Gamania is renowned for its business acumen and many competitors have tried and failed to emulate its "out of the blue" creativity. How does Gamania's operations division go about being creative? What is their attitude toward creativity? G!VOICE invited Bea from GTW-GO1 to share their secrets with us. To our surprise, Bea told us right off the bat: There is no such thing as creativity that comes out of the blue. Creativity must be "cultivated"!
GTW-GO1
Senior Manager WANG, Lan-Chun (Bea)
G!VOICE: What does creativity mean to you?
Bea： Any idea is creative if it is not bound by old frameworks, formats or methods! You can also call it "Innovation".
G!VOICE: Where does your creativity come from? How does it take shape?
Bea： I think "Creativity" is something that must be "cultivated". If I have a goal today and I need to be creative in a particular field, I must then pay particular attention to these matters in my everyday life. When I look at these things I ask myself: What do I think of them? How should I interpret them? There is no right or wrong answer, but I think of it as a form of training. I am in fact preparing myself to look for good ideas in the haystack.
I also actively look for novel experiences, browse other people's blogs and leaf through magazines at random. Sometimes, creativity is just something that strikes your fancy. Mind you, it tends to show up when I am suffering from insomnia. （Laughs）
G!VOICE： What is the hardest part about generating creative ideas?
Bea： It's really hard to "connect creativity with business"! Sometimes, the search for creativity ends up with all kinds of wacky or illogical ideas. They might work for some industries but might not be suitable for our current business environment.
G!VOICE： How do you encourage creativity in your team? Is there a particular process?
Bea： There is no guide book for creativity. It is also very abstract and subjective with the definition varying from person to person. You can't use a text-book approach to teach them how to be creative. What I do is if I see an interesting case study I will share it with everyone. Other people can then digest it and form their own interpretation.
G!VOICE： How do you identify good ideas?
Bea： A good idea is hard to define and this may depend on the needs of your industry as well. We see all kinds of very creative thinking in the media but all they produce is a lot of "Like". For me, if a creative idea can't be connected with a business opportunity then from an operations perspective it's too insubstantial to be a good idea.
G!VOICE：Can you provide a few ways or tools that you or your team use to generate creative ideas?
Bea：In operations, we now increasingly emphasize the use of data mining and analysis to support or verify product assumptions. Creativity therefore is a relatively small role for us compared to say Marketing, Branding or PR. We take a more scientific approach so there is less room for true creativity. The "cognitive map" is a tool I tend to use. As for helping the team come up with ideas for defining the product or marketing niche, my guidance usually consists of asking the team several important questions: 1. What is it that we have and other people don't? 2. What are other people better at? What is it that the market lacks but we can provide? We find the answers to these questions then back it up with our experience in the market and understanding of the target audience is my usual approach.
G!VOICE： Please provide an example of your creativity.
Bea： Before Dragon Nest was launched, the team and I believed that hacks represent a fatal threat and also colors players' perception of our company and products. We therefore came up with "Severe penalties for hacking" as the main marketing message. After receiving enthusiastic support from the Company and other units, we immediately put this into action and immediately generated a huge buzz at the launch. We used different methods to show players the results from our anti-hacking campaign and turned them from doubters into converts.
Operations believe that creative ideas must connect with business opportunity.
Creative marketing that turned doubters into converts helped Dragon Nest win popular acclaim!
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