The future of NCSOFT depends on the success of MMORPG Aion 2 – More than 300 people are working on the game

The MTN portal has published information on the number of teams involved in the development and support of NCSOFT games. It turned out that a total of 303 people are working on the MMORPG AION 2, which is considered a very large team by the standards of the South Korean gaming industry. If we take into account all the specialists who are temporarily involved and simultaneously working on other projects, the figure will be 330. Let us recall that in September 2023, the Aion 2 development team consisted of 240 people.

Previously, it was not known that such a number of employees were involved in the development of the game within the gaming industry in South Korea. Considering the current state and the process of restructuring the company, which has been going on for more than a year, journalists call this situation “crazy.” However, there is an explanation for this: NCSOFT has high hopes for this game. Previously, it was repeatedly stated that Aion 2 would become a key project for sales and profit growth. Therefore, the team that created the MMORPG Lineage 2M took up development.

The choice of the Aion franchise for this purpose is quite justified, since previously almost all of the company’s old franchises were discredited: the Lineage series became famous for its aggressive monetization, and players simply “tired” of it, and Blade & Soul 2 completely failed financially.

As for the company’s other games, the number of teams looks something like this (numbers in parentheses include temporarily hired employees):

• Over MMORPG Project Skyline 188 (201) people work. It is assumed that this is the same project with Sony based on the Horizon Zero Dawn franchise. At the moment there is not even an approximate release date for the game.
• A team of 177 people is working on the LLL shooter. It was shown at the G-Star 2023 gaming expo and is expected to release in 2025. Previously, it was planned to conduct large-scale testing in 2024.
• Of the games already released, MMORPG Throne and Liberty has the largest staff – 239 (264) people. At the moment, a global version of the game is being prepared, which will be served by NCSOFT itself in Asia, and Amazon Games will be the publisher in Europe, America and Oceania.
• The most profitable MMORPG game Lineage M employs only 124 (128) people.
• Lineage 2M – 190 (193) people.
• Lineage W – 149 (156) people.
• Blade & Soul 2 – 145 (147) people.

I will briefly describe the situation with the management and production groups within the company, but I will not go into details. At the moment, NCSOFT has 3 development departments, which have their own teams that work on individual games. These departments are called CBO (English letters):

• CBO1 is developing and supporting games in the Lineage series, and is led by Lee Seong Gu, whose background includes MMORPG Lineage M, Lineage 2M, Trickster M and Lineage W. According to rumors, he is the one leading the development of MMORPG Project Skyline.
• The main projects in CBO2 are Lineage 2M and Aion 2, and the department is led by Baek Seung-wook, who participated in the creation of MMORPG Aion and MMORPG Lineage Eternal before the decision was made to restart the project and transfer it to another team. He later led the development of Lineage 2M and now oversees several games at once.
• CBO3 is working on new projects, including the MMORPG Throne and Liberty. It is headed by Choi Moon-Young, whom players may know from the developers’ streams. At the moment, this department has the weakest performance and high hopes are pinned on the results of the global version of Throne and Liberty.