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Speaker Spotlight: Yengage director of sales Justin Susumu Endo reveals how to be an international player

Justin Susumu Endo will be part of a panel at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki discussing how to be a truly international player

Speaker Spotlight: Yengage director of sales Justin Susumu Endo reveals how to be an international player

Justin Susumu Endo is the Director of Sales and Marketing and a Co-founder at Yengage. At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki on September 11th to 12th he'll be part of a panel with the topic On Being A Truly International Player.

Click here to get more info about the show and to buy your tickets.

Justin Susumu Endo is the co-founder of Yengage with two years in the mobile games advertising space.

Before Yengage, he completed his MBA at Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne with a focus on marketing and analytics.

He also has 2 years of technical sales in the IT/healthcare industry and worked for 2 years in Japan.

PocketGamer.Biz: What does your role at the company entail?

Justin Susumu Endo: We help foreign studios advertise their games in Japan, providing user acquisition, creative services, PR, and influencer marketing.

I manage all sales and marketing activities for Yengage and oversee our day-to-day campaign operations.

What do you think have been the most exciting developments in gaming since the last Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki?

Personally, I love mobile gaming, so seeing new and exciting games from AAA to indies is awesome.

From a gaming perspective, the rise of battle royale games has been impressive, to say the least (though I'm much better at PUBG than Fortnite).

I am also an active Pokemon Go player so it's been interesting to see how the recently launched trading feature really revitalised their userbase.

What are your thoughts on the way the industry has grown in the last 12 months?

Japan has really started to open up to new game genres. In the past, it was hard to compete as a foreign title against the massive Japanese titles like Puzzle & Dragons, Tsum Tsum, and Monster Strike.

This year, you've seen new breakouts and Japanese players are interested in trying different games (both genre and look and feel).

Knives Out and Identity V (both by Netease) have shown that new genres other than casual games with RPG elements can be successful in Japan.

Also, the rise of premium-looking hidden object games like those by MyTona and G5 have filled a strong niche in Japan.

What do you think the next 12 months in mobile gaming are going to look like?

Japanese studios are pretty risk averse and there is not a big indie scene in Japan.

However, as I said previously, Japanese players are becoming more sophisticated and open to new gaming experiences.

As such, I expect the Japanese market to continue to open up to foreign studios. I expect new genres to become popular with a huge opportunity for indies and mid-sized studios.

Which part of Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki are you most looking forward to and why?

The networking with peers! These events are a great chance to catch up with familiar faces and make new connections in the industry.

About Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki

In a few short weeks the whole mobile gaming industry is set to descend on Helsinki for Pocket Gamer Connects. The event, which runs from September 11th to 12th, is packed full of talks, tracks, networking opportunities, and more. You can read about the full conference schedule here.

There are still tickets available for the show, and if you click this link right here you'll get all the information you need on how to buy them, and what's going to be happening in Helsinki over the two days.


Contributing Editor

Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.