Yuta Maeda, Senior Executive Officer, GREE, Inc.

Using "love" as a weapon, we will spread excitement to the world.

Senior Executive Officer, GREE, Inc.　Yuta Maeda(Maeda Yuuta)

■ Profile

Born in Kakamigahara City, Gifu Prefecture in 1982. Since 2006, he has worked at venture capital firm JAFCO Group Co., Ltd., where he has been involved in venture investment and development, mainly in the IT/mobile sector. He then joined Pokelabo Inc. in 2009, and was appointed Representative Director and President in 2011, his current position. Pokelabo became a subsidiary of GREE, Inc. in 2012. Since 2013, he has concurrently served as Senior Executive Officer and Director of GREE, Inc., his current position. Patent attorney.

With the mission of "Making the world a better place through the Internet," GREE has continued to grow since its founding in 2004. We spoke with Maeda, Director and Senior Executive Officer in charge of GREE's games and anime business, about his career so far, the appeal of GREE, and its commitment and strengths in games.

As a student, I was passionate about music and kickboxing. I was immersed in band activities from high school, and when I moved to Tokyo from Gifu Prefecture to attend university, I doubled up my studies with music school. However, facing the harsh realities of the music world, I gave up on my dream and focused on kickboxing. While neither of these experiences are directly related to my current job, I apply them to many aspects of it. Music nurtured my creative spirit, and kickboxing provided me with the skills to condition my mind and body. After graduate school, I obtained a patent attorney license. I worked part-time drafting patent specifications. After graduating, I decided to look for a job, but I realized the obvious fact that I knew nothing about jobs in the real world. I realized I had to choose the type of work I wanted. I focused on the venture capital industry because it offered me the opportunity to interact with many different companies and jobs, and ultimately joined JAFCO (JAFCO Group Co., Ltd.). After joining the company, I met with over 100 company presidents each year, participated in board meetings and management meetings for our portfolio companies, and gained experience working with companies in a variety of industries and at various stages of development. Among these, I focused on three areas I believed could "compete globally from Japan" and pursued: regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, and mobile games. At the time, gaming was booming on major overseas social networking sites like Facebook, and the release of smartphones was expected in the near future. I focused on investing in mobile games, seeing them as the fastest-growing market sector over the past decade. While meeting and investing with mobile game companies, I was approached by the founder of the newly established Pokelabo Inc., and joined the company as Director and CFO in July 2009. At the time, the company raised 1 billion yen and took a big gamble, but things were not smooth sailing. The company faced a management crisis within a year, and I became president. With the rise of smartphones, we quickly shifted to mobile games for smartphones, achieving significant growth. In 2012, we entered into a capital and business alliance with GREE, Inc., further expanding our business. While concurrently serving as a director of Gree, he is taking on even greater challenges by developing the Gree Group's game and anime business through three companies: Pokelabo, WFS Inc., and Gree Entertainment Inc.

■ Because I love it, I understand the feelings of my fans

One of the attractions of GREE's game and anime business is that we have many employees who are otaku in the broadest sense of the word. People who have a deep love for something know how to please their fans. That's why I believe that love is an important talent, just like being good at drawing or doing quick calculations. It's precisely because of this love that we feel, "We want to create something that we find truly interesting, and we want to cherish the people who enjoy our work." While content creation may seem glamorous at first glance, it's actually extremely tough. Sometimes, even after spending three to five years preparing for release, it doesn't sell at all. When something we created, believing it to be interesting, doesn't sell, we feel rejected. It's also a job that you can't continue without a strong love for it.

■ Pursuing a game that is uniquely Japanese

One of the things the Gree Group is conscious of when developing games is creating "works with a Japanese flair." Our definition of "Japaneseness" is games with a narrative that resonates with viewers within Japanese culture and context. There are countless Japanese game fans around the world, so regional localization and cultural adaptation are unnecessary. There are many users who want to enjoy Japanese games as they are. As a result of the global spread of otaku culture, the number of game creators is rapidly increasing. In fact, it is said that there are already 10 times as many creators in China as there are in Japan. However, even though the number of competitors is increasing, while it may be possible to copy Japanese-style appearances and systems, it is not so easy to replicate the uniquely Japanese worldviews and depth of settings. In games, Japan itself is a brand.

■Message to university students

I encourage all university students to just get moving. Looking back on your life, don't you think that the experiences that have become part of you and the starting point of something were born from spontaneous action? Focus on the "quantity" of action. In recent years, advances in the internet and AI have made it easier to obtain knowledge and information, and the standards for intelligence are changing. Knowledge and intelligence are increasingly becoming commodities. What's important is the ability to effectively utilize digital technologies, including AI, and the ability to ask questions based on the experiences gained from action. Make full use of your position and time as a student and just get moving. Develop the habit of taking action and carve out your own future.

Student Newspaper April 1, 2024 Issue Tsuda University First Year Student Ishimatsu Karin