In their weekly interview series Womenize! features inspirational, diverse people who work in the games and tech industry, to share their experiences, give valuable advice and talk about their projects. In cooperation with Womenize! and Madeleine Egger, GamesMarkt is republishing these inspirations.
Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Jessica Edenhofner, Head of Gaming & Entertainment at gocomo. She speaks about how her storytelling and journalism background shaped an empathetic, audience-focused approach, where balancing data with instinct and understanding people drives both engaging gaming content and effective team leadership. Read more about Jessica here:
Hi Jessica! Starting with a degree in journalism, you’ve navigated from student magazines and internships to leading content and social media teams in gaming and esports. How did your academic background in storytelling shape your approach to building engaging content and leading creative teams?
For me, storytelling and content have always been inseparable. Whether it’s journalism, social media, or brand communication, you’re ultimately trying to connect with people and make something resonate. Early in my studies, I learned to think in three simple questions: who am I talking to, why does this matter to them, and what do I want them to feel or do? That framework still guides almost everything I create today.
I chose a very hands-on journalism program instead of a purely theoretical university path, and I’m genuinely grateful for that decision. We worked across TV, print, radio, graphic communication, and digital formats. It was intense, but it gave me a practical toolkit and a realistic understanding of how content is actually made. In social media and content roles, you’re rarely just one thing. You’re writing, thinking visually, planning video, moderating communities, sometimes even performing. That broad, craft-based training helped me feel comfortable across disciplines and later enabled me to lead teams with a better understanding of their work.
Leadership, on the other hand, was something I was exposed to even earlier. As a teenager, I supported my mother’s company by helping develop workshops and marketing materials for leadership training. At university, those early impressions were refined through sociology courses, communication theory, and very practical advice from professors. I still remember a radio lecturer telling us: “People can’t see how you feel – so describe it clearly.” That stuck with me, not just for audio storytelling, but for leadership. Clear communication, transparency, and context matter just as much when you’re leading people as when you’re telling a story on air.
Moving into gaming, entertainment, and esports was the moment I truly turned my passion into a profession.
Over time, theory turned into practice. I’ve worked with very inspiring leaders and some very challenging ones, and I’m genuinely grateful for both experiences. They taught me what kind of leader I want to be – and, just as importantly – what I definitely don’t want to replicate. With that perspective, I grew with my teams, my responsibilities, and my mistakes. That experience shaped how I approach leadership today: combining structure with empathy, clarity with openness.
Moving into gaming, entertainment, and esports was the moment I truly turned my passion into a profession. I’ve always believed that engaging content comes from working on things you genuinely care about. When you don’t just try to understand your audience but actually are a part of it , storytelling becomes more honest and more effective. Leading teams that share that passion, giving them strong frameworks and the tools to sharpen their craft, and growing through challenges together is what makes my work both meaningful and impactful.
You’ve built a career at the intersection of creativity and data, producing content that resonates with Gen Y, Z, and Alpha. How do you decide when to follow instinct versus analytics, and can you share a moment where that balance made all the difference?
This is actually a difficult question for me to answer, because in almost all of my projects, instinct and analytics are actually deeply intertwined. I rarely experience them as opposing forces – strong outcomes usually come from their interaction. Data helps define the who and shows existing patterns, while instinct, fed by experience, helps interpret why something might work next.
On top of that, testing my theories plays a big role for me. Especially when an idea is instinct-driven, I like to validate it early. Being a gamer myself and surrounded by very diverse gaming communities – from Gen Z to Gen X – gives me the opportunity to turn gut feelings into test cases with a small but meaningful sample size. I’ll float ideas, listen carefully, and adjust. That process sharpens instinct instead of treating it as something abstract or unexplainable, and refine ideas before scaling them through data.
The balance also depends a lot on context. When you’re working on larger campaigns or long-term activations, data and research naturally take the lead – you have the time to build strategies, concepts, and frameworks. But even in those settings, there are moments when you have to react quickly. And in fast-moving digital environments, instinct becomes essential – always grounded in analytical understanding, never detached from it.
One example that is particularly close to my heart is the introduction of a Tabletop and Pen & Paper area at DreamHack Hannover and Gamevasion Hannover. After visiting multiple DreamHack events internationally and coming out of the COVID period – where digital tabletop platforms and Pen & Paper streams grew massively – my instinct told me that this culture belonged in a gaming LAN festival environment.
For me, that’s the ideal outcome: using data as a foundation, instinct as a compass, and testing as a bridge between the two.
Analytics supported this intuition. Sales of trading card games and board games had increased significantly since the pandemic, and formats like Critical Role or content from Rocket Beans had brought Pen & Paper into the mainstream. However, there were no exclusive benchmarks for the German market, as no comparable event was actively integrating these themes at the time.
We started deliberately small in 2022, treating it as a test rather than a full-scale commitment. Even then, the engagement – especially in the Pen & Paper area – exceeded expectations. Those early learnings and numbers gave us the confidence to scale the concept strategically the following year at Freaks 4U Gaming.
The result was a success: in 2023, over 1,200 One Piece players attended DreamHack Hannover, making us early adopters of a format that is now visible at events like gamescom, gamescom LAN, Caggtus, and Polaris. As a lifelong nerd, it’s incredibly fulfilling to see that a mix of instinct, testing, and data-driven scaling helped prove that tabletop and Pen & Paper are a natural part of the wider gaming ecosystem.
For me, that’s the ideal outcome: using data as a foundation, instinct as a compass, and testing as a bridge between the two – not just to hit short-term goals, but to help shape what the gaming and entertainment landscape can look like long-term.
Looking back, what’s one lesson from your journey (from early content creation to heading departments) that you wish every aspiring leader in gaming and entertainment knew?
The one lesson that stands out most clearly is that everything comes down to empathy. Very early on, I was introduced to the idea that people don’t leave companies, they leave people. At the time, it sounded like a leadership mantra. Over the years, I’ve learned that this sentence can be broken down into a very concrete skill: the ability to genuinely understand and care about the people you work with and create for.
In my early content roles, empathy meant understanding audiences on a human level. Not just through numbers, but by asking: what do they care about, what frustrates them, what do they need right now? That’s also why influencer marketing works so well. People are far more likely to trust a recommendation from a streamer on Twitch or a creator on TikTok than a classic ad – not because the product is better, but because the relationship feels real. Humans are social by nature, and even parasocial relationships can build strong emotional trust. When there’s a positive relationship, loyalty follows.
As my responsibilities grew and I started leading teams, the same principle applied – just internally instead of externally. Passion is a great starting point, especially in gaming and entertainment, but it’s not enough on its own. People do their best work when they feel safe, respected, and supported. That means allowing room for mistakes, encouraging creative ideas, and being open to new perspectives. It also means accepting that people aren’t machines. Sometimes they struggle, sometimes they need help, and good leadership shows up in those moments.
I’ve experienced uncertain phases in this industry – projects falling through, market shifts, and periods where stability wasn’t guaranteed. What kept teams together in those moments wasn’t the brand name or the projects alone, but trust in the people around them. Open communication, transparency, and a sense of “we’ll figure this out together” make an enormous difference.
Old sayings like “treat others the way you want to be treated” or “what you put out comes back to you” might sound outdated, but in my experience, they hold true across content creation, community building, and leadership. When you communicate with empathy and respect, you build stronger relationships – whether that’s with an audience, a community, a client, or a team. And strong relationships make it much easier to achieve shared goals, even if that goal is simply creating great work together.
