White Nights Moscow 2016: how it was (figures, projects, reviews)

Place

Nevosoft held the conference in Moscow for the second time. White Nights debuted in the capital last fall. Just like a year ago, the event was held in the congress park of the five-star Radisson Royal Hotel.

This is almost the very center of the city. Opposite the White House.

But it’s not just about location, of course. When you take the escalator down — straight to the huge exhibition area — the first thought is: “a lot.”

A sticker of your choice was issued to the badge at the conference

A lot of people; a lot of booths, in each of which indie developers, actively gesticulating, show something to the guests; a lot of sponsors, most of whom are publishers, not advertising networks, of which there are few and who are very happy with this (the chance that a new acquaintance is a client, not a colleague – much higher); a lot of people you want to meet and need to see.

All this helped to assess the scale of what was happening.

Participants

The center of the exhibition area was the giant stands of Playrix, Appodeal and Game Insight. The latter announced the launch of its new shooter project Guns of Boom during the conference. In fact, the stand was dedicated to him, where guests of White Nights could get acquainted with the project.

Guns of Boom

The King stand was located next to them. The authors of Candy Crush took it and gave it to those independent developers who are creating their projects on the company‘s Defold engine.

“We invested our marketing budgets in indie instead of running ads about our engine. And we liked it!“We can tell as openly as possible that we went to White Nights and closed the quarter on tasks with one confoy!”.

However, the queues were lined up not only for him. For example, at the developers’ exhibition, which was attended by about 70 teams, on the first day there was a small pandemonium at the Zebrainy studio’s children’s project.

Almost on the contrary, Skylore, a new AIGRIND game, a unique Kaliningrad studio, which has been supporting the multiplatform MMO Warspear Online since 2008, which was released even on Symbian OS, was pleased with its high performance, lamp picture and nostalgia for Ragnarok Online.

Mobirate Stand

At the same developer exhibition, the Mobilate studio, known for projects such as Parking Mania and Dead Ahead, also showed its new game — an unexpected three-dimensional battler Warpets for the studio, which, by the way, received an award as the best project among the games participating in Deconstruction Workshop.

Program

The most important thing at business conferences, to which White Nights also refers itself, is the opportunity to meet with the widest possible number of market participants in order to solve specific business problems.

This does not mean that the program is secondary. Not at all. Reports and topics, on the one hand, the face of the conference, its status. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for opinion leaders to publicly, in the most open format, exchange their experience with colleagues.

The halls were full

Among the reports, I would like to mention a large-scale speech by the lead designer of CD Projekt RED, Matthew Steinke, in which he tried to reflect how the development team sees the player’s travels around the world of The Witcher 3.

Vyacheslav Taraskin’s presentation from Unity was also very interesting, in which he told how, resorting to what tricks and unusual solutions in monetization, you can increase the game’s revenue.

The applied report was made by Alexandra Pestretsova, who previously headed marketing departments in My.com and Game Insight. She talked about how to work properly with video bloggers.

The round tables were especially successful this time! I also remember an excellent round table on children’s games, in which representatives of Interactive Cartoon, Indigo Kids, Thematica and TrilobiteSoft gossiped about the problems of the segment, and a table dedicated to what and how to analyze in games, where Pixonic, devtodev, AppLovin, Game Insight and Orc Work took part. By the way, videos of all tables, as well as reports, will soon appear on our website.

Table about children’s games

Numbers

If we talk about numbers, then the scale of the event turned out to be really serious. During the two days of the conference, it was attended by more than 1,200 people. 40% of them are developers, 15% are publishers, 10% are platform representatives, 5% are artists, the rest are representatives of analytical platforms, payment services and advertising networks.

Reviews

Igor Klyukin — COO Pixonic

White Nights has always been one of the most significant conferences for mobile developers, and this year the scale has only grown.

This time, the speakers seriously pumped their skills and the international level was already felt.

The same is true in organizational terms — everything turned out very cool and both large and indie developers could profit from the conference as a whole. It’s cool that there are mobile conferences of this level in the CIS, which only grow over time, developing the local community.

The only thing that hurts is that I didn’t have enough time to talk to everyone and be everywhere.

Dmitry Kravtsov — CEO of devtodev

Let’s start with the fact that devtodev can rightfully be called regulars of the White Nights conference, every year the organization of the event gets better, the level of participants and speakers is constantly growing. This year, in addition to delivering an expert report, we also participated in a round table on game analytics, and the interest and passion that accompanied this part of the event pleasantly surprised us: conversations continued on the sidelines of the party. From the fact that the organizers guessed the theme, it was good and interesting for everyone.

It was also extremely useful to meet with devtodev users at our stand — to discuss plans, listen to their ideas for further development of the service.

Tanya Evdokimenko — Director of the Kiev office of Playrix

White Nights is an opportunity to hold meetings with many key partners in one place, meet old friends, as well as make new promising acquaintances. On the territory of the CIS, this is certainly one of the most significant events, and although it cannot yet completely replace a number of international conferences, its level only increases with each White Nights. Thanks to the organizers and see you in Prague [the next White Nights conference will be held very soon — in February — in the Czech Republic, — ed.]!

Maxim Fomichov — Country Manager Russia & CIS in G2A.COM

White Nights is one of those rare conferences, each visit to which is guaranteed to turn into successful acquaintances and useful connections. Whether it’s St. Petersburg, Moscow, Helsinki or, I’m sure, Prague, visiting White Nights is guaranteed to turn into excellent partners and deals for you. As for the last Moscow conference, I was most pleased with the construction. Finally, the business conference does not look like a cluster of white booths. This year, the WN team, in my opinion, has surpassed itself and I really hope that in the future they will be able to keep a similar pace!