Level Up Drops COO, Hires Blogger
I’ve been hearing about so much bad stuff happening at Mobius, I almost missed all the good stuff happening at Level Up. Sheila Paul has resigned as COO, and Kevin Codamon is now their website’s editor-in-chief. Sheila was an offline advertising dinosaur who wasted Level Up’s money; Kevin is an online media maven who can fix Level Up’s lame site.
Congratulations to Level Up on losing a liability and gaining an asset. Level Up is one of the Philippines’ top online game publishers; they need less bullshit-spewers and more gamer-bloggers.
(Via Carlo Ople.)
Tags: Gaming, Kevin-Codamon, Level-Up, Philippines, Sheila-Paul
June 30, 2007 | Filed Under Gaming, PhilippinesComments
27 Responses to “Level Up Drops COO, Hires Blogger”
Post a Comment
-
About the Author
Mike Abundo serves as Vice-President for Online Services of the Philippine Internet Commerce Society. He also writes for Inside Online Video and Tech Side Up. Email him at mike@mikeabundo.com.
Subscribe to this blog
Hi Mike,
I would like to disagree about your comments on Sheila. On the contrary, under Sheila’s leadership, Level Up set the benchmark on how to market online games. Since we were the first one, we tried to learn how to do things right. There was no “manual” on how to do marketing on a non-traditional product like online games back then. The initial investment was spent so that awareness would be created. It was not a waste of money in my opinion. Now, new competition is marketing on an “aware” target. Even blogs (such as yours and mine) are using this niche (yet growing) market to create content. Surely, badmouthing one of the pillars of the industry such as Sheila is simply in bad taste…
I appreciate the challenges Level Up faced as a local industry pioneer way back in 2003, and how successfully you overcame those challenges. I heard how Ben ran around chasing investors. I saw your office at Pacific Star when it was just a bunch of messy rooms. I raved to my friends about your cool new business model. I attended the Oz World launch party at the Hard Rock Cafe. We were all just coming out of the dotcom crash; you guys made it feel like 1999 again.
Thing is, under Sheila as marketing manager and then COO, I kept seeing your offline marketing get more and more expensive while your online marketing fell by the wayside. Creating initial offline awareness in a backward virgin market is all well and good, but the silly TV shows and bloated offline events and irrelevant celebrity endorsers and sucky website and bad blogger relations dragged on way too long.
Terry Semel’s Hollywood complex was part of the reason Yahoo lost to Google, and I was starting to see some of that at Level Up (MTV? Mahal and Mura? Half a million for Iya Villania? C’mon!). Sheila was great for the offline stuff, but that should’ve been put in its place years ago.
Bad Taste Mike…. Very bad taste. Almost as bad as that double-breated suit of yours. If your only claim to fame is being a VP
of a ridiculous little org like PICS, then you have no right to mouth-off like that. Get a real job and maybe then you can comment
about other people’s work.
Migs Tantoco
sanmiglite@gmail.com
Interesting really, to have a no one like Mike Abundo speaking about the gaming industry, it’s like a wheelchair bound person judge a breakdancing competition.
It’s really NOT about the expense. It’s about the “budget”… it’s two different things.
We allocated for it and did what was best - to introduce an entirely new medium of entertainment for the pinoy. I guess big-name companies wouldn’t have partnered with us if we just sulked in our little corner and did nothing.
Peace!!!
I see where you’re coming from, Mon. I remember how Destiny Cable’s upper management was stupid enough to refuse a partnership with you when you were small. Even Philippine ISPs didn’t pay much attention to the Internet back then.
Maybe you needed all that offline fluff for so long to impress big dumb local companies, maybe you didn’t. I saw Level Up’s online media potential from the start, so I am of the opinion that you didn’t need all that fluff for so many years.
If you honestly believe you needed to spend all that money on all that fluff for all those years to get all those partners, while waiting for your unaware market to wake up and notice your Web strategy falling by the wayside, then so be it. I don’t think you needed that crutch, but it’s your show.
Mike, you are clearly a dork. Please shut up already. Also, please stop using all those tags so I don’t pick up your dumb site
and even dumber comments on my news alerts. Thank you.
JYoung
Hi Mike! I worked with Sheila Paul for more than a year first as a Brand Manager with her as my Business Unit Director and later on as Marketing Manager when she became COO at Level Up. Just like her, I am no longer in the Philippines. And just like everybody else I know who has read your post, I disagree with everything you said about Sheila.
To the point:
under Sheila as marketing manager and then COO, I kept seeing your offline marketing get more and more expensive while your online marketing fell by the wayside.
Media were weighed against specific objectives. Usually, main marketing objective was acquisition through events that were effective and at the same time cost-efficient. Cost-efficiency, that time, meant doing grassroots activities done mostlty in gamerooms. It made perfect sense - this is where most people play anyway. It is a universal marketing truth - best to do marketing where your consumers are close to the actual, in this case, point of purchase. This is one reason why it seems like priority was given to offline marketing. And sure, that was the agreed direction - and we did only what was best to address the thrust.
Our offline marketing budget, contrary to what you said in your post, did not get more and more expensive while our online marketing fell by the wayside. Expensive is one thing, cost-efficient is another. I would think that our offline executions were cost-efficient in that our acquisition cost per head compared to how much revenue we are able to generate per head (ROCI - return on customer investment) makes a lot of business sense. Online marketing, however, is the trend now - not two years ago. SEO, adwords, adsense and what-not are only beginning to put discipline to what seemed so young, fresh, and foreign back then. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we had the same knowledge and marketing know-how that we have now, we’d be blazing through the internet with a powerful online marketing campaign. Moreover, our objectives were much different from what they are now; objectives define what exactly could be done to address it.
but the silly TV shows and bloated offline events and irrelevant celebrity endorsers and sucky website and bad blogger relations dragged on way too long
I never really knew that Massive was a silly TV show. What we knew back then was that show was a pioneer in the category. The first online game-centric show in MTV Asia. I know that for sure because I also worked in MTV Networks. Also, this show was something that LU communities watched regularly. One of the goals of Massive was to showcase our communities to the public that did not know much about OGs. I think we were effective in doing that. In fact, this is proven by Massive’s impressive rating points — the highest local content on MTV to rate next to canned programs (like Pimp My Ride). Irrelevant celebrity endorsers? How would you know if a celebrity endorsement is relevant or not if you are not a celebrity yourself. C’mon, seriously, I don’t think you can speak for everybody else on this matter. Let the consumer decide for himself. And as far as I am concerned, for example, Iya did a pretty good job in acquiring new players and retaining current ones. How would I know? Of course, I had game performance metrics to prove that.
Terry Semel’s Hollywood complex was part of the reason Yahoo lost to Google, and I was starting to see some of that at Level Up (MTV? Mahal and Mura? Half a million for Iya Villania? C’mon!). Sheila was great for the offline stuff, but that should’ve been put in its place years ago.
You think Iya is not worth half a million? Or better yet, take this: any proof to show that Iya was not either more or less of 500 Gs. Think again. Your figures might just be assumptions and misguided thoughts by fans like you.
Conclusion
Sheila and the LU team working with her that time only did what was best to effectively and efficiently address specific product requirements, corporate thrusts, and organizational needs. In Sheila’s record are achievements that I will never find on your blog, neither on your resume. To be sure, I took a look at your LinkedIn and found out that your record is not that impressive anyways - especially your record on Marketing. Oh and you were a COO for just a month? Cmon man, you shouldn’t have put that on your resume if it’s only there to show how incompetent a professional you are. The fact remains, too, that a web strategist really doesn’t mean anything now as much as the word Webmaster doesn’t either. So don’t take your insecurities on Sheila whose marketing and operations expertise has been looked up to not only by companies in the Philippines but even by companies here in Vietnam. And, for someone who has a (short of fantastical) record like yours, best solution is to just give her due recognition for good work and STFU. Really.
Cheers! Xin chà o.
Pao Peña
dear mike,
i’ve been in the philippine gaming industry for a several years now, and its funny how i’ve never really heard of you until recently. and when i first heard about your blog and your nasty comments, i never really gave a sh*t coz i just figured you were some disgruntled former employee of one of the game publishers that didn’t really make it in any of those companies, and bothering with you would just be an enormous waste of time.
but this particular post of yours was something i was fortunately able to read myself, coz now i see what you and your comments about our industry, and certain people in it, are all about.
dude, you are absolutely f*cking clueless. clueless to the facts that, there are not enough people that give a sh*t about what you think for you to make a difference, the way you say what you think makes it even easier to ignore any relevance you might have, and that if you actually gave a real f*ck about the industry (and not just sparking controversy) you’d find a more constructive way to get your opinion heard (and most importantly, acted upon).
i just think that if all these comments on the industry and their companies were geared toward a real goal, like improving the way things work, a smart guy (like you think you are) would find a better way to get that done.
so stop whining like a baby just coz you’re not part of the action. you have no idea how this industry really works and what people have to go through to keep it running. i’ve seen so many people come and go coz they didn’t have what it takes to survive here, and you sound exactly like the worst of them… they tried, they failed, they whine.
but every former employee of this industry gets respect coz they actually tried. you on the other hand, just blab about all the bullsh*t you fabricate in your head, since you have no clue about the facts you’ve never had access to.
you remind me of one of the morals in the movie american history x… when edward norton, with all his “efforts” to improve the future of the white supremacists, was asked: “has anything you’ve ever done actually improved your way of life?”, or in this case, the way this industry works? no. and that’s because, you, like him, chose the most boneheadedly possible option to get that done. bravo dumb*ss! they should make a movie about you too, though i doubt it’d be anywhere nearly as entertaining.
so stop crying about it like a little b*tch and grow enough balls to actually do something about the situation. until then, you’re that annoying insect buzzing around, that people can ignore, but get up once in a while to squash for the pure and simple fact that: you’re annoying, and nothing else ^_^
PS: i know you’ll get what you really want out of this post, more hits! so there, you’re welcome. at least we both got something out of it, right?
Pao, if you think measurable online marketing has been around for only two years, you have a lot of catching up to do.
Sure, sure but it’s only now that online marketing discipline is actually firming up to become a more mature approach to doing marketing especially for web/online products/services like OGs - hey, especially in Southeast Asia.
Pao, The Cluetrain Manifesto, a primer on Internet marketing, was published in 2000. Online marketing was established as a discipline years before Level Up even existed.
Mike, remember the old adage: Better to keep quite and let people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and prove it. For your own pitiful sake, please shutup already. Thank you
JYoung
Compare Level Up’s irrelevant endorser Iya Villania to Google Earth’s hyperrelevant endorser Matt Harding. Only later did Level Up actually get a relevant endorser in the person of Alodia Gosiengfiao, and even then she’s woefully underused. Sheila still thinks in terms of mass marketing instead of niche marketing, a horribly cost-ineffective mindset when marketing online services.
lets stop fighting na! lets just play perfect world ….
“flyy withhh meee……….”
Dude naman,
Not all strategies in the U.S. apply to the Philippine market or Southeast Asia for that matter…@_@;;; You do know that the U.S. lost against the Vietnam War diba? o.O;;; I respect the credibility of your sources but I’m sure you know that one person’s tactics may not be effective towards another. And you can see this naman everywhere not just in business like trying to court a girl for example, or finding ways to convince your parents to buy that favorite shirt you want…^_^ get it? o.O;;;
Oh by the way, I personally have felt the Mike Abundo effect…it’s called Nausea
Man, I have to agree with Migs, bad taste talaga….you seem to write intelligently naman and have lots to say..but i guess that’s why i have never heard of you, if you had lambasted someone in a professional manner maybe you’d have come across as a bit credible. What a waste of bytes and space…that’s why you’ll get what’s coming to you…if you have qualms about someone or something try to write like a COO that you say you are….please…..people will say you’re the Boy Abundna of the It industry…..familiar names…yes?
I think it’s a good idea for game company execs to be gamers as well.
But I also posted something in addition in this post here.
I dunno but im sure LU had a lot more players back then compared to the shithole right now and is probably one of the reasons it got sold to PLDT [with their GMs leeching cash off players and the massive botfest around even at their marketed "bot-free" servers]
Well if COO got fired then good ridance maybe something with LU is bound for improvement.
Sheila didn’t get fired, as the headline of this post suggests. Sheila resigned as she was offered a job in KL, where she is at now. She was also offered for a top level position here in Vietnam. But that’s another story
Edit:
*She was offered a top level position…
paki blis lng po at free 2 play
Mike is too much of an online junkie that everyone who doesn’t subscribe to his idea of everything online taking over is deemed a dinosaur… or something ancient. I don’t agree all the time, but some of the posts make sense as it is.
gus2 ko na mag laro free2play dapat
sana parang RF na lang ang RO2 free 2 play magload ka lang para x2 dr0p and x2 exp..
kapag ginawa nyo to 100%
madaming magquit sa ibang OL game at lilipat sa RO2 kailan b lalabas ang RO2?