Tecmo Koei Singapore Reviews

Pros

Friendly Understanding Treats their interviews seriously Attitude more important than raw skill Japanese Culture Gamer Culture Tightly Knitted The president and founder Yoichi Erikawa was present during my final interview and he was asking majority of the questions. Makes the candidate feel valued.

Cons

Located at Aperia Mall, not the worst of places but not many options for food. If you don't speak Japanese or are unwilling to learn, may be at a disadvantage as a lot of HR material is in Japanese. you will either need to use pattern recognition/Google translate to do your HR material or just learn Japanese. Good news is that they offer subsidised learning which you can use on Japanese classes. (recommended as majority of your colleagues are able to speak to some degree)

Pros

+ Gamer environment, good if you like games + Have chance to work at main branch at Japan for certain periods + Decent benefits and perks

Cons

- Different team has different KPI and expectations, so it depends on your luck - Too many rules & regulations: clocks in clocks out, write weekly review, etc - Public shaming when you make mistakes with the excuse "so others can learn from your mistakes"

Pros

Great colleagues, most of them are passionate about japanese culture and games

Cons

Little growth opportunities for most

Pros

As previous people said, safe job. No real danger of getting fired after you're full timing here. some people basically can sit and sleep at their table and play mobile games half the day. nobody cares.

Cons

-Really poor career growth and salary increment. (Some of us gets below $100/year increment for reasonably acceptable/good performance) - forget about being promoted without doing an unhealthy amount of bootlicking. -pure performance and providing good work results (even above 100% KPI and hitting promotion requirements on paper) is not enough. - moving goalposts when you hit their KPI to justify no promotion -any kind of constructive criticism to the management will be ignored/ brushed away "politely" -just leave after clocking 3 years.. its not worth it. no matter how talented you are, the management will not see it because you are just a statistic.

Pros

You never get fired unless you mess up majorly and everyone complains about you. People in your teams are competent most of the time. Generally everyone is really friendly.

Cons

You aren't promoted based solely on skill, the reluctance to promote good members is very obvious. The only thing that makes this company really bad is that the management really sucks.

Pros

- No Experience / No Knowledge? No Problem! - Koei Tecmo Singapore is a very good place for fresh graduates or people outside of the industry to get their footing around the Game Industry. Most of the task you perform as a Game Planner/Game Designer in Koei Tecmo Singapore does not require you to have any knowledge in Game Development. You can come in fresh and as long as you make it past the interview, you are here to stay as long as you don't screw up very badly. None of the skills you think a Game Designer requires will be used or developed here, you don't need a very creative mind or a very good problem solving skills, you just have to be able to fiddle with excel sheets and perform the bare minimum to function. - Good Starting Salary - Starting Salary is very competitive when pit against other Game Companies in Singapore, which can be used as a bargaining chip when you look towards a career/company change down the line. - Employment Benefits - There are definitely good career benefits for all to take, however, do be warned that it is up to the boss discretion to cancel all your claims without any valid reasoning. - Only Surface Level Interaction required - As long as you don't go too deep in the office politics, it is very easy to survive in Koei Tecmo Singapore. As long as you keep a shallow and surface level interaction with them, you won't be marked or be in their radar. However, if you do plan to further your career in the company, you have no choice but to play along with the façade.

Cons

- Minimal Game Development Opportunities - If your dream / goal / passion is to develop new and upcoming games, this is not the place for you. Without going into details, the games you will encounter mostly in this company are operational games where to perform a repeated cycle of task each week to keep the games going, there are very little room for you to flaunt your creativity / skills, what the company is looking for in you are a pair of working ants. You will be here as an organic robot to maintain the game for them. There are very little chance for you to work on newer Koei Tecmo Titles at least when you are here, do not get misled by the company's website and featured games, you will not be working on them. - Lack of learning chances - As long as you are here, don't expect to hone or further your skills. You won't get a chance to flaunt the skills you picked up in school or from learning it from your own. There are no real mentors that you can learn from here as most of the experienced/good employees have already left the company for better career opportunities. The ones who are sticking around and in high level positions are not there because of their skills in the field, but because of their long years with the company and their ability to play and weave around in the office politics game. Do not be too surprised with your managers/superiors spewing random suggestions that seems obviously wrong, they are just there to say something to look like they are helping or doing something. - Career Development vs Deep Rooted Office Politics - Every company has its own culture, but very evidently in this company, career development does not really depend on your skills/achievements during your time in the company. You can work super hard and achieve insane results, but as long as you do not play the office politics game, (Making yourself known / Showcasing yourself whenever you can / Getting a good number of managers to like you) it will be pretty hard for you promote. Don't be too pissed when your peer who performs moderately, goes off work on time promotes before you, the managers doesn't know / care about how much effort you put in, they care more about the surface level interaction you have with them. Unless you have been already accepted as `one of them` it will be very hard for you to raise your career in this company. - Lack of Skilled / Passionate Staff - Most of the staff you will encounter in this company are your generic employees who are here to draw pay while doing the bare minimum to keep their jobs. Do not mix up seniority with skills in this company, expect to see a senior staff unable to perform a task a intern/fresh hire can perform. As most skilled employees leaves the company upon discovering the lack of career growth in the company, the ones that stays tend to be the ones who are here to draw salary, leave on time and perform the bare minimum. - Every man for himself Attitude - Beyond the surface level interaction you will encounter in the company, most of the managers here will be looking to protect their own jobs. Don't expect your manager to take responsibilities to stick up to you, when their jobs / performance / review is threatened, expect to be thrown under the bus. - HR Protects the Company (Singapore Branch), Not the employees - Do not expect the HR to protect you when issues such as power harassment / sexual harassment .etc occurs. First they will try their best to silence the commotion and prevent information being passed to the main Japan branch. When things do not go their way, they will employ different tactics to make you resolve it on employee level either by constantly dismissing your claims, using scare tactics or just keep brushing it off. If you skip past their level and report incidents directly to the main company, be warned that your career is more or less done and put to a standstill at that point. You will be marked and they will try their best to delay your promotion, regardless of your seniority and effort. Side Note: Just to be fair, CEO, Hisashi Koinuma is not the one running the show in the Singapore Branch.

Pros

Good team spirit and recent salary increase

Cons

Lacks of satisfactory new products

Pros

- Great work environment. - Friendly colleagues who are mostly gamers.

Cons

- Extremely high workload during certain periods of time.

Pros

- Great co-workers to work with

Cons

- Stagnant career progression - Uncompetitive salary

Pros

Got to work on fun game titles with established IPs Not pressured to stay back by supervisors Convenient location Good people Good benefits

Cons

Hard to get promotion, especially if you don’t know Japanese Stressful with no overtime pay