In this blog post, we will introduce how to effectively utilize your contest award experience in your game planning self-introduction letter and turn it into practical competitiveness.
Self-introduction
“I am curious and positive.”
I grew up traveling between Korea and other countries. My father is Chinese and works in the auto parts industry, and my mother is a teacher, so I had to change schools every four years. Thanks to my parents, I was able to visit many countries, including the US, China, and the UK, and learn many things. I also became more familiar with different languages than my peers. Thanks to my mother, I was also able to visit various regions and countries within Korea and meet many people. When I was young, my parents were worried that traveling to different countries and changing schools would make it difficult for me to make friends, but I am a very curious and positive person, so visiting different places and meeting different people had a positive influence on me. In particular, I think meeting new people was a really valuable experience for me. Meeting people with different personalities, different tendencies, and different ethnicities and hometowns, talking with them, and listening to their life stories broadened my understanding of people. Seeing different lives that I couldn’t experience indirectly through books made me think that I grew up to be a person who can think a little more broadly. Thanks to my positive experiences as a child, I grew up with a personality that makes it easy for me to get along with people. I grew up as someone who likes to accept new things and come up with ideas to create something new.
“When I decide to do something, I don’t give up no matter what obstacles I face.”
When I was young, I wasn’t very interested in studying. If I had stayed in South Korea, I would have studied diligently, but while living abroad, I saw people who were doing what they wanted to do without being concerned about their educational background, and that made me think about what I wanted to do rather than studying. So, I focused on painting, which I loved, and when I saw something new, I devoted myself to coming up with new ideas through it. Then, at some point, I realized that I am Korean and that in order to establish myself in South Korea, I needed to study hard and get into a good university. In the past, I thought that this would destroy my individuality and personal preferences, but as I searched for information about what I really wanted to do, I realized that academic achievement is a sign of perseverance. So I started studying, and that was when I was in my second year of high school. I studied hard until I rose from the bottom of my class to first place. I started studying one subject at a time, and continued until my grades improved in English, Korean, and mathematics. As a result, I began to improve one by one. I knew I had to do it, and once I realized that I was studying for my dream, I felt less stressed and more free. That’s why I was able to enroll in the business school I wanted to attend, and while I was there thinking about starting a game company, I started working at Neowiz and realized that I wanted to develop more innovative games, so I began preparing to apply for a job at your company.
Strengths and weaknesses
“I am competitive and driven.”
The strengths of my personality are my competitiveness and drive. What surprised me while I was in business school was that people were doing so many things and had so many projects in progress. Amidst all that, I was curious and liked to laugh, so I don’t think people saw me as someone who was hard-working or good at anything. By chance, a business school professor I really wanted to hear speak came to give a lecture, and when he saw that I wanted to make the most innovative game in the world, he told me that in order to do that, I had to put in the effort first. In other words, it seemed like I wasn’t trying hard enough. Hearing his words, I became determined to succeed, and from that moment on, I began investing 10 hours a day in pursuing what I wanted to do. I put a lot of effort into analyzing games and planning them again, and as a result, I was able to win a contest. I am usually very curious and interested in many things, but once I start working on something, I tend to focus on that one thing. I think this tendency will be useful in creating games that require a high level of immersion and in pushing forward with planning.
“Let’s talk no matter what”
I am very driven, so when I start working, I tend to ignore my surroundings, which was a good thing in business school classes where teamwork was important, but it was also a bad thing. I didn’t communicate enough, and once I started working on something, I didn’t pay attention to what was going on around me and gave harsh evaluations, which made my teammates who weren’t ready feel intimidated. So now, I make sure to communicate with everyone. I set aside time during meetings and breaks to check in with my team and see how everyone is doing. As I started talking to people, I got to know their different sides, which I was able to apply to the game, and it gave me an opportunity to think about the synergy that a good team can create.
Successes, failures, and lessons learned
“Living away from home and the tears I shed in a gosiwon”
My biggest success and failure was when I first moved out on my own. When I entered college, I thought that my free spirit would make it difficult for me to live at home with my family, and my parents were also supportive of me moving out, so I took the 2 million won I had saved from part-time jobs and moved to Seoul, where I found a small room in a gosiwon near the university. The lessons I learned during my two years living in a gosiwon were incredible. I learned that I had to be careful not to make even small noises, not to invade other people’s space, that it was difficult to manage a small room, the importance and difficulty of doing things on my own, and the responsibility of earning money to pay for my room. Until then, I had lived a life full of curiosity, but but after moving into a gosiwon, getting sick, vomiting in my room, and cleaning it up myself, I became an adult who could take responsibility for myself. Living away from home, especially living alone and taking responsibility for myself, allowed me to develop a sense of responsibility. I also learned to accept other people. When I was just studying, I couldn’t accept people who behaved strangely. I couldn’t understand why people stole, became addicted to drugs or alcohol, or drank excessively, but after entering university and becoming responsible for my own life, I realized that people live in many different ways in order to make a living, and that’s why I started to live a life of respect for others. I think I was immature, but as I matured, my understanding broadened.
