App2Top

“Key components of Korean games are cooperation and competition among players,” said NPIXEL about the local market

In light of the upcoming release of the MMORPG Gran Saga, we had the chance to speak with the game developer — the South Korean team NPIXEL — about the country’s domestic market and what’s currently happening there.

Interview October 1

“Now is a good time to break into the turn-based tactics genre,” an interview about the development, features, and budget of “Sparta 2035”

About how the team, previously engaged in hyper-casual games, took on the development of “Sparta 2035”, a turn-based tactical game in the style of XCOM for PC — the editorial board of App2Top spoke with Gleb Durnovo, one of the founders of the Lipsar studio.

Interview September 12

KupiKod: “Indie projects in Russia can earn from 5 to 50 million rubles”

About how profitable the business of topping up Steam accounts in Russia is, whether it’s possible to enter this market today, as well as the size of the Russian gaming market and how much foreign AAA and indie titles can earn in it — we spoke with Anton Chernov, CEO of the platform KupiKod.

Interview June 24

“The modern adult game market (especially its free-to-play segment) is similar to the mobile market in 2009,” says Andrei Postnikov from Nutaku about the situation in the adult gaming industry

This is the second time this month we are addressing the topic of adult games. This time, in an interview format. We discuss the niche of “for adults” projects with Andrey Postnikov, Senior Business Developer at Nutaku.

Interview May 6

“Initially, we wanted to make a PC clone of Splatoon,” — an interview about the development of Slavania

In March, Slavania, the debut game by FrostLeaf Games studio, published by Game Art Pioneers, was released on Steam. We talked with Vladimir Averyanov, the game designer of the project, about how the metroidvania was developed based on Russian fairy tales.

Interview April 11

Revival: Recolonization was released. About the history of the project development — in our interview with HeroCraft

On April 11, the global strategy Revival: Recolonization was released on PC in full. App2Top talked with Sergey Ulankin, head of console and PC publishing at HeroCraft, about how development was going, how successful early access was, about working with VK Play, and much more.

Interview April 10

PlayDeck: “For Telegram games, the ARPPU is usually around $40- $60, and the percentage of payers can reach 5%”

There is little talk about games in the Telegram messenger. We decided to fix the situation by talking with Daria Novikova, product director at PlayDeck startup. The latter launched a gaming marketplace for Telegram. In a conversation with Daria, we touched on topics such as user engagement, earnings from leading projects, monetization and, of course, PlayDeck itself.

Interview February 6

“In the game development industry in 2023, the salaries of relocated specialists did not change,” – Roman Gordy from Arbonum.

App2Top interviewed Roman Gordy, one of the co-founders of the service, discussing the impact of relocation on the gaming industry and the favored destinations among Russian developers.

Interview January 22

“We have to get out before Hellblade 2, so we probably aren’t afraid to compete with it,” Odd Meter said about the upcoming release of Indika

Ahead of the imminent release of the Indika third-person action game from Odd Meter, now based in Kazakhstan, we spoke with studio head Dmitry Svetlov.

Interview December 5, 2023

The experience of successful crowdfunding on Boomstarter — interview with Asya Yurina from Baba Yaga Games

In early October, a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the development of the game Vasilisa and Baba Yaga was successfully completed. The game developers from the St. Petersburg studio Baba Yaga Games received 960 thousand rubles from sponsors. App2Top talked to Asya Yurina, co-founder of the studio, about how the campaign was going.

Interview November 28, 2023

What to expect from Nau Engine — interview with Andrey Karsakov

In October, it became known that the basis of the new Russian open engine Nau Engine will be a solution from Gaijin Entertainment — Dagor Engine. App2Top talked with Andrey Karsakov, Head of Nau Engine development, about how it happened and what technologies the engine will support.

Interview March 22, 2023

“It took us 10 months from the start of work on the script to the delivery of the book to the publisher,” Nikita Korzhavin about the experience of working on a comic book on Shadow Fight

In February, the official comic book for the Shadow Fight franchise appeared on the bookshelves of the CIS. We talked with Nikita Korzhavin, Nekki‘s business development director, about how the comic was being worked on and what task it solves for the game franchise.

Interview December 7, 2022

“Studio Ghibli had a huge influence on the appearance and atmosphere of the game,” producer Terra Nil said about the sources of inspiration

At the beginning of 2023, Terra Nil, an inversion construction simulator about ecology, will be released on Steam. We publish an interview with the producer of the project Ruan Rothmann (Ruan Rothmann).

Interview September 15, 2022

“Employees of many companies do not suspect that there will be enough money in their accounts for another 1-2 months, and then they will all be fired,” Sergey Belyaev about the Russian game dev

About the situation in Green Grey, salaries of Russian developers and gray schemes for transferring money to the country — in an interview with Sergey Belyaev, co-founder of the Infusion Games studio.

Interview June 24, 2022

VK Play: “Now the traffic source is not important — the commission is uniform and applicable to any game”

Yesterday VK announced a change in the commission policy of the VK Play platform, whose store component is the Russian equivalent of Steam. Now developers can count on 95% of the sales of games hosted on the site. We talked in detail about the nuances of the initiative with Rodion Kotelnikov, CTO VK Play.

Interview June 22, 2022

Playkot about the new game: “Spring Valley will earn $400 thousand in June. By the end of the year, the game will generate $1 million per month”

In mid-May, Playkot hosted the global launch of its new Spring Valley game. By June, its business metrics had reached excellent values: the percentage of those paying was 7.7%, and the retention of the first day for organics was 41%. We talked about the history of Spring Valley and the specifics of its development with the producers of the game — Evgeny Smirnov and Konstantin Popov.

Interview May 6, 2022

Growth, new processes and the preservation of the rebellious spirit: the creators of Redout about how the first year as a member of Saber passed

In November 2020, Saber Interactive, a subsidiary of Embracer Group, acquired a 100% stake in the Italian studio 34BigThings. We contacted Valerio Di Donato, CEO of 34BigThings, to discuss the implications of the takeover for a studio that has always prided itself on its freedom and “strangeness.”

Interview March 31, 2022

Rodion Kotelnikov: “The audience of MY.GAMES Store is slightly inferior in size to the Russian audience of Steam”

How many times has the number of “Allods Online” registrations increased in recent weeks, how things are going in the store with premium projects, why does he need browser games with advertising monetization – we talked about this and much more with Rodion Kotelnikov, the head of MY.GAMES Store.

Interview February 14, 2022

Interview with the producer of Dying Light 2: “This is not a typical sequel — we wanted to make the game better in all aspects”

Dying Light 2 Stay Human shows excellent sales at the start. However, Techland encountered a lot of problems during production. We talked with a senior studio producer about the difficulties of developing a sequel, the expansion of the company, the work of the narrative team and the impact of the pandemic on internal processes.

Interview December 13, 2021

Samustai on porting, optimization and marketing: “In the release month, Titan Chaser earned €20 thousand on consoles”

The other day on App2Top.ru there was a live broadcast with Anton Vinogradov, co—founder of the Samustai studio, which is engaged in porting indie titles to the console and publishing them. We talked in detail about the process of transferring games, optimization and the difficulties of working with different platforms. They also touched upon business processes, including revenue distribution, features of console marketing and sales.