Understanding your unique value
On a podcast with guests coming mostly from the product management side, it was really nice talking to Jen since her career was built on marketing games rather than developing them. She worked at some of the biggest companies like EA, Zynga, Scopely, and Riot where she collaborated with game development teams as a part of the marketing department.
Her entrance to the games industry happened thanks to her background in the toys industry which has a lot in common especially with regards to the types of IP used such as Star Wars or Monopoly. The key part in her transition, in addition to her experience with working on those common IPs, was her ability to unlock her network in order to capture opportunities.
As someone who worked at those large game teams for years, Jen recommends people to focus on their unique value when they try to enter the games industry. It is important for a team or company to realize how you will differentiate yourself from others and move the team forward. This unique value certainly includes your professional skills, but is not limited to it. You should also show that you are someone that others want to spend time with. In the end, we are spending most of our waking hours at work, so it is important for your teammates-to-be to want to have you around.
Another important factor is to show that you are productive and can get stuff done. Most of the things we label as “work” is actually executing projects with different scopes. No matter which industry you are in, you need to be able to finish things that customers (be it another company or individuals) will be satisfied with. This can be displayed through several things from previous jobs you had or the projects you worked on during college. But even when none of these exist, you can use your personal life to show that you can get stuff done. If you played a team sport, you can show that you were able to collaborate with many other people to reach the same goal. Or if cooking is your favorite pastime activity, you can say that you are used to having a plan and following it while improvising when necessary to come up with the end product. I think this is a really crucial point since we mostly try to confine work to professional limits. But lots of things we do in our private time also help us become better professionals.
When it comes to growing yourself both personally and professionally, adaptability is what Jen thinks has the biggest effect. If you can’t change your approach to people and problems according to conditions, you will not improve yourself in the long term. You might find a comfort zone where you don’t need to change your approach at all, but that will end up limiting your career if you are not willing to change your behavior. Although this does not mean you should completely forget about your core values and just go with the flow, you should understand how much you can flex your style. With that understanding in mind, you can fine tune your approach to different people or different problems when necessary.
Since Jen is a marketing expert, she has a lot of experience on both how a marketer should collaborate with a game development team and how a product person should collaborate with a marketing team. Her go-to recommendation for marketers is playing the game being developed and its competitors. When a marketer brings insights from other games on the market in order to help the team have a better understanding, the game development team will be much more willing to work closely with the marketing team going forward. And when the tables are turned, a product person should try to keep the marketing team in the loop and provide them with both updates and material regarding the game. When a marketing team is informed about the game’s roadmap and is given the necessary material to use for supporting that plan, they will simply fall in love with that product person.
The importance of focusing on your unique value is sometimes ignored or underestimated. Each person in a team has specific responsibilities, but the end goal is the same for everyone. And when you realize the unique value that you can bring to the table, you can really double down on it and show that you can move the whole team towards that target. That will make others trust and depend on you more through time, which will help you take more and more responsibility and grow yourself.