Here’s an old interview on IGN with Jack Liu, Co-Founder and Creative Director of GameFactory, dated 7th December 2005, shortly before the US server has been officially launched in the same month:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2005/12/07/albatross18-realms-of-pangya-interview
A couple of interesting quotes from the interview:
“By the way, I must confess at this moment that I am an avid player myself. I had to find a moment to segue this into the interview because no matter how much I work on the game during office hours, I find myself coming home at night, jumping online, and getting in at least six holes before I can go to bed. It truly is that addicting and fun.”
“The initial idea to do a golf game actually arose from all the publicity that was being generated by professional Korean female golfers like Se-Ri Pak and Grace Park. Not one to sit on its laurels, Ntreev began developing a golf game that would appeal to the casual gamer.”
According to the Pangya wiki, Game Factory was later renamed OGPlanet. On the Game Factory’s Bloomberg company profile page, Game Factory seem to have been “operating” OGPlanet:
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0344623Z:US
This makes sense since both companies were at some point active, as seen in the banners at the bottom of the Albatross18 page. The two companies might have merged at a later date, or Game Factory has been at some point just shut down:
Jack Liu worked at OGPlanet until February 2008. He later founded CrayonPixel, a game company specialized in mobile gaming. Now he’s currently employed at SuperCell, the developers of the mobile games Brawl Stars and Clash of Clans.
Thanks to kyuubi on the Retreev Discord channel for some infos on OGPlanet.
Varthall