OVERVIEW

I spent 3.5 years in Japan working at Sony Interactive Entertainment on the PlayStation marketing and localization teams. My experiences have taught me about the challenges and rewards of delivering quality gaming experiences to audiences around the world from both user-centric and product-centric perspectives.

Most of my work involved working across cultural and linguistic boundaries. I was responsible for marketing Japanese versions of Western games and managing localization projects for Japanese and English games into Chinese and Korean. I was also an assistant on the PlayStation 4 hardware launch team during my first year at Sony.

Roles

Marketing Communications Manager

Localization Project Manager

Responsibilities

Marketing Strategy & Execution

Promotion & Sales

Event Management

Project Management

Software Translation & QA

Results

Lead 3 marketing campaigns

Managed budgets of $1M+

Shipped 10+ localized games

Helped launch PlayStation 4

PROCESS

I joined Sony Interactive Entertainment in October 2012 as one of two non-Japanese members of a 40+ person marketing team. There, I had the opportunity to learn about Japan's games industry and contribute to a number of different initiatives in communicating both hardware and software products. Later, I spent a year working in localization, where I was a facilitator and enabler for bringing Japanese and Western games to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and China.

Marketing work

A selection of games I've marketed and a few details about my work during the PlayStation 4 launch in Japan.

DRIVECLUB is a PS4 racing game with a social twist. I led the marketing in Japan where one of the biggest challenges was convincing racing game fans to try something other than Gran Turismo. I conducted a multi-channel advertising campaign featuring custom made YouTube trailers, leveraged market research and analytics to improve ROI on ads, organized a launch event live streamed on Japan's largest streaming service Nico Nico Video, appeared in promotional activities with Japanese race car drivers, social media outreach, and facilitated live demos at Tokyo Game Show.

Destiny of Spirits was a free-to-play global location game for the PS Vita that saw over 1 million downloads worldwide during its operation. I was responsible for promoting the game in Japan, the highest ARPPU region for the game in the world. I optimized cost-per-click and conversation rates on digital advertising, broadcasted regular live streams of the game with the developers, and collaborated with magazines to publish regular gameplay articles.

One of my favorite cooperative multiplayer games for PlayStation, HELLDIVERS is a download-only title that was a low budget challenge from a marketing perspective. I worked closely with the Japanese localization team to write regular blog posts about the game up until launch, schedule closed-door events with game media journalists to demo the game, and pushed for the inclusion of the game in a number of gaming events throughout Tokyo.

I was part of a 6 person team directly responsible for marketing strategy for the PlayStation 4 before its launch in February 22, 2014. As the most junior member, I played a support role executing strategy defined by senior team members such as handling media inquiries, writing press releases, overseeing logistics for events, and serving as liason with US and European branches.

A bit more about my localization responsibilities

I was a project manager on the third-party localization team at PlayStation's Asia division. My role was to work with strategy teams to help video game publishers and developers localize their games into Chinese and Korean.

For my role, I coordinated game directors, producers, programmers, and designers to resolve localization issues for 10+ game titles by managing project milestones, assessing risk, and monitoring asset quality. A lot of my work involved leveraging a combination of Japanese and English to keep all stakeholders updated on project progress. When issues arised I was directly responsible for putting out fires by doing my own translation checking, software debugging, and technical requirements (TRC) checking.

Companies I've worked with: Square Enix, Bandai Namco, SEGA, Capcom, Paradox Games, Idea Factory