For today’s blog, please meet Jin Sang Kim, Creative Director for the first ever project at Ocean Drive Studio.
Quick Intro
Name: Jin Sang Kim
Your Role: Creative Director, crafting vision and leading game design decisions for the first project
What else?:
Hardcore gamer. I always need more time for games. Also, I have my own Twitch channel, streams various types of games during my free time.
Games as a Gamer
Favorite Games:
I have so many games to discuss, but if I need to pick only few…. Final Fantasy VII and The War of Genesis would be my choice. These two games have been my all time favorite.. and I have even introduced these two as my favorite games when I have submitted my cover letter to Nexon more than 10 years ago.
These two games made me think of becoming a game developer. The story and the visual presentation were extraordinary, both games had me go through wave of emotions. I am super happy that I will have chance to play the remake version of both games!
Recently, Last of Us part 1 and 2 gave me similar experience, and if I have to pick more games, I wouldn’t hesitate to discuss Last of Us part 1 and 2!
I have completed playing many different games in 2020. On top of Last of Us part 1 and 2, I am currently playing Witcher 3 and Starcraft 2: Legacy of the void. All the games I have been enjoying are the games with greatness in their own genre.
Favorite Game Studios:
My favorite game studio is Nintendo, and I have huge respect towards Shigeru Miyamoto. One of my goal as a game developer is creating a game which can be enjoyed by my families, and future families for a long time. Nintendo has been always focused on this vision and have been successfully creating games for everyone.
Games as a Developer
Start of the Gaming Career:
I have always loved playing games. I have been caught playing games (when I was supposed to do other stuff) so many times.. that I can’t even count.. It was just an ordinary event, my mother taking out my keyboard from the computer or slapping my back.
I loved playing all kinds of games but it was when I have completed Final Fantasy VII and The War of Genesis II, I started to dream of having my name on the ending credit of the game. I was a high school student at the time and I have made up my mind I would major in computer science.
Key Philosophy:
It’s pretty simple. My focus developing games is “creating a fun experience.”
What made you Join Ocean Drive Studio?:
The biggest reason behind joining Ocean Drive Studio was, my belief in the team. I have known most of the talents at Ocean Drive for a long time, and I have no doubt I can purely focus on making a fun game. Also, my 20 years of experience working in game development gave me learning that it’s not easy to complete a game project. And knowing the team at Ocean Drive, I was certain that I would be able to ship more / great games with this team.
My Past Projects:
I have worked on many different classic RPG titles as an engineer at Nexon. I have joined the team working on Kingdom of the Winds, Dark Ages, Elancia, and was able to work on Asgard and TalesWeaver from the scratch.
It has been always super tough to complete and ship game projects, and my experience working on multiple online RPG projects in my early career had helped me with my latter projects.
After my early days at Nexon, I have started my own development studio called JustNine. I have directed multiple projects in various different genre. It includes fishing game World Tour Fishing(KOR name 청풍명월) for PC and mobile, and mobile platformer called Hell Kid. During my JustNine days, I had to play multiple roles and I was happy that I could work on my own games.
Before joining Ocean Drive Studio, I worked as live game director / creative director for the mobile SRPG/Tactical RPG Romance of Three Kingdoms: Legend of Cao Cao. My focus at the time was cultivating the game service with the community. I have worked on developer notes, and even did Twitch streaming to discuss the game. It was an eyeopening experience for me as a game developer and loved the fact that I could work with the community real-time by discussing topics via streaming.
As Jungsoo and Jae have discussed with other blogs, I really love the fact that Ocean Drive Studio’s open development approach. For our first project, I am planning to meet the community on regular basis!
Personal Stuff
I have adopted a hedgehog with my kids. Hedgehog was 1 month old and we have been taking care of him for a month. Will share photo of him sometime soon!
By the way – I am streaming regularly! If you are curious what kind of games I play, and want to say hi please stop by (and follow my channel! – https://www.twitch.tv/xxxmind). I stream in Korean, but if you leave a chat in English I will greet you! If needed I can stream in English too!
I am super excited to introduce myself to the future fans of our first project and can’t wait to share the game in the future.
