Learn From Leaders with Monte Singman

Monte has 34 years in game business and extensive experience in bridging eastern and western gaming markets. He is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in building companies that focus on content and technology, especially in the mobile and online game industry. Alongside his current role as VP of business development at iDreamSky, he is a visiting professor at Shanghai Theater Academy.

Monte is the founder of International Game Developer Association (IGDA) Shanghai Chapter, of Radiance Digital Entertainment, and of Zona, Inc. His prior experience includes: Head of Productions and International Business Development at Shanda Network, Head of Studios at Infogrames, Executive Producer at Accolade, Technical Director/Senior Producer of Capcom USA and Senior Software Engineer at Electronic Arts.

First I have to assign a purpose to my goal, it does not need to be logical, it just needs to provide a meaning to my endeavors; Then I try my best to make the process of getting to that goal fun, so instead of suffering all the way to the end zone, I would enjoy and play all the way, you won’t even notice that you have surpassed your original goal.

Don’t build products for yourself, build the products for the target demographic. This sounds trivial, but you will be surprised how many people do this, they hypnotized themselves into believing what they want is what their audience want, and they look for evidence to back up their view point, the typical confirmation bias.

Tenacity pays off. The story of the turtle and the hare reminds me that I can’t change my gifts, but I certainly have control of my attitude, I can work hard and not assume that I have superior understanding of the market and my customers, I can work hard like the turtle and take one step at a time towards my goals.

I am usually pessimistic towards hype, things like VR, AR, blockchain, Cloud and AI , these jargons get tossed around like miracle solutions in tech fields. I later realized although these innovations are hyped up and maybe be the next bubbles, there are some merits in these technical innovations, I am personally interested in the field of cloud gaming with the coming of 5G, but I don’t think it will be mainstream in 1-3 years, I think in 5 years the telecommunication and GPU cloud will catch up and virtualize all gaming hardware.

I value honesty, while real talents are hard to come by, I think that people are rarely honest with themselves and the others what they can or can not do. In general, honest people are more reliable and can command respect and trust from people they work with.

China Startup Pulse Podcast:

Gamification is Not Copying Games with Monte Singman, iDreamSky Technology

“Most of the gamification activities happening in the market are superficial” This is a statement from today’s guest Monte Singman, a game veteran with 33-year industry experience. So what’s the real meaning of gamification? How should people include game dynamics into products? Monte has an insider and interesting point of view about games and gamification.

In today’s episode, he will address the importance of fun, a key element for the successful gamification which is sometimes overlooked. And the best stage for gamification is when users feel comfortable to spend the time without restrictions.

Currently Monte is the VP of international business development at iDreamSky Technology, one of the largest independent mobile game publishing platforms in China, and he has brought over 100 mobile games into Chinese markets. We will also talk about his business path from Silicon Valley to China and the technology that he believes will change the game industry.