before.”
I smiled.
“Ah, don’t worry. I know someone who’s very good at this sort of thing.”