“Business in the gaming industry is when a developer makes a game not only for the sake of art, but also to make money on it”

The day before yesterday, the preliminary program of White Nights Moscow 2016 became known, which will be held on October 11-12 in the congress park of the five-star Radisson Royal Hotel. It is already known that such companies as CD Projekt RED, King and Playrix will perform among others.

Yulia Lebedeva, Nevosoft Business Development Director, told us about how the program is compiled, how the organizers choose speakers and how presentations at the upcoming conference will be interesting.

Julia Lebedeva

“From the very first conference, we raised the bar high: we decided that the program should be the coolest for us. Therefore, we first create a certain “ideal” program, and then we look for speakers for it.

A prerequisite is that there should be at least one coveted “star”, i.e. a speaker from a company that is a world leader and has not performed in Russia before. And it is desirable that she rarely performed anywhere at all. Every time it becomes more difficult to find such companies. At one time, White Nights was one of the few conferences where such companies as Supercell, Rovio, King, Warner Bros., Wooga or, for example, the creator of the legendary Syberia, Benoit Sokal, spoke. Also, our strength has always been the presence of all major platforms – now this is already a quality standard for many, but I think we made it the standard.

Then I communicate with each speaker personally, finding out exactly what he would like to tell, and often offering a topic that, in my opinion, would be the most interesting.

White Nights is a conference for business. I have already explained once that business is not the annoying “Christmas trees” from our video. Business in the gaming industry is when a developer makes a game not only for the sake of art, but also to make money on it. Some individuals, proudly calling themselves “indie”, prefer to ignore this aspect – in my opinion, solely because they cannot earn money. There is nothing wrong with making money in a business that brings you pleasure, and how great it would be if all indie developers could receive revenue adequate to their creativity.

Moreover, I am sure that in order for this to happen, you do not need to wait for a miracle. You need to attend the presentations that we collect at White Nights. We don’t teach how to make games – we gather representatives of platforms, publishers and successful developers who share their experience. Moreover, I believe that presentations at the conference should not teach you anything, these are not refresher courses. They help to better understand what is happening in the market, see your “window of opportunity” and refract someone else’s experience on your situation.

For example, Bob Slinn, the chief partner with game developers at Facebook, will come to Moscow. This is a person who participates in the development of the overall strategy of the company and will be able to tell you what games are worth (or not worth) doing in the near future, will tell you about the partnership between Facebook and Unity. David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies, will also speak. Of course, but personally I am very interested in listening to a person who 12 years ago was able to predict the development of the market and create such a company.

Other platforms will also tell about the opportunities for developers: VK.com , G2A.com , Google, Amazon and, of course, the company that regularly holds performances by appointment with us.

Traditionally, there will be a technical presentation from Unity, as well as an hour and a half master class on development for VR from Unreal Engine. This is also interesting, although our main focus remains the opportunities for developers to reach the first positions of all the tops.

By the way, you should definitely listen to Tanya Evdokimenko from Playrix, a company that has become one of the recognized world leaders in the gaming industry, releasing three hits one after another. By the way, Dima and Igor Bukhman were at almost all White Nights, including the very first one. And for the first time, Playrix will be with us as a cool platinum sponsor!

Oleg Pridyuk, known to many, promised to tell a lot of interesting things about how everything works in King. What struck me: the company regularly compiles a PDF with information on projects in development, and is sent to teams that then compete to be the best. Projects are measured both by the usual parameters – the size in memory, the load on the processor – and by such important metrics that affect the funnel of traffic as the startup speed on an old phone or the battery consumption of the phone.

Other developers and publishers are also scheduled to speak: Game Insight, Pixonic, Creative Mobile, 101XP and several others that we did not have time to announce. The “nail” of the program is Matthew Steinke, the leading technical designer of the Witcher project, who will perform in Russia for the first time. Matthew has devoted more than 16 years to the gaming industry, having worked on projects such as Tom Clancy’s: Splinter Cell, Mortal Kombat, Stranglehold and PsiOps:The Mindgate Conspiracy. He will share CD Projekt RED‘s experience of working on the third part of The Witcher.

I want to note separately for some grumblers: there are no selling “marketing reports” in the program at all. There is a presentation from Unity Ads, which I would recommend to those who dream of high eCPM during advertising monetization. At the round table in St. Petersburg, we remembered them and Appodeal with a kind word.

There are four round tables in the program: a conversation between modest developers Leonid Sirotin and Sergey Babayev, a discussion of children’s games, a discussion about HTML5 and an HR table on how to find / retain / dismiss employees in game development.

As for the promotion of games, the selection is wonderful. Facebook Instagram and Audience Network promotion is already a traditional master class by Oksana Afonina. If you haven’t been to her yet, be sure to sign up and listen.

Alexandra Pestretsova is a promotion guru who headed marketing at companies such as Game Insight and Mail.Ru Group, will tell you about YouTubers and how to work with them. And in the new company PlayClips in general came up with a completely new solution for the market: they work with YouTubers who bring their fans into the game and interact with them right inside the game! At the same time, traffic is tracked, and payment for it goes according to the revenue share model.

Well, the “highlight” of the conference will again be the Deconstruction Workshop. Everyone really liked the new format of real-time analysis of games by experts in St. Petersburg, so we will hold it again.

From all of the above, we can draw a simple conclusion: programmers have nothing much to do at our conference. Unless some of them want to be the first in Russia to get a Unity certificate, but shh, it’s just rumors so far!

White Nights is a conference for owners of gaming companies, for CEOs and COO, various VP, business owners, producers, marketers and game designers. We will have a ton of useful information for all these people, and I haven’t said a word about networking yet. And it already depends on you personally whether you will be able to get this information, digest it and do something cool. I hope you can, and it is with this thought in mind that I start working on the program every time.”

You can register for White Nights on the website – while the prices are “starting”. Already on Monday, the organizers promise to increase them.