GC Studios
The team of cross-culture experts who have extensive game-industry experience to support indie game developers.
About GC Studios
GC Studios, a division of Globalize Consulting, is a team of experts in the games industry and gaming culture, Japanese and Western cultures, and crossing all of the necessary bridges for international business. Our team has a lengthy background in game development at every stage of the process as well as how to market and sell games to the right audience in the right markets after they've been released.
Meet the Team
ELLE
KAJIWARA-AIREY
Studio Director
Elle has been a gamer his whole life and wouldn't have learned Japanese if it weren't for Japanese games, so he chose to follow his passion by working in the games industry, helping both large and indie game developers alike over the past 30 years.
In the games industry, his experience includes translation & localization, culturalization, global marketing & PR, and event organizing, while also having actively worked with game developers and publishers all over the world on hundreds of game titles, including several famous game franchises.
Throughout his years in the industry, he's helped game companies set up studios from zero and led the localization of a major game title into 18 languages ahead of its global release. As the head of the game studios that he helped to start up, he was responsible for the marketing and sales strategies, and he can bring all of this experience to the table when he helps your game company too.
Christina was previously the co-founder of an American startup that specialized in developing iOS games. Since the start of her professional career in 2010, she has ably worn many hats and taken on roles in UI design, project management, localization, QA & LocQA, marketing, and writing/copywriting for various industries, including games.
On a different note (pun not intended), Christina's vivid imagination helps her when she's relied upon to compose, perform, and arrange game tracks and sound effects for games.
CHRISTINA
THEODORAKIS
Studio Manager & Music Composer
OUR FAVORITE GAMES
Elle's Favorites:
Dragon Quest series, Tales of Destiny, Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2, Persona series, Megami Tensei series, Greedfall, Biomutant, Octopath Traveller, Witcher 3, Fable 2 & 3, Rogue Galaxy, Fantasy Life, Radiata Stories, Shell Saurs Story, Getsu FÅ«ma Den, ActRaiser, Itadaki Street series, Momotaro Dentetsu series, Doom, Final Fantasy 1 to 6 & 9, Dokapon series, Infamous series, The Outer Worlds, Assassin's Creed 2, Ookami
Christina's Favorites:
Final Fantasy, Pokémon, Spider-man, Tekken, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Kirby, Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 4, Lego Batman: The Videogame, Ghost of Tsushima, The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto
The Indie Game Market in Japan
Japan is the type of country that focuses on big names because of how the media gravitates towards them, so it's hard to get media coverage unless you know the right people. Because the Japanese indie game community is mostly Japanese-speaking, it may be hard to see from the outside, but there's a strong following of indie games in Japan, and with the right help, we can bring your games to those communities in order to make them really successful in Japan.
Why We Want to Support Indie Game Developers
Elle and Christina both have experience working at startup and indie game companies—GC Studios is itself a division of a startup company—so we understand that startups and indie game companies are full of creative and passionate people just like us.
How GC Studios Can Help You
We can help you with localization, culturalization, marketing & PR, and events for Asia and other regions throughout the world. We're connected to an international network of professionals within the games industry whom we closely collaborate with in order to assist you in breaking into your target market because entering the Japanese and other Asian markets is different from breaking into the West. We have the know-how to be able to handle the challenges that you'll face in Asia so that you don't go in blind because we've witnessed companies fall flat on their faces firsthand.
OUR EXPERIENCE
How We've Helped
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Assisted Western companies participate in multiple game events in Japan, South Korea, and China, such as Tokyo Game Show and G-Star.
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Localized and culturalized multiple Western games for the Asian market.
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Arranged the whole production for voiceover for games to be exported to the Asian region.
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Set up events specific to games as well as planned and executed marketing campaigns.
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Worked with homegrown influencers.
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Conducted QA and LocQA for the Asian region.
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Composed and arranged game music and sound effects.
The Difference We Made
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Boosted the number of users for an online game by over 700% in Japan and South Korea in the first month.
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Increased the number of social media account followers by 400% in the first ten days and continued to steadily grow.
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Grew awareness of companies by setting up booths at game events.
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Localized and conducted LocQA for games in eight languages in Asia.
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Filtered through and took out culturally-inappropriate content for each Asian country.
If you're interested in breaking into the Japanese and Asian markets, then know that we'll be bringing our full range of experience and expertise to give you the greatest chance at succeeding.