Today, Sega officially announced that it has hired Joseph Kim as Vice President of Product, to lead its mobile product strategy in the West. Kim’s previous position was as FunPlus’ Studio Head in the Strategy Division, but his history includes work on other noteworthy games like Faraway Kingdoms: Dragon Raiders, NBA Rush, and Fantasy Quest. He has also consulted on a number of mobile games, and is responsible for launching an early social game called League of Heroes on Myspace and Facebook, which ended up being one of the highest monetizing games of its time.
Chris Olson, COO at Sega Networks states, “This position is instrumental in pulling all three of our wholly owned studios and two studio investments together to drive Sega’s success on mobile.”
Sega’s mobile division is growing at a steady pace, with releases like Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom and Puzzle & Glory. The original Sonic Dash, which released in 2013, recently hit a milestone of 150 million downloads.
When asked about Sega’s focus on mobile gaming, Olson told [a]listdaily, “It’s a huge focus for us. Sega created a separate division in Japan to better compete with the rapid market changes we’ve seen in the mobile space. They’ve been highly successful and our division in San Francisco, Sega Networks, have modeled ourselves in similar fashion. We have three studios in the West devoted to mobile titles with strategic investments in two more companies. It’s a growth market and we aim to bring our games to as many players as possible. We think we offer a competitive advantage as we have a deep heritage in creating compelling entertainment experiences; as the market matures, player expectations will rise and we have a lot of experience in bringing high quality games to market. It’s an exciting time for games and we are enthused to bring our creations to market.”
[a]listdaily talks to Joseph Kim, newly appointed to VP of Product, to find out what the future might have in store as Sega moves deeper into mobile development.
What initially drew you to Sega
Sega is a renowned brand with global recognition that I loved growing up. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work for the company that created two of my personal favorites, Golden Axe and Shinobi. Aside from the quality IP, the team at Sega is filled with passionate people who value their work. I wanted to be a part of the enthusiasm that they have coming to work every day and share my knowledge with them. It’s also great having Sonic in the office to put a smile on my face.
Can you tell us a little more about your new role and your plans for it
My role is still fairly new. But I’ll be tasked with helping to ensure that Sega’s mobile titles are the best they can be. I’ll be involved with various partners across Sega to give input on our roadmaps, vetting titles in the pipeline, working closely with product managers to ensure high quality standards, and ensuring players get an exceptional game experience.
My plans are to do whatever it takes and within the scope of my power to ensure we make the best games possible. More specifically though, I want to start by ensuring that the studios we work with have the best support possible to improve their games. Sega has existing infrastructure to help the studios including BI, market intelligence, customer support/marketing, and product strategy functions. My initial goal is to help these teams make extremely impactful contributions to the studios.
How do you see Sega’s mobile offerings evolving and growing this year
It’s still too early for me to comment on this, but I can speak more generally on how I’d like to see Sega’s offerings evolve over a longer term period.
First of all, I believe that we are fundamentally still early in terms of new categories of mobile games in the market. I strongly believe we will see new classes of mobile games evolve that are unique and fun. I feel we are getting pretty close with strong hints of breakthrough gameplay in several genres such as tactical turn based role-playing, action role-playing, and strategy card battle hybrids. In each of these genres we have seen games that have solved different parts of the complete puzzle to break through but not quite there yet. However, I sense a game in one of those genres will break through similar to how DOTA Legends broke through last year in the party-based active skill battle game category. So, my hope is for Sega to aggressively attack these types of promising new game categories.
Secondly, I am a huge fan of existing Sega IP whether it’s Golden Axe, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter, Valkyria Chronicles, Altered Beast, etc. I’d also like to see us do tasteful +1 game design iterations on more proven game categories using our IP. This may be internal development or with talented 2nd or 3rd party developers we partner with.This isn’t a promise of anything to come, but certainly something I’m personally interested in looking into.
What are some of your favorite mobile games right now, and how do you think they influence your approach to mobile
One of the reasons why I think there is a big opportunity in mobile gaming is that I don’t really have any current games I’m playing. Some of my past favorites, however, have been Summoners War, Hearthstone, Frontline Commando 2, Paladog, Heavy Mach Defense, and WindRunner.
