Hi, my name is Bochan.
Welcome to my website, and to my very first blog.
Why am I blogging?
This website was initially created for my videogame consulting business, but I've decided I'll maintain it in the format of a blog for a few reasons:
First, a typical website for consulting businesses is very dry and boring. It generally contains a bunch of fluff and throws jargon at you to give the impression that the consultant knows what he/she is doing. But it does very little to actually introduce the consultant.
Second, there is always something to talk and share opinions about in the videogames industry. New technologies, new business models, new ethical greyzones, etc. I'd like to use this place to share my opinions on those issues and help potential clients learn about my thought processes and philosophies. Over time, as these writings accumulate, I expect my blogs to paint a silhouette of my mind.
Third, I sort of missed maintaining a website. Ever since shutting down CHV.net back in 2001, I have not run a "live" website although I enjoyed the process of creating and building a library of content. I am hoping this will scratch that itch.
With that out of the way, I'd like to use this first blog to introduce myself. This will (hopefully) be the only blog where I talk primarily about myself, and future blogs will focus on topical issues.
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About myself
I am a Korean-born "citizen of the earth (i.e. ambiguous national identity)" whose life passion is videogames.
I decided at the age of 12 that I would pursue a career in videogames. However, at the time I was just a kid living in Korea (in the late 80s; more than a decade before Korea would have its first "successful" videogame company), so I ended up taking a rather meandering path to get into the industry.
School and Start-Up
I left Korea when I was 17 and studied Computer Science and Japanese in college. As a sophomore, I tried applying for internships at videogame companies only to be rejected by all of them, which led me to start my own venture; an "internet broadcast station for videogames" called CHV.net, or Cyber Hippy Vision. Even though I eventually had to shut it down, this venture taught me two critical things earlier on in my life; (1) product development and project management skills, and (2) the fact that I had no idea how to run a business.
Anime and Publishing
So, after running that website from 1998 to 2001, I returned to Dartmouth to finish my degree. And following a brief internship at an anime convention in New York (called Big Apple Anime Fest), I worked at an anime publisher called Central Park Media where I handled the licensing, localization and marketing of Manga and Anime properties. This is where my training as a "business guy" began, learning how to put together P/Ls and handle licensing agreements. I also worked alongside some seasoned sales people who sold our DVDs and books into retailers like Borders and Tower Records. I didn't know it at the time, but what I learned here would come to help me immensely later in my career.
Capcom Mobile
My real "break" into the videogame industry didn't happen until 2006 when I joined Capcom's newly-founded mobile games subsidiary as a localization manager. I was horrible at that job (my Japanese wasn't quite there yet), but my boss was kind/smart enough to place me in a different role where I thrived; Strategic Planning, or "being the numbers guy".
You see, before Apple's AppStore came around in 2009, mobile gaming was a highly fractured landscape of phone carriers, each with their own storefront, and each country having their own carriers. And it was my job to capture all of that data, then analyze and translate them into business strategies to further increase revenue.
I loved that time because I handled SO MUCH data (e.g. daily sales data from 55 carriers across 100+ products). The excel file to "calculate" each week's sales report was 10,000 rows long, and the weekly exercise of analyzing sales trends, testing them against hypotheses and then establishing "sales trend conventions" helped me develop a firm understanding of revenue trends across product lifecycles.
It was also around this time that I started experiencing disillusionment with the videogames industry. Whereas I had spent decades trying to just break into the industry and had assumed I would be happy just to participate in it, as I spent some years working as a part of it and began to understand why games were produced the way they were, it eventually dawned on me; the industry was lacking sufficient leadership, and it didn't necessarily know what gamers wanted. So I began working on a transition from "the business side" toward becoming part of a development team.
Console and Product Development
The first step of my transition was to join the console division of Capcom; a semi-internal transfer. And there I started by doing the same job, but for Capcom's console and PC games instead. I was overseeing digital sales on PSN, XBL, WiiWare/VC, Steam and other PC distributors like GOG, EA Origin and Amazon Digital as well as game-streaming services like OnLive and Gaikai. But instead of only managing numbers, I began handling contracts and business deals as well. And I made many new friends outside of the company during this time.
Side note: one of my achievements from this time was convincing Sony to allow third-party publishers to sell "PSN Avatars" on the PSN store; yes, those 500+ PSN avatars released by Capcom in 2011-2012 were my babies!
Around this time, I started tinkering around with Unity because I felt that all the years working on "the business side" was making me lose my touch with "the technical side" of videogames. I'd spend 2-3 hours a night coding, 2-3 times a week, chipping away at a humble videogame prototype. (I still do this, but nowadays it's in Unreal Engine 4 instead)
A few years after, I made another transfer within Capcom. This time, however, I was actually involved in game development. I managed the QA and submissions teams, and oversaw all P/Ls and contracts for games in development. I oversaw 5-6 projects at a time, half of them AAA titles, and witnessed all their successes and failures. It was a rare opportunity even within the industry to have so much visibility across so many titles at the same time, and this period served as a crash course for me to understanding how game development teams and projects are typically managed.
Street Fighter V and Beyond
Following this, I was assigned as the Producer for Street Fighter V as it entered its full production phase in 2014. I had been overseeing that title since its prototype phase in late 2012, but to be honest I never even dreamed of becoming the Producer for the title. But the project desperately needed help, and because I had been responsible for growing the Street Fighter franchise's digital revenue since 2009, I knew better than most what the franchise needed in order to survive as a business in the coming decade. Besides, nobody in his/her right mind would turn down such an opportunity. So, as Lead Producer for SFV, I formulated its long-term strategy, and negotiated the PS4 console exclusivity deal with Sony to elevate Street Fighter's e-Sports profile to the next level (which, I am happy to say, worked out just as well as I had hoped).
I remained at Capcom until SFV's release, and left shortly after. People often ask why I left Capcom, but for me this was a matter of staying true to my original goal. When I decided as a young kid that I would join the games industry, I didn't do so to make a lot of money. Even back then, I think I knew in my heart that videogames would not be a lucrative career, if a career at all. Instead, I did so for the excitement and innovation that the videogame medium brought to the world. And I started my journey to CREATE for the next generation of gamers.
However, years before my departure, it became clear to me that Capcom, having become a fairly old publicly-traded company, was no longer aspiring to lead in innovation. The risk-averseness that plagues most larger videogame publishers was holding back Capcom just the same. And while the 401k and cadillac health insurance were nice, I felt that my window to escape that corporate life was closing fast. So I left.
Why I am a consultant & why you should talk to me
I work as a consultant for two reasons:
First, I have expertise that is hard if not impossible to come by unless you're at an established videogame publisher, and I want to share it with outsiders and newcomers who can benefit from that knowledge.
Second, I want to help more than just one company. The industry is large and many teams need help. Many good games don't reach their full potential because younger teams have no clue what to expect out there. They often drive completely blind, unaware that they are headed straight toward a ditch. If I can save a few teams from shooting themselves in the foot, that would be plenty fulfilling for me.
So, if you're a game developer and your game is coming along nicely, reach out to me. I am always happy to meet new developers and learn about their projects. And while I won't pretend that I can double or triple your revenue, for some developers it could actually mean exactly that because poor execution can easily lead to games only achieving a fraction of their full potential. Ultimately, I can say with confidence that working with me will almost certainly improve your bottom line (and if I feel that your case might be an exception, I will advise you accordingly ^^).
I guess that's it for my first blog!