Avatar Can Even Smile or Cry

Park Hae-Jin (26), a office worker accessed to ‘Net Marble (www.netmarble.net)’, and entered into a chatting room with her Avatar. Avatar of her boyfriend waited for her and gave a heart-shaped rose wreath of to her Avatar. There was ‘I Love You’ on wreath. Two Avatars exchange their rings.

▽‘2 Generation Avatar’〓When NEOWIZ started Avatar in 2000, Avatar was just a picture instead of ID. Netizen was satisfied with ‘1st Generation Avatar’ which wore clothes, glasses and hats.

From the early months of the year, Avatar started to blink eyes, make simple gestures. Recently, Avatar makes an expression or takes a stylish motorcar or pet. Hair or scarf waves in the wind. Avatar can have various events such as a proposal of marriage, birthday party or wedding ceremony.

When you input emoticon (^^, ㅜ.ㅜ, etc.) while chatting in Say Club (www.sayclub.co.kr), Avatar can smile or cry automatically.

Lee Jang-Uk, the manager of Communication Team, NEOWIZ said “Empathy of Netizen on Avatar has increased. Companies have entered into competition to develop Avatar for customer satisfaction.”

▽“Picture for 100∼6,000 won?”〓 Samsung Research Institute forecasted “Since NEOWIZ started Avatar in November 2000, its market scale of 2001 reached 20 billion won. This year, the market scale will reach 100 billion won.”

NEOWIZ has earned monthly 3 billion won from Avatar. There are 3 million members who used to purchase items such as clothes and shoes. Net Marble which started Avatar service in April, has sharply grown. The company has earned 1.2 billion won of the monthly sales from Avatar. Freechal also has gained 0.3 billion won a month from Avatar. Mattel, Inc and NIKE put their brands to the item shopping mall and have looked for a commercial effect.

The margin rate reaches 80∼90%. Avatar is settled as a profit model of ‘.com’.

Sanskrit language ‘Ava’ means ‘Pass’ and ‘Terr’ means ‘Below earth’. Avatar meant a manifestation of God which got down earth from an ancient India, but these days, it indicates ‘cyber doll’ which expresses own self in a game or chatting as the internet has been popularized.

Seong-Yub Ra cpu@donga.com