Blog

Recruiting in style

Our billboard is one way we reach out to people for recruiting. But the best way to attract talented people to GREE is ourselves, raving about our company, work, and our awesome group here. Our employees have been doing so with 25% of hires coming from referrals. Go GREE!

To that end, in appreciation, the company threw us a fun party recently. Employees who sent in referrals, along with their families, were invited to a VIP tailgate party and Section 5 seats for the SF 49ers versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Candlestick Park. Whether we were die-hard football fans or not, it was great fun to be together. And the food...what’s not to like about nachos and garlic fries?

Some of us started it right by donning 49ers shirts, the kids got a kick out of the attention from the cheerleaders, and those new to football learned a bit or two about the game. In the end, the afternoon was not just about thanking employees for introducing great talent to the company; it was a genuinely fun time, 49ers style!

We have a billboard!

On the heels of GREE’s huge presence at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS), we have our own S.F. local brand push - check out our new billboard on Hwy 101 right in San Francisco!

This is our first time with our brand out in the community, and we are excited to say hello.

The foundation of any company is its team, and recruiting the best people has been our top priority. We are proud to say we have hired 40+ amazing people in a pretty short space of time. In this current market, this is no small feat, and we like to think our success attests to who we are, and the direction we are taking as the leading mobile social gaming platform in an industry that barely existed last year. We feel like we are at the beginning of a huge wave, and those who join us need to prepare for an exciting ride.

Still, how do we reach people when we are new in the US market? Looking for something eye-catching & fun, we worked with a smart creative agency to design several billboards around San Francisco. We know there is great talent here, and want people to find us. Let us know on Twitter or Facebook if you spot our billboards!

GREE does Tokyo Game Show

We’ve been rather mum here but we have a good reason; as you can guess, we’ve been heads-down these past few months, busy - really busy - building our U.S. office, team, and games from scratch. It’s exciting for us, and we are itching to share our accomplishments with you soon. Exciting news is coming!

In the meantime, I wanted to give our Japan team a shout-out to what they did at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) recently. GREE had one of the biggest booths there, occupying about 10% of the total show-floor space. This is not insignificant: in the past, the event has been dominated by console or carrier companies. Console games and PC titles continued to grab game awards, but “Dragon Collection,” a game offered by GREE in Japan, received a special award as a social game. The landscape is changing indeed, and mobile social gaming is in.

GREE is a household name in Japan, and soon we will be introducing GREE to the U.S. market through our upcoming mobile social games. Please cheer us on as we get rolling!

GREE and OpenFeint = Awesomeness

Big news for us today! We are very excited to announce that GREE has acquired OpenFeint! With OpenFeint’s 75 million+ users, and our 25 million in Japan, we will reach over 100 million users, and together we are going to build the best mobile social gaming ecosystem in the world.

You can read about all of the details of the business transaction here and here . But what is most important is what this means to us. Opening an office in San Francisco was our first step to expand outside of Japan, and bring our social gaming know-how to the US market, but with OpenFeint, we achieve a huge step forward with our goal to connect users and developers around the world, helping developers launch their games in new countries, and users interact with gamers worldwide. Our founders, Yoshikazu Tanaka and Jason Citron, knew this was an incredible match when they first met, sharing the same global vision about connecting people. We really look forward to what we can do together.

To that end, it’s also important to note that we will not be changing the OpenFeint team and network. We highly respect who they are and what they have done. Rather, we are bringing our social gaming expertise to the table to further co-develop what OpenFeint has built. We partner with the best and add our talent, not tinker with what they already do best. Both companies, however, are hiring aggressively since we have big goals to achieve, so check out our website if you are interested. And, if you are a game developer wanting to bring social games to the next level, we'd love to hear from you!

This is going to be a great ride!

Find us at SXSW

We are pleased to be part of two exciting panels at SXSW this year. The timing is perfect with our arrival in San Francisco and launch in North America. These panels are part of SXSW’s focus on Japan as an emerging leader in tech and mobile markets. We are honored to represent a new trend of Japanese companies going global.