Game Passion

Dan Schrementi has always been driven by friendly competition and a love of entertainment. It was this drive that propelled him into the position of vice president of sales and marketing at slot-maker Incredible Technologies.
    
After receiving his B.S. in marketing at Illinois State University, Schrementi landed a job working for his favorite baseball team, the Chicago White Sox. While it was hard to leave his team, he could not pass up the opportunity to market his favorite amusement game, Golden Tee Golf. This was the beginning of his career at Incredible Technologies.
    
Schrementi admits that even after 10 years with the company, the best part of his job is being able to create and sell games that he loves to play. He believes that in this industry, to excel at your job you have to be a customer of your own product.
    
Schrementi joined Incredible Technologies in 2004 because he was passionate for the games he played. As the company expanded into casino gaming, that passion became a professional asset that he was able leverage due to the firm’s size and capacity for growth. For him, the most rewarding part of working for a small, private company is seeing the results of your work and knowing that it has made a difference.
    
Schrementi credits his success at Incredible Technologies to the support of his family, and of company President and CEO Elaine Hodgson. He started out as a market associate working under Hodgson, who nurtured his development by providing him with career opportunities that ultimately led to his current job.
    
“Without an advocate, it would be impossible to succeed,” Schrementi says, and luckily for him, he has had many. For an industry that is widely acknowledged as being difficult to penetrate for an outsider, Schrementi has nothing but gratitude for the industry veterans he worked with over the years who passed along their market knowledge and helped him to navigate through the professional landscape.
    
Although Schrementi loves his job, his work isn’t just all fun and games. Trends in the gaming and entertainment industries are constantly evolving, and companies either meet consumer demand or lose out to competitors. The biggest challenge in Schrementi’s job has been learning to adapt to forces that are beyond his control.
    
“When we have done everything we can to bring the best product to market but then some other market factor has impacted us, that is the toughest situation we face,” he says.
    
His advice to newcomers: “Develop a framework for being able to attack the challenges that are inherent in the industry, so you come to the correct solution through a good process.”