# Jake Song - Maker: Game designer - Date: b. 1967 - Houses: NCSoft - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jake-song/ > The KAIST-trained programmer who co-founded Nexon, built Kingdom of the Winds, then designed Lineage, the online world that made South Korea the capital of the MMORPG. **Why it matters:** Song created two of the earliest commercial graphical online RPGs and, with Lineage, built the game that turned NCSoft into a giant and defined the PC-bang era of Korean gaming. ## Quick answers **Who is Jake Song?** The KAIST-trained programmer who co-founded Nexon, built Kingdom of the Winds, then designed Lineage, the online world that made South Korea the capital of the MMORPG. **When was Jake Song born?** Jake Song was born in 1967. **What is Jake Song known for?** Jake Song is best known for Lineage. **Why does Jake Song matter to fantasy and games?** Song created two of the earliest commercial graphical online RPGs and, with Lineage, built the game that turned NCSoft into a giant and defined the PC-bang era of Korean gaming. ## Life Song Jae-kyung, known internationally as Jake Song, was born in 1967 and belongs to the first generation of South Korean computer scientists who turned academic networking into an entertainment industry. He graduated from Seoul National University's department of computer engineering in 1990 and earned a master's degree in computer science at KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, in 1992. While there he wrote Hanterm, a terminal emulator that let Korean text be used on Unix and X11 systems. He began a doctorate at KAIST but left it, and in 1993 joined the software company Hancom, where he worked on a multiplatform GUI toolkit and on a text [MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mud/) game. MUDs were the laboratory in which Song, like [Richard Bartle](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/richard-bartle/) in Britain and [Raph Koster](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/raph-koster/) in the United States, learned what happens when many people share an imaginary world. His ambition was to give that world pictures. ## Work In December 1994 Song co-founded Nexon with Kim Jung-ju, a friend from his university days. There he led development of *Baramui Nara*, known in English as *Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds*, a graphical online role-playing game loosely based on Korean mythology and on a manhwa (Korean comic) by Kim Jin. It opened on April 5, 1996, making it one of the earliest commercial graphical [MMORPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mmorpg/) anywhere, more than a year before [Ultima Online](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-online/). Accounts from Korean gaming press describe a falling-out with Kim before the game's commercial service began; Song left Nexon in 1996, reportedly surrendering his stake. That September he started a new online game at the internet company I-Net. As the Asian financial crisis squeezed Korean firms, Kim Taek-jin, head of a small office-software maker called [NCSoft](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/ncsoft/), recruited Song, who joined in December 1997 and brought the project with him. The result was *Lineage*, released in 1998. Its isometric 2D look resembled Western contemporaries such as Ultima Online, and its server code reportedly began as a fork of the software Song had written for Kingdom of the Winds. Its world came from Shin Il-sook's comic *Lineage*, the story of a rightful prince reclaiming his throne from a usurper, and the game's servers were named after the comic's characters. [Lineage](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lineage/) arrived at the perfect moment. South Korea was rolling out broadband and filling its cities with PC bangs, cheap internet cafés where friends played together for hours, and Lineage, subtitled *The Blood Pledge* in Western markets, with its guild-driven, unforgiving player-versus-player competition, became the defining game of that culture. NCSoft reported that it had at one point more than three million subscribers, most of them in Korea, and it was the engine of the company's growth into one of the country's largest game publishers; by November 2013 it had earned about US$1.8 billion. A prequel, *Lineage II*, followed in 2003. In 2000 NCSoft opened a U.S. subsidiary and Song went to work in America. The original Lineage struggled there against 3D games such as [EverQuest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/everquest/), and in May 2001 Song joined NC Austin, the company's Texas studio, contributing to the project that became *Tabula Rasa*, the science-fiction MMO later led by [Richard Garriott](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/richard-garriott/) and [Starr Long](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/starr-long/)'s team. After a reported disagreement with Kim Taek-jin, he left NCSoft and in April 2003 founded his own studio, XLGAMES. XLGAMES' first release, the online racing game *XL1* (2006), failed. Its second was far more ambitious: *ArcheAge*, in development from 2006, a fantasy MMO its makers described as a "sandpark," blending the player-driven freedom of a [Sandbox](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/sandbox/) with the guided content of theme-park games. Players could build houses and farms on open land, sail ships and engage in naval warfare. It launched in Korea on January 15, 2013, and in Europe and North America on September 16, 2014. Korean press reported balance problems and weaker-than-hoped results at home, and the studio went through significant restructuring. A sequel, *ArcheAge Chronicles*, was announced on September 24, 2024. ## Legacy Song's career connects the text worlds of the MUD era to the enormous online-game economies of East Asia. Kingdom of the Winds gave Nexon its foundation, and Lineage made NCSoft; Korean commentators have long observed that he helped build two of the country's largest game companies while profiting relatively little from either. Lineage's success also shaped the global industry's picture of online play, demonstrating that an MMO could be a mass social pastime rather than a niche hobby, years before [World of Warcraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/world-of-warcraft/) did the same in the West. Lineage's descendants, from *Lineage II* to the much later *Lineage W*, remained central to NCSoft for decades. For visitors following the chronicle of [Online Worlds: From MUD1 to World of Warcraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/chronicle/online-worlds/), Song is the figure who shows that the story of the MMORPG was never only an American one. ## Facts - He co-founded Nexon in December 1994 with Kim Jung-ju; the company's first game, Kingdom of the Winds, opened on April 5, 1996. - Kingdom of the Winds was adapted from a manhwa by Kim Jin; [Lineage](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lineage/) was adapted from Shin Il-sook's comic of the same name. - Lineage's server software reportedly began as a fork of the Kingdom of the Winds code Song had written. - NCSoft reported that Lineage at one point had more than three million subscribers, most of them in Korea. - By November 2013 Lineage had earned about US$1.8 billion for [NCSoft](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/ncsoft/). - His studio XLGAMES released the "sandpark" MMO ArcheAge in Korea on January 15, 2013. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia (Korean)](https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%86%A1%EC%9E%AC%EA%B2%BD_(%ED%94%84%EB%A1%9C%EA%B7%B8%EB%9E%98%EB%A8%B8)) - [Wikipedia: Lineage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_(video_game)) - [Wikipedia: Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus:_The_Kingdom_of_the_Winds) - [Wikipedia: ArcheAge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcheAge) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.