“Localization is more than just languages,” Jung Suh told his audience during his session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Think of it as culturalization.”
Jung Suh has been in the gaming industry awhile. His career began in the mailroom at Creative Artists Agency before he moved on to marketing at Activision. He also co-founded game rental company GameFly.
He notes that a lot of people thought he and his fellow co-founders were crazy for going up against established companies that offered games such as Blockbuster and Netflix, but they persevered and proved their naysayers wrong. He considers GameFly one of the highlights of his career so far. “It taught me the entrepreneurial spirit and not being afraid of jumping off the cliff, so to speak,” he says.
He eventually left GameFly to start Red Rocket Games, a mobile game studio in China. During that time, he worked with Yodo1 on a Red Rocket game they ended up publishing. The experience taught him a considerable amount about the free-to-play business model, and he ended up leaving Red Rocket Games to join Yodo1’s ranks.
The Culture of Yodo1
Yodo1 is known for taking games from one cultural market and making them succeed in another cultural market. Suh explains that the company does this with a “robust game review process” with local game designers at Yodo1 HQ in Beijing. On average, the company gets about 200 game submissions each month to sift through. Games are scored on a variety of factors, such as art, monetization, tutorial, and gameplay. If a game is considered a cultural fit, an eight-person game committee votes on whether or not to publish their game.
Once the decision is made to publish, a product team creates a proposal for the developer regarding suggested changes that need to be made to the game. “We focus on the basic metrics that will ensure success: retention, conversion, and monetization,” Suh says. “All of our design suggestions surround those metrics, whether it is onboarding tutorial changes, art, music, or gameplay tuning for the unique tastes for each geographical region.”
For Suh’s part as Yodo1’s vice-president of global publishing, his days start early with checking email at 6:30 a.m. to make sure there aren’t any urgent things that need to be addressed. By 8:30 a.m. he is in the office and taking conference calls. Depending on the day, he may join Yodo1’s product teams for “quick morning scrums” or be in meetings with department leads discussing important business.
Suh is a big believer in taking a break from work, so rather than spend an entire lunch hour in the office he opts to use most of his lunch hour to hit the gym or take part in a boxing workout and eat a quick lunch at his desk. Fitness is an important component of living for Suh. He subscribes to Tony Schwartz’ “Energy Project” philosophy and believes that you need to be physically fit, as well as mentally and spiritually fit, to perform at your peak and fuel creativity. “Plus,” he says, “let’s face it, I spend an inordinate amount of time in front of my computer. It’s a nice break to let out some steam or lift heavy things.”
Suh spends his afternoons with Yodo1’s marketing department, keeping in contact with Yodo1’s other studios in Korea and Japan, and attending to various emails and other projects. Evenings include conference calls with global partners and he does a final email check around 11 p.m. To top it off, 30 percent of the time, he is traveling around the world for work.
He admits there can be a strong tension of wanting to do so many things but not having the resources to do everything. “In the end, it really comes down to being able to pick the right things to say ‘yes’ to and ‘no’ to,” he says.
Despite such tension though, he loves the work. “I really enjoy assisting in the creation of really good games from the publishing side,” he says. “Sometimes being on the outside and looking into a game gives us a different perspective and view on the game. Often working on a title full time for 6 to 12 months can be myopic. Working with the people in our organization and our partners around the world is really the most rewarding thing about what I do at Yodo1.”
Emerging Trends and Technology
Suh sees two emerging trends that could potentially change the gaming industry. The first is in regard to input systems. He points to his son as an example of how up-and-coming generations may experience technology differently than older generations have. “I watch my 2-year-old son and he wants to touch, tap, or swipe anything that has a screen. He has no idea about a keyboard or mouse.”
He also thinks that wearable technologies will begin to take up more of the gaming stage, with such devices already becoming cheaper and somewhat multipurpose. “I think gaming would benefit from those technologies, as well as things like voice inputs and eye tracking,” he says.
Suh is especially excited for the place where wearable technology and big data will intersect. He notes that it has previously been very tedious to track personal progress or input daily data into a notebook or spreadsheet, but that wearable technologies and apps can now make it much quicker to input data and progress — pointing to the personal health industry and products like Fitbit and Jawbone as good example of how wearables and data are intersecting.
The reason this makes him so excited has a lot to do with his life philosophy, both in work and personal performance. “I think a lot about improving things day to day, whether it’s production or how much stronger or faster I’m getting.”
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