👊 Joseph Kim

While out to dinner with Demiurge folks one night we talked about different brands and the strength of those brands including WWE. After dinner, I checked WWE relative to other brands like Marvel and Star Wars using Google Trends and realized just how strong the brand is. I then found Ed Kiang (of WWE) through a LinkedIn search and cold messaged him to discuss a potential game together.

To determine the game to make, I asked SEGA employees if we had any WWE fans and I found there were 6… Show more

While out to dinner with Demiurge folks one night we talked about different brands and the strength of those brands including WWE. After dinner, I checked WWE relative to other brands like Marvel and Star Wars using Google Trends and realized just how strong the brand is. I then found Ed Kiang (of WWE) through a LinkedIn search and cold messaged him to discuss a potential game together.

To determine the game to make, I asked SEGA employees if we had any WWE fans and I found there were 6 at our company. I conducted 1:1 interviews with all of them and brainstormed different game concepts with them. While I initially determined that a "WWE Management" game resonated most strongly with our internal WWE fans, we couldn't find a good studio to execute the game design. I was thinking of gameplay based on the game King's League Odyssey on Kongregate as an emulation target. We then ran a survey to see how WWE fans would like different game concepts including a WWE fighting game, WWE management, and WWE idle. While Management ranked #1, Idle ranked just slightly lower than fighting which seemed to indicate that a WWE idle game may actually be viable.

While visiting Demiurge studios on another occasion I happened to have lunch with Dave Bisceglia the CEO of The Tap Lab at the time and they were working on their Politicats idle game. I found our idle game studio.

After launch, Tap Lab became unavailable so we transitioned the game to Demiurge who were local.

This game project, unfortunately, was not the big success we had hoped for. Most of the fault is mine. I asked the initial team to explore gacha with idle mechanics and this was not done in a good way. I needed to understand the game category a lot more and to understand how to actually make that work or not do it. Further, the math in the game for progression against rewards was fundamentally broken. Somehow we had an exponential progress curve against an exponential difficulty curve rather than polynomial or linear. Show less

The origins of this game started when SOA (SEGA of America) requested a mobile game be developed as a companion app to their console game Sonic Forces. After going through a number of different suggestions I recommended a sync, multiplayer runner based on my kids experience playing Fun Run 2 and the download volume for that game. I initially thought a 2-D runner would be better but Hardlight studio had the Sonic Dash engine and once they built a prototype we thought it was super… Show more

The origins of this game started when SOA (SEGA of America) requested a mobile game be developed as a companion app to their console game Sonic Forces. After going through a number of different suggestions I recommended a sync, multiplayer runner based on my kids experience playing Fun Run 2 and the download volume for that game. I initially thought a 2-D runner would be better but Hardlight studio had the Sonic Dash engine and once they built a prototype we thought it was super fun.

Hence, my involvement in the game was coming up with the initial game concept and shepherding the game through initial green light. I also staffed publishing side resources on the project. From there, just high level oversight/recommendations and had no day-to-day involvement with the Hardlight team. Primarily just recommendations and advice. Show less

Led team of 46 (core team) + 19 (central). Turnaround of project in mid-development. Reset all major processes including PM, development, art, and UI/UX. Restructured team and brought in key hires. Shifted global development in 4 offices in 4 continents to centralize in 1 office in Beijing HQ before handing off to Beijing team for project completion. Worked every day including weekends (16+ hour days) and every holiday except for 2 weeks when my wife gave birth. This project was a… Show more

Led team of 46 (core team) + 19 (central). Turnaround of project in mid-development. Reset all major processes including PM, development, art, and UI/UX. Restructured team and brought in key hires. Shifted global development in 4 offices in 4 continents to centralize in 1 office in Beijing HQ before handing off to Beijing team for project completion. Worked every day including weekends (16+ hour days) and every holiday except for 2 weeks when my wife gave birth. This project was a beast.

King of Avalon has been in the Top #10 Grossing since launch as well as reaching Top #1 Grossing in Nov of 2016. Show less