The Reason I Jumped into the AR Blue Ocean After Creating Smartphone Games For 8 Years
Hi! I’m Naomi Numata, an intern at Pretia.
5 months have passed since I joined Pretia.It’s July already, time certainly flies.
Without further ado, let’s get right to the interview.
Today we’ll be interviewing the Product Manager Nagisa Mizukami, who joined Pretia in April.
Nagisa Mizukami
Graduated from College of Contemporary psychology, RIkkyo University. Born in Hokkaido, raised in Kanagawa.
Nagisa started her job at gumi Inc. as a new graduate, involved in numerous original IP social game developments/ managements. In May of 2015, after gumi Inc. got listed, she did a career change and started working at DeNA Co., Ltd. There she worked on a major IP social game development, and gained experience for large-scale developments.
After working on social games for 8 years, she joins Pretia Inc. in April 2019 as a Product Manager to challenge new possibilities in entertainment.
Nagisa, thank you for taking your time today!
My pleasure!
So what exactly did you work on at gumi and DeNA?
I was the Game Director at gumi, and the Planner at DeNA.
At gumi I worked on various things, like launching a new game and directing a major IP. I got to experience negotiation, level design, event planning, implementation of Gacha systems, leading a team and much more.
At DeNA, I was involved in a major IP. It had a lot of in-game content, and there were many projects running simultaneously. I was in charge of the release of one of them.
When did you start considering a career change? Was there a specific event that made you start thinking about it?
Well, to be honest, I wasn’t thinking about a career change at all when I was at DeNA. It wasn’t like I was job hunting back then.
Wow, really? Then what brought you to Pretia…?
So when I was at gumi, I worked on expanding a small company. At DeNA, I was focused on one major project, working on its release and leading an entire team. Since I was still at DeNA, I wanted to work at a company smaller than gumi, to make use of my experiences at the two companies. Expanding a company through committed game-creating was what I was looking forward to.
Obviously, I wanted to work in the entertainment industry and nowhere else, so I looked up some companies that create entertainment products and were in the middle of expanding. Sadly, many of the existing smartphone-game companies had already become well known . It seemed like the “perfect” workplace didn’t exist for me.
I could decide to make one for myself. If I was going to start a business on my own, I would have to take a side job to raise funds for that. That was right about when Yoshimi contacted me. It surprised me because Pretia seemed like the perfect place to do what I’ve been wanting to. That’s how I ended up here.
What gave you the final push to joining us?
There’s various reasons.
Firstly, I wanted to be involved in creating games that utilized the latest technology, like VR and AR. I worked on social games and browser games for 8 years before I joined Pretia.
Frankly speaking, they were all “Gacha games”. The 7 or 8 games I worked on had different themes and systems, but the basic idea was the same; Selling something through a gacha. They were targeted at similar audience types as well. It made me feel like I was stuck. . It made me wonder if I was going to end up working on the same kind of gacha games for the rest of my life.
Looking at the current gaming industry, there’s plenty of games other than gachas. Through playing VR games at VRZone or Pokemon GO, I decided that I wanted to tackle a new type of game.
Secondly, I thought Pretia was the perfect place for “expanding a small company”.
When I was at gumi, there were about 80 members. Back then, none of their products were a big hit and they were on the verge of going bankrupt. Then one of the games became super popular. It led to gumi expanding overseas and becoming more famous. It was looking more and more like an actual company. Looking back at it, the whole experience was thrilling like a roller-coaster.
On the other hand, after moving to DeNA, I got to see what a mature company is like. I learned quite a few things I thought I could apply to small companies like gumi.
So I think I can combine both of those experiences to come up with unique ideas.
Thirdly, I felt that the members were competent and honest. It’s common for startups to be unorganized, member-wise. Not to sound condescending, but when I talked with Yu and Yoshimi, I began to see that Pretia is a pretty solid startup. It convinced me that I’d be able to devote myself to game creation with great members like them.
Lastly, I thought it would allow me to work on new developments.
In the smartphone-gaming industry, it’s getting increasingly difficult to make a big success with new games. You could spend a billion yen on a project just to see it fail. So companies tend to pick out only the very best members and assign them to new projects. On top of that, since I had more experience on game management than development, it was getting harder to be involved in new game development projects. Here at Pretia, my job is not limited to just game development, but also expanding the business and the AR market itself as well. I think that’s pretty amazing.
After actually joining, what do you like the most about Pretia?
The international environment. When I first heard that the official language is English, I assumed all the documents were in English or something, but it was so much more than that.
And I can really see that each member strongly believes in Pretia’s missions, especially in 1 on 1s. It’s wonderful that we can all band together based on the company’s mottos, no matter the country or the background.
All-English is pretty tough, isn’t it….
Definitely tough.
I’m not the best at English, but when I make grammatical mistakes, the engineers give me advice via DM. When I struggle to express something or it ends up sounding a bit rude, I explain and apologize later. They always tell me it’s completely fine, and give me a lot of support.
Except for Gary, all the non-Japanese engineers are non-native English speakers as well. That does help relieve the pressure quite a bit. It would’ve been really hard for me if they were all native speakers…
I feel like you’re only mentioning good things about Pretia! Do you have any points you want to improve in the future?
The products, the system of development, the question of how we can work comfortably and efficiently at the same time… I want to find solutions with the other members.
There’s plenty of room for improvement regarding the game itself,its development, its popularity and so on. I’ll work on anything that I notice.
Tell us about your personal prospects for the future.
I want to be able to do both creative and business. I feel like there’s already plenty of people who can do one of those, so I’ll keep trying to think from both perspectives.
Since PMs can both manage a product and get involved in the business side, I feel that it’s the perfect position for me.
I have three people I look up to, and all of them have both of those business perspectives and creative perspectives. Plus, they have the ability to think outside the box, creating a variety of genres ranging from popular ones to rather controversial ones. I understand the fun in working on one megahit product, but I’d rather create many different types of products.
One of the three is Osamu Tezuka, the manga artist. He worked on anime before anime was a thing in Japan. Creating AR/VR games is kind of similar to that. I want to be a pioneer at the forefront of AR games.
Reading your past articles, I came upon the phrase “Creating multiple worlds”.
I had online friends back when I was in middle school. The internet was a sketchier place than it is now….
I liked manga and games since then, but unfortunately there was no one around me I could share my hobbies with. So I started posting on online forums, which made me really happy to see that people shared the same views as me. It became a habit to share things online when things weren’t working out well in real life. I learned to get satisfaction from both real life relationships and online ones depending on the situation.
Based on that experience, ever since I started working, I’ve focused on promoting online communications. On the other hand, it started getting difficult to meet my friends as often because our lifestyles were quite different. The ratio of online relationships to real life relationships were slowly changing from 5:5 to about 8:2.
With less real life private interactions, I had been experiencing a bit of an empty feeling for the past few years. I knew myself that the 5:5 ratio was the best, and I wanted to get back to that.
Even though the internet is such a big thing now, I feel like a lot of people actually want real life connection.
I was almost thinking it was inevitable that we focus less on real life interactions, but then I saw Pretia’s mission; “Empower collaborative achievement”. AR games create a whole different world as well as strengthen the connections you have in real life.
Please leave a message for the upcoming PMs!
It’s great if they’re like, “I’m gonna do this!”.
And someone who sympathizes with our missions. Or someone who might feel stuck or bored with smartphone games….
The smartphone game industry is a “red ocean”; It’s high-risk high-return. If you’re unlucky, all you’ll have left is a big debt. The competition is more intense than ever.
Having had the 8 years of experience, I wanted to take a risk and so I jumped into a “blue ocean”. It’s perfect for someone who wants to utilize their experience as well as trying a new field within gaming.
It’s been 8 years since I started working in the gaming industry, and there were 2 paradigm shifts during that time period. One — when browser games became popular, and another when smartphone games became popular. The number of players increase greatly when a paradigm shift is happening. I think it’ll be interesting is we can work as pioneer players of the AR/VR games. The work we do is a different kind of fun from working on services that are already popular. . Pretia is a great place for people who find that appealing.
That’s it for the interview!
Listening to her story, there were a lot of phrases that resonated with me. I really felt Nagisa’s passion towards creation.
Nagisa is a super motivated person who is willing to catch up on all kinds of things, and she takes whatever action is needed to meet her goals!
I truly respect her attitude towards work. I have a lot to learn from it!
If you’ve read this article and are feeling interested, why don’t you come come join Pretia, where many inspiring members like Nagisa await you? Let’s unlock the future of AR games together!
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This article is originally posted by Naomi Numata, Pretia,inc. Translated from Japanese by Yui Arita. Available July 1st,2019, from Wantedly.
