‘IF YOU LIKE VIDEO GAMES,
IT’S THE BEST PLACE TO WORK IN THE WORLD’
Justin Hulog talks about his Riot Games journey and why the Philippines is an important market for the company
Justin Hulog’s journey at Riot Games started because he wanted to go home to the Philippines. Hulog, who was born in Baguio and moved to the United States when he was 6, said, “I’d been living in the US for such a long time that I was ready to go back. I had spent my whole life being a Filipino in the US, wishing that I could spend more time in the Philippines.”
At that point, almost five years ago, Riot Games was looking for someone to manage the Philippines. “I was like, okay, sure, I’m down. But afterwards, it was an interesting twist of fate. The person who was supposed to be my boss, and who was based in Taipei, left. So they were like, ‘Hey, actually, instead of the Philippines, do you want to move to Taiwan?’”
So Hulog, Riot Games’ general manager of Southeast Asia, never got to live in the Philippines like he wanted. Instead, he first moved to Taipei for a year, then Los Angeles for another year and then Singapore.
“I thought living in Singapore meant I could spend every Christmas in Baguio but it hasn’t happened because of the pandemic.”
While Hulog has always loved video games, his career didn’t start in the world of gaming. He did management and consulting work and also worked at the Philippine Embassy in Madrid.
“Then I realized that I didn’t really want to be a diplomat . . . I decided to get an MFA (master of fine arts) in creative writing because I wanted to do something not corporate. That actually ended up working out pretty well because it turns out that if you work in video games, if you work in the arts, there’s a place for people who are both creative and also have a good business sense.”
Hulog, who has a degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, oversaw US market and global operations at a start-up in San Francisco before he was recruited by Riot Games.
Thinking about video games
“I wanted a job in video games. I’d spent so much time playing video games, thinking about video games and thinking about being in this world. I was like, I will literally do any job that you can give me in Asia and video games. And so here I am,” he said.
At Riot, the company behind the games League of Legends, Valorant, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Legends of Runeterra, Teamfight Tactics (TFT) and, of course, the recent hit animated series “Arcane,” Hulog gets to do exactly that: spend a lot of time thinking about video games.
“I tell people, ‘If you like video games, it’s the best place to work in the world.’ Our campus is like a big nerd paradise. In a normal workplace, you talk about sports or weddings or clothes . . . we kind of spend all that time talking about video games, whether it’s our games or not . . . like, ‘Oh, this new video game came out’ or ‘Are you excited for what’s coming for Valorant?’ or ‘Have you played Axie?” Hulog said. “When you think about that culture permeating throughout the entire company, I think that it has a pretty profound impact on the type of person who works at Riot and the type of person who stays at Riot because whether you work in accounting or you work on the core development of a game, you spend a lot of time thinking about video games.”
Some video game-loving Filipinos will get to experience this as Riot Games is opening an office in the Philippines headed by country manager Joel Guzman. “We are expanding our presence in the Philippines so if any of your readers are looking for jobs in video games, stay tuned,” said Hulog. “This also means we will have a direct connection to our fans and hopefully we’ll create more resonant experiences.”
But even before that, there were already plenty of Pinoys at Riot Games. “There’s a pretty large Filipino community at Riot,” said Hulog. “There are Filipinos at all levels of the company who work at many, many different things. You know how there tends to be affinity groups in American companies, like the women’s group or the gay and lesbian group? Riot has a Filipino group that has I think 132 members. It used to be called Poro, Pilipinos of Riot, but then it changed to FAR, which is Filipinos at Riot. They’re incredibly active. The team there does a lot of work. They’re incredibly proud of being Filipino and they tend to be big advocates toward creating experiences that are very specific to our community and our people.”
And there’s a pretty large Riot community in the Philippines—devoted players of the company’s different games.
There’s no denying it, Riot Games is huge in the Philippines. It’s an important market for the company. “The Philippines tends to be a really strong market for being an indication of what the rest of the world is going to think. We tend to do alphas in the Philippines. We tend to do tests in the Philippines because I think the Filipino perspective is one that straddles both the Western perspective and the Eastern perspective, and it gives us a good sense as to how to tailor a product so that it can be resonant from a worldwide perspective.”
New experiences
Another thing Hulog noticed about Filipino gamers? “Filipinos tend to be quite open to new experiences and get really excited about it, from an esports perspective, from a mobile perspective, from a cryptocurrency perspective. Even with games that we don’t produce, we see a lot of excitement to try new things. That is one of the things that I’m particularly proud of, this ability to be adaptable and to be really open to new technologies and new experiences.”
He added, “One thing that I also love about Philippines is that Filipinos are incredibly passionate gamers. It makes it a pleasure to serve and to create campaigns for the Philippines not just because it makes you the coolest uncle in the world but it’s a very excited audience.”
Hulog, who has been with Riot for almost five years, says one of his favorite milestones was launching Valorant, Wild Rift and Legends of Runeterra all in the same year. “I’m very proud of that but no one should launch three games in one year . . . we were like, this is crazy. But we wanted to have a closer connection to our players.”
And then, of course, there’s “Arcane.” “Riot’s aspiration is to become the next great media company of the next century . . . we talked about being the Disney of the next century but with games at the center.”
The success of “Arcane,” which has a 100-percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, made it to the No. 1 spot on Netflix charts all over the world, and captivated both hardcore fans of League of Legends and those who have never played the game, means a lot to Riot Games. Hulog said, “It gives us a lot of confidence that other experiences that we might want to create, which aren’t necessarily tied to games . . . we could do it and we can do it. We’re pretty excited about it.”
Another recent Riot launch that Hulog was excited about was the introduction of Neon, Valorant’s first Filipino agent, who brings speed and excitement to the game. And there are more surprises coming. Hulog said, “Stay tuned for our plans in the Philippines. The Philippines figures pretty big in our plans to grow and so we have some really exciting things in store.”
But which Riot Game does Hulog actually play? “I play all of them. The question is, what am I good at?” he said, laughing. “I’m very very good at TFT. I’m pretty decent at Wild Rift. And then it just collapses from there.”