We continue to summarize the results of 2024 with gaming (or gaming industry-related) teams and experts. Up next is an interview with Sergey Belyaev, co-founder of the studio INFUSION GAMES.
How did the year turn out for the company? What achievements would you like to highlight?
I understand the expected answers are how great everything was, what an amazing year, and so on. Even if it wasn't. PR will always be PR, especially around the New Year.
But I always try to be as honest as possible. For INFUSION GAMES, the year was extremely challenging both in terms of workload and business-wise. We were forced to:
- significantly reduce staff;
- partially freeze work on one of the projects until next year;
- restructure the employee team;
- come to some unpleasant conclusions;
- redistribute the workload among those we retained;
- postpone releases.
Yet, as they say, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. All these upheavals and hardships led us to improve team efficiency and work speed. Despite the cuts, we fully focused on getting our role-playing battler Arena Heroes to release. We are actively preparing for the product launch! We plan to start test ad campaigns soon—we're already preparing creatives and polishing the build for the stores.
I want to emphasize that the main credit for getting us so close to release goes to all the guys and gals working with us. They’re all incredible, and I am very proud of them!
Arena Heroes
In your opinion, how has the situation changed in the gaming market?
The good news is the market is slowly getting better, thawing out. The bottom has been reached. Looking forward, we really hope for a “spring”! The trend is positive, but it’s still very tough for all the companies that are in development or launch phases and haven’t yet reached profitability.
As for the labor market, it’s been all over the place throughout the year: from massive hiring to massive layoffs, salaries shooting up to the sky and then plummeting back down. Of course, this is somewhat of a generalization from the overall feeling. Some were lucky, some positions remained unaffected, some are still in high demand. But looking more globally, rather than subjectively, I wouldn't say that 2024 brought any particularly positive changes for employees.
How was this year for the genre you're working in?
We’re watching the market with anticipation as we prepare for launch. Despite the overall decline in the RPG market (due to decreased demand for MMORPGs), subgenres like Idle RPG and battlers are growing. That warms our hearts!
Arena Heroes
What trends do you expect to see strengthen or emerge in your niche in 2025?
Speaking about the industry as a whole, I expect an investment “warming,” assuming nothing critical happens again. Investments are the main driver of the entire industry’s development!
We look positively toward 2025 and believe it could be a new turn in the spiral for our industry.
What are the company's plans for next year?
Regarding product plans, the first half of the year will focus mainly on Arena Heroes. We plan to actively scale up in regions and traffic volumes, add many new mechanics, and expand the game’s features. We aim to achieve very strong product and business metrics. We’ll be launching on new platforms and expanding the “geography” of our web venues.
In the second half of the year, we plan to fully resume work on our shooter Cyber Wars, the very game we decided to put on hold temporarily.
Additionally, we will be “forced” to expand our staff numbers.
From the perspective of the company's future business development, we have various developments at the R&D and prototyping stages. These are predominantly AI-based service solutions. They are waiting for their time. First, we need to establish a flow of live data from our products.