Danish-American Hans Olsen began his professional career in 1988 when he accepted a position to work as a consultant for Commodore Business Machines to promote the Commodore brand of home computers (C64™ & AMIGA™) and its growing catalog of software and games.
An avid gamer, a passionate writer, and an experienced low-level programmer, Hans was a regular contributor of technical and mainstream editorial content to many popular computer magazines, including IC Run, COMputer, HighScore Professional, AMIGA™ Magasinet, AMIGA™ Interface, and Dreamcast® Magasinet. He was among the first to publish articles about computer viruses and spent most of his time programming games and productivity software for the early generation of 8- and 16-bit home computers.
Having graduated from High School, he spent a few years working at a retail computer specialist Pro Computer learning the trade and eventually promoted to manager. Headhunted to work as a game programmer, he joined GiliSoft to produce educational games localized and distributed across the Nordic region. With the multimedia crash in the 90s, Hans accepted a CD-ROM Editor and Staff Writer position with Audio Media, a reputable magazine publisher responsible for Alt Om Data, Privat Computer, and CD-ROM Spil (later GameZone). Following his stint with Audio Media, he started working for T&T Media as their Nordic Editor-In-Chief of PC Player, PlayStation Magasinet, and Nintendo Magasinet. Rounding up his editorial endeavors, he joined Game Reactor (owned by Egmont Online) as their first pan-Nordic Editor-In-Chief.
Entering the new millennium in Y2K, Hans started his own business, United Coders, a consultancy firm specializing in public relations, marketing, and business development in the computer and video games industry. Within a year, United Coders had established itself as a leading partner to studios, publishers, and distributors across Europe. And in August 2001, he was the co-founder and European Editor-In-Chief of Insert Coin, an exclusive trade-only publication with a print circulation of 10.000 copies distributed to industry peers and worldwide press.
Hans continued his career by accepting numerous executive positions. Working as the Nordic PR-Manager for JoWooD Productions, he was responsible for launching a series of award-winning simulation- and strategy games. Hired by Creative Labs (Nordic) as their Technical PR-Specialist, he promoted and marketed an impressive array of products spanning from innovative MP3 players to speakers, graphics cards, and other multimedia accessories. Representing Memorex Products in Germany, he was tapped as their Nordic PR-Manager and was in charge of the entire catalog of multimedia storage devices and accessories. By recommendation of a leading game developer in Sweden, Hans became the Senior European PR-Manager at Vivendi Universal Games in Paris, representing high-profile game brands from Sierra®, Black Label Games®, Valve®, and Blizzard®.
During the spring of 2004, Hans relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area of California, working five years as Technical- and Executive Producer on work-for-hire game projects on PC and the Microsoft XBOX®, Sony PlayStation®, and Nintendo® platforms.
In 2009, Hans founded GAME PROMOTER, a market-leading consultancy firm supporting indie developers with their public relations, marketing, and business development needs. And in 2016, he accepted a CEO position at EnsenaSoft, a leading developer and casual game publisher, before returning as an independent games industry marketeer in 2018.
