Jobs in Games: Why InnoGames’ Marc Morian left the games industry and what brought him back

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Behind every game is a creative team making it happen. In our Jobs in Games series, we highlight some of the individuals working in the games industry, whether they are veterans with years of expereince under their belts or entirely new to the industry.

We ask how they broke into the sector and their advice for others on making a career in games.

In this interview, we caught up with InnoGames senior PR manager Marc Morian, whose career has taken him across industries but ultimately led him back to games. He also reflects on the culture of games and offers valuable advice for those looking to break into PR.

PocketGamer.biz: First, can you tell us a little about yourself and your history with games? Have you always been a gamer and been interested in it as an industry?

Marc Morian: Yes and no. Thanks to a friend’s Atari 2600, I had my first brush with video games at the age of seven.

Later, I got my own Commodore 16, then a C-64, an Amiga… And the rest is history. Still, it took me a long time to get interested in the industry and consider a career in games.

I had always known that I wanted to turn a passion into a profession, but when the time came to pick a career, my greatest passion happened to be music.

So, I first went with that. I did quite a few internships and temp jobs, many of them in and around L.A., where I managed to get hired and fired like the best of them. However, as my experience with working in music grew, my desire to work in the music industry waned.

How did you get started working within the games industry?

Eventually, I took on a contract testing job at EA L.A. to keep me afloat. Game testing was the toughest job I’ve ever had. I had completely underestimated what it means in practice to spend 8+ hours a day playing a broken game and trying to break it even more.

When my contract ended, I dabbled in game localisation for a while before deciding to pursue an M.Sc. in Marketing at Manchester Business School. After graduating, I was offered a job as an International Marketing Coordinator with the now-defunct publisher DTP Entertainment in Hamburg.

I took it – and there I was, working on titles like The Dark Eye: Drakensang and Summer Athletics. Living the dream on a whopping 26k EUR a year in one of Germany’s most expensive cities.

You left games at some point, what was the reason behind this – and why did you return?

I was laid off just 18 months after DTP had hired me. Soon after, the company went under, and it took me over 7 months to find a new job.

At the time, I didn’t understand why no one would give me a chance, given my fancy master’s and previous experience. Only later did I realise: In Germany’s browser game capital, no one had much use for my knowledge of the good old business model of putting games on a shelf and hoping someone would come in and buy them. Or for my degree for that matter, which had taught me absolutely nothing about performance marketing.

I was only days away from having to apply for welfare when InnoGames decided that I would make a good cooperation manager. I will always be grateful for that last-minute save! However, my job quickly evolved into a payment manager role, which was too far removed from marketing for my taste.

InnoGames couldn’t offer me a suitable alternative at the time (now I know why), so I left after 12 months and instead joined Fishlabs as a marketing & PR manager. I felt right at home when I realised that, at the time, the company knew little more about performance marketing than I did and seemed just as reluctant to get involved in it. Two and a half years later, the home of Galaxy on Fire went under and was subsequently sold to Koch Media.

After being laid off twice, I took a long, hard look at my situation and decided to try my luck outside of our industry, starting with a marketing and PR job at a local international school. The money was better, as were the hours. Plus it felt good to be around kids and to work for a non-profit.

After that, I had one more job in marketing/PR for education before joining a couple of relatively old school banks. On one hand, I liked the high-stakes vibe and the money was great. On the other, media opportunities were usually considered threats. Accordingly, compliance and legal were always breathing down my neck. Under these circumstances, I found it difficult to really enjoy my work. 

After some time, I took another long, hard look at my situation. And when I saw that InnoGames was looking for a PR Manager, I immediately decided to go for it. In April 2022, I started my second stint at the home of Forge of Empires. This time as a Senior PR Manager.

What are some of the big differences between other industries and games? Is there anything that really sets gaming apart for you? 

When I returned to games, it felt like putting on my favourite pair of sneakers, like stepping into a warm bath.

Despite being big business, our industry has retained an authentic casualness that is not unique but very, very special. And it’s easier and more fun to work with people who share your passion, especially when that passion has playfulness at its core.

You mentioned being back at InnoGames, where you have previously worked in a different role; what made you want to rejoin and why in a PR position? 

In 2011, I had left InnoGames only because I felt that being a payment manager didn’t fit my career plans. When I returned in April 2022, I found that the company hadn’t changed much.

At its core, I mean. Sure, it’s more settled now, and its growth has added layers of hierarchy, along with all the good and bad things that typically entails.  Also, the once vibrant office atmosphere that I enjoyed so much in 2010 isn’t what it used to be (thanks a lot, Corona!).

But it’s still a great company to work for. It’s still extraordinarily fair and transparent, and I still appreciate how the founders run things and present themselves. Most importantly, though, I’ve never worked for a company where the colleagues are as friendly and helpful as they are here. 

As for my transition towards PR, it was very gradual. I didn’t even notice it at first. At Fishlabs, the PR part of my job title meant little more than proofreading the occasional press release and doing some product presentations for the media.

By the time I joined my first bank, I was all about PR. It’s taken me a long time to realise that PR is a perfect fit for both my skills and my affinities.

After all, talking and writing is what I do best. I am extroverted and outgoing, though not as much as I used to. I have a knack for networking, and when I manage to convince a journalist to do a story and I see it published, I get a great sense of satisfaction.

My current job allows me to spend more time doing all of this than any other I’ve had. So, unsurprisingly, I have never been happier.

What is it like managing the PR for InnoGames? What is a usual day for you?

I mainly do corporate PR. Most of it comes down to employer branding. For example, when I “acquire media opportunities” (a terrible turn of phrase when you come to think about it) so that colleagues can share their expertise on a topic, it’s usually about showing potential new employees that InnoGames employs smart, likeable people who do cool stuff. People they might want to work for – or with – one day. 

When it comes to our games, what I do is PR on aspects that are relevant to my target audience, which is, by and large, “everyone except our current and potential new players”. So, when Forge of Empires hit the €1 billion lifetime revenue mark, it was me who knocked on your door here at PocketGamer.biz.

Personally, I prefer corporate PR because it’s about playing the long game. InnoGames is not a good example because it’s our thing to make games that last for decades, but in general, products change much faster than the company. You can really take your time to build the company and employer brand. And these days, I consider it a real luxury to be able to take my time to do something properly.

So, on a typical day, I start by reading some general interest media to keep an eye on the “big issues”. Then I check my media monitoring tool and do a Google search for InnoGames to make sure it hasn’t missed anything important. Then I read some games business media and my LinkedIn feed.

Aside from some housekeeping, listening to company-wide presentations like product or management updates, or attending recurring meetings, I spend the day driving projects. I’m involved in some one-off “special” projects, but usually “driving projects” means supporting my colleagues in tackling interviews, pitching topics to journalists, or drafting press releases.

Do you have any top tips for working in PR?

You bet! Here goes. Disclaimer: This is all based on my own somewhat convoluted career path and, therefore, highly subjective. Just assume that every sentence below starts with “In my opinion…”

First, you need to be sure that PR is really for you. It requires creative language skills that can be honed but can’t be learned from scratch.

If you don’t have an innate drive to rephrase a sentence over and over and over again until a little voice in your head says “Relax, it’s fine now”, PR is probably not a good career choice. You also need a certain amount of salesmanship. After all, your success depends on convincing journalists to “buy” your stories. Unfortunately, that also means having to cope with rejections almost every day. And when you do get rejected, you usually can’t just write that journalist off. You have to go back and try again and again with new stories.

So, the ability to swallow your pride and a certain level of persistence are also important, as well as a sense for when persistence is about to turn into pushiness. Last but not least, you need to be reasonably extroverted and outgoing. People won’t share interesting stuff with you if you don’t do the same, and you won’t meet those people at your desk. 

Don’t underestimate what it means to change industries. The grass is not always greener on the other side. There are usually trade-offs involved. What is much less obvious: You must be willing to learn the new industry, but may not be able to.

Avoid working for someone who keeps asking you to justify the value of PR’s value – and therefore the value of your work – to the company.

Double-checking every now and then if, how and to what extent your work is still advancing the company’s goals is good management. But even if you are the company’s very first PR Manager, the question of whether PR has any value to the company at all should have been answered long before you got hired.

By now, your future boss should have bought into the belief that the more positive things people out there hear about your company or its products, the more positive their attitudes will be – with all the potential positive effects that might entail.

Finding out what makes your potential future boss tick can be hard, though. I recommend seizing the opportunity to ask questions during the job interview.

Gather as much hands-on PR experience as possible before trying to land your first PR job. It will probably be a while before someone in a “proper” company will let you handle the entire process of writing a press release, sending it out, and following up with journalists.

If your parents own a restaurant or your friend runs a hair salon, for example, see if you can find out something about their business, their customers, their personal story, or anything else that might serve as an interesting hook for a local media outlet.

Once you have done this successfully a couple of times from start to finish, I suggest you contact an indie studio and see if they let you do the same for them.

Steve Jobs had it right (again): You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. When recruiters look at my meandering CV, they tend to conclude that I am fickle. In contrast, when I look at my CV these days, I see a lot of experiences that have made me grow as a person, helped me become a well-rounded PR professional, and have led me to where I am now.

I guess what I am trying to say is: Many roads lead to Rome – and some of them are full of twists and turns. Be careful about waiting for the perfect opportunity. It may never come. It might be better to jump right into things and see where life takes you.

In any case, doing PR for a games company can be incredibly satisfying, thanks to all the great people you get to meet, the cool places you get to be, and the exciting things you get to do.

Finally, is there anything we should be on the lookout for from InnoGames? 

Well, we have launched our newest game, Heroes of History. It’s a novel combination of city-builder and hero collection RPG. So far, it’s exceeded our expectations, which weren’t low to begin with, by far as a result, we expect to be able to scale the game.

When that happens, you won’t need to be on the lookout. Instead, it will be hard not to run into one of our ads. Aside from that, we will be releasing another game in 2025.