（私は実際には小さな2つの理由については、この論文を投稿するためらっていた。 1つは、私の元会社に過ぎるので、少し（誰とお友達と私はまだ私の元上司の情報を非表示にしていることを編集している）を少し行くと恐らく私は開示しないことを要望する。 2 、私はまだ恋に私の考えにしているけど、正直に言えば、それは関係ないと思う。もし誰か、との考えを盗んだ私の望みどおりの自分を実行する可能性が、その後は最高だベトナムのため。 ）
Essay A: What matters most to you, and why? (Recommended length is 3-4 pages, double-spaced)
I grew up wanting to feel more Vietnamese. When I was younger, I went to school on Sundays to learn the language, but I never studied for class. My parents taught me and my sister our family rituals, but I never paid careful attention to them. I was in the common predicament of someone wanting things without a willingness to work for them. I want to be fluent, I want to make my parents proud, I want to help my countrymen ¬- these thoughts would regularly be overridden by, I want to play computer games, I want to watch TV, I want to watch football on Sunday mornings . Today, what I find to be most important to me is gaining a better understanding of my Vietnamese heritage.
As I grew older, I started to fulfill some of the goals I had made in my youth. Before my junior year at UC Berkeley, I switched my major to Comparative Literature to study literature in English and Vietnamese. At the time, I considered myself a good writer and was stunned when I received a C on my first paper. I realized I needed to develop my skills considerably when I was told by another student that this was the lowest possible grade a professor would assign for a completed paper.
Improvement came slowly. A graduate student I had befriended showed me how to probe at the deeper issues in the works I was reading, and I used her instruction to gradually improve my analytic and writing skills over the rest of my time at Berkeley, managing reasonable grades. My grades were relatively lower than those of other students in the department, but when I graduated I felt accomplishment in reading the same Vietnamese authors my parents had grown up on. This desire to explore my heritage has also led me to write articles concerning Vietnamese-American identity that have been published by the newspaper Viet Weekly and Viet Voice Magazine.
In 2003, I studied abroad in Hanoi, Vietnam during the fall semester of my senior year to see firsthand the developments in the post-war society. It turned out to be the most rewarding experience of my life, and for the first time, I truly felt comfortable with my Vietnamese identity. At the same time, I saw the progress of the market economy and the exciting changes that were occurring there. When I returned to America, I started thinking about returning to Vietnam to work, learn more about my roots, and complete my fluency in the language. I realized, however, I did not have a plan for what I would do there and decided to stay in America to work, gain experience, and slowly develop a plan that would lead to my return.
In January 2004, after my return from Vietnam, I started work at a video game company named [former company], and was offered a full-time position once I graduated that spring. This was actually my second tenure there. In the spring of 2000, I was hired as a shipping intern at the age of 19, the 9th employee of the company. At the time, [former company] only rented video games online. When I left at the end of 2001 to finish my undergraduate degree, I had been entrusted with the company’s game purchasing decisions, controlling over fifty thousand dollars a month, but more significantly, the challenge of growing our subscriber base, and thus, the business, by balancing the needs of the customer within the restrictions of our limited budget.
At [former company], I fulfilled a childhood dream of working in the video game industry. When I was young, I could not afford to buy many video games, but I would accompany my parents to shopping malls each weekend so I could sit down at a bookstore and read video game magazines. When I think about my experience beyond the professional aspects, it is exciting to think about how I contributed to the development of three video games and two game peripherals, and was even interviewed by a gaming website!
In 2004, [former company] had started to manufacture video game peripherals and in 2005, video game publishing was added to the business. At that time, I was put in charge of our online store, initializing marketing strategies and inventory purchasing, because of my past success in recognizing sales opportunities and grassroots marketing. [former company]’s online store was unique from those of other video game companies because a sizable portion of our revenue had always come from direct sales. Recently, however, sales had stalled, and I was asked to return the store to its former prominence.
At the beginning of 2006, I was made E-Commerce Manager after leading the online store to a record holiday season, more than doubling our seasonal revenue goal with sales of $[]. More importantly, I had showed upper management my maturity and leadership skills in leading the office through a stressful season that forced the entire office to fulfill online store orders in the rain and cold for six straight weeks. I was twenty-five at the time and easily the youngest manager at the company.
Understanding the scope of my accomplishments helped me make the decision to leave [former company] and return to Vietnam. I felt that I was ready based on the experience and skills I had garnered from work at [former company] and slowly put together ideas on how I could combine my enthusiasm and experience in the video gaming industry with my desire to be in Vietnam.
On September 1st, 2006, I arrived in Vietnam to work towards starting a video game company.
Today, the video game industry is just emerging in Vietnam. While there are already companies with proven track records in the industry, their goals differ. Some take on game projects from outside the country. Others focus on licensing game properties from other nations and localizing them for use in Vietnam. The focus of my future company will be to sell Vietnamese games to a Vietnamese audience, catering to adult and female gamers, a demographic often called “casual gamers” and one currently not being fully tapped. This offers several advantages. One, casual gamers generally do not demand that their games be technically (graphics and audio) advanced. Successful games in this market are rarely those with the biggest budgets. This means that our company will not necessarily need a large amount of funding to launch its first game, and our games will require less development time compared to more complex titles.
Requiring less development time per project means that we will be able to get to market faster, cutting into the advantage of market position held by more established companies. Requiring less funding at the onset will be a key to starting the company quickly and minimizing one barrier of entry to market. One of the company’s keys to success will be the ability to launch simple, yet fun games on a regular basis as we depend on word of mouth to gradually build a fan base for our titles.
I also intend to adapt a strategy used successfully in the South Korean and Chinese gaming markets called micro-transactions. This strategy dictates that revenue comes from not only the game, but transactions from within the game as well. For example, a gamer might pay fifty cents to access a new level or buy an outfit for her online avatar (the digital representation of the person in the game world).
One obstacle to successful software distribution, however, is gaining penetration into the nation’s gaming cafés. As in other Asian nations, computer gaming in Vietnam is primarily conducted at gaming cafés because normal retail packaging would be unable to compete with piracy. Over the next year, I will be researching the current economics behind café owners’ decisions to serve particular games and developing strategies on how to get our products visibility.
With our company’s continued success, Vietnam’s gaming industry will become increasingly self-reliant. Games that are developed in Vietnam for a Vietnamese audience create revenue that stays within the country. The company can serve as a role model for other Vietnamese gaming companies in terms of its success and contribution to the country, so that the industry will gradually be able to sustain itself rather than depend on outsourced projects or externally licensed properties and reach the current state of the video game industries in South Korea and China.
I have thus far defined the company as our company, rather than as my company. This is because I see our company’s fortunes resting on the collective shoulders of the staff rather than simply myself. The company will have a flat corporate hierarchal structure so that no matter how large the company gets, each employee feels the opportunity to make the success or failure of the company part of his own. Each employee will see another employee, no matter his rank, as an equal and will be treated as such. In that way, each employee will personally have a stake in creating a better future for Vietnam.
Over the long term, the success of our earlier products will allow us to tackle projects larger in scope. The role of the company will grow to introduce projects that by themselves have an impact on developing the next generation of Vietnamese. I would like to work with the Vietnamese government to develop games that will aid teachers in the classroom.
For example, war simulation games can recreate history on the computer screen. In May 1954, Vietnamese forces successfully fought off the French, leading to the end of the First Indochina War and Vietnam’s independence. This battle, known as the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, is considered to be one of the most significant in Vietnamese history. Over seventy five thousand soldiers from both sides were involved in the battle, with casualties exceeding over ten thousand. I envision a massively multiplayer online war game where each student takes the role of one of the soldiers who took part in the battle. Each player would have a specific role to fulfill, in the process learning the importance of teamwork, dilemma of military decisions, ramifications of military conflict beyond the soldiers in battle, and cultural values. Importantly, the game would let gamers play both sides of the battle, and there would be no moral judgment placed on either side.
Working with the Vietnamese government would be a way to gain funding but also a way to get our product into classrooms nationwide, ensuring that the game would have a genuine impact on a generation of school-goers, similar to the one Oregon Trail had on children from my generation.
When I think of these future objectives, I am excited about the ability to take a role in Vietnam’s future in terms of a fulfillment of lifelong aspirations to feel more Vietnamese. Although I realize there is no definitive way to “feel Vietnamese”, contributing to Vietnam’s development is one way of reaching this goal.
Over the last few years, as I have started to understand the influence I can have on a business, I have also learned what is important to me and how I can satisfy those aspects of my life. I now feel confident that I am on the right path to making an impact not only in starting a video game company, but also in making positive change within Vietnam.
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