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NCSOFT, a global premier game developer and publisher, today released a documentary series titled ‘TECH Standard’, which uncovers the company’s advanced gaming technology and its vision on R&D.

‘TECH Standard’ is a documentary series of three episodes that unveils the company’s technical prowess in game development and its vision, featured through developer interviews.

The first episode, ‘MMORPG’, highlights NCSOFT’s innovative technology that powers the global one-build service in Lineage W. This technology enables international players from 12 different countries to simultaneously access the game and enjoy stable gameplay. The technical features include Registered I/O (RIO) server technology, an in-house seamless terrain processing system called ‘Level Segment Graph’, and network optimization with the use of submarine network.

The second episode, ‘Continuity’, focuses on NCSOFT’s secure IT infrastructure for continuous and uninterrupted service. It is resilient to many outages, from small-scale ones at the server level to large-scale ones like natural disasters. NCSOFT was able to achieve such high-level stability with the duplication, dualization, and diversification of data centers and internet lines. Also, the operation of ‘NC Cloud’ – a hybrid model of in-house data centers, private clouds, and public clouds – and the automated system for infrastructure – built for global one-build service – both fuel steady operation.

The last episode, ‘Digital Human’, illustrates NCSOFT’s guidance and vision for future gaming technology. The video clip presents the development process of its digital human, which was first unveiled at ‘GDC 2023’. It also demonstrates the type of interaction and digital human that NCSOFT pursues. Leaders of AI and visual R&D divisions featured in the video and explained the corporate goal of creating a digital human that offers real-time interaction.

Myung Jin Park, Principal Corporate Brand Officer (PBO) of NCSOFT, said, “Beginning last year, NCSOFT has put great efforts into driving the ‘Open R&D’ initiative to actively communicate with the users from the development phase.” He added, “We hope the sincere developer interviews featured in this series will effectively convey our vision for future technology and our endeavors for change.”

NCSOFT is committed to R&D innovation across various technologies, including intellectual property (IP) development, strengthening of game production skills, and securing the latest technologies. The company’s R&D investment amounts to KRW 1.28 trillion over the past three years, from 2020 to 2022. In terms of headcount, 3,394 personnel, which takes up 71% of the total 4,789 employees, are committed to R&D. Since 2011, NCSOFT has been devoted to securing fundamental technologies of AI, leading to the growth of AI Center and NLP (natural language processing) Center, where over 200 professionals conduct their research.

The full episodes of ‘TECH Standard’ are available on NCSOFT’s official YouTube channel. More detailed stories for each topic are also available on the official corporate blog.