2015 results: Alexey Savchenko from Epic Games about the promised land for game developers

Event of the Year

It has been a busy year, so one point is not enough.

Firstly, this year all key professional middleware technologies have become free to use. This significantly lowered the threshold of entry into development for young teams and opened up a whole horizon of new opportunities for developers.

Today, the gaming market is a kind of promised land, if compared with any other period from its own history in the past. Now developers have access to free and convenient technologies, platforms, distribution channels, events and rapid prototyping opportunities.

I would immediately like to make a reservation about the usual objection – “Yes, but this leads to a large number of bad projects collected on the knee.” This is partly true. But there is one “but”.

I see a lot of projects at work. As a rule, there are always about the same number of good and very promising stories – about 10-15%. Compared to last year, there were about three times more projects. Attention: including good ones.

The second important point (observed, in particular, in the framework of the last GDC 2015) is the attention paid by the VR and AR industry. These technologies are not only the main marketing vehicles for the entertainment industry. The overall effect they have on game development, interactive entertainment, the film industry, iron manufacturers and investments in the industry cannot be underestimated.

Thirdly, by the end of the year, in particular, after the autumn European Gamescom, the main console discourse shifted to the fact that PS4 unconditionally knocks out Xbox One. Even the frankly weak line of announcements on the PSX in no way cancels this.

In the mobile industry, I consider the purchase of King AB to be the main event. There was a lot of talk about how much this purchase made sense, how much the deal was overvalued, and so on. From an industrial point of view, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that there is a situation when a large conservative player buys out a large representative of “young money”. This is a precedent. It will be extremely interesting to see Activision Blizzard’s activity next year.

Trend of the year

Here, too, I want to note a couple of points. From the point of view of industrial infrastructure, we have a boom in regional events and an increase in the consolidation of the community. In 2015, the number of various shows, developer meetings, private initiatives in cities for lectures, showcases and jams has increased several times.

First of all, the catalyst is, of course, industrial enthusiasts who have their main job, but who are engaged in organizing such events based on the message “Someone has to do it.” For which a special thank you to them.

In this regard, by the way, we are a little behind Central and Eastern Europe, which have already moved to the stage of joint cooperation at the country level. In other words, the level of interaction there is higher, the growth of the community is more stable and faster, but I think it’s a matter of time for our region (CIS countries).

This point is also important from the point of view that each event is communication in a broad sense, and communication is new opportunities.

I also want to note the fact that the landscape is leveled in terms of platforms. Steam is getting a lot more attention today than before. Developers (especially beginners) have become aware of the degree of risk associated with launching and operating games on mobile platforms. Many have come to understand that without the support of a major publisher or access to traffic channels, it is very easy to get into 99% of games that will “drown” in the general flow. The use of engines also simplifies access to console digital stores, PSN and Xbox Marketplace (mostly PSN, of course) are increasingly heard in conversations.

As for the mobile, the midcore story continues here. Traffic prices continue to rise. The latter pushes all market players to use classic (not mobile) marketing tools, to conservative approaches to product advertising. As part of this trend, we are seeing a series of expensive commercials featuring Hollywood stars, more interviews and work with the press, as well as work with licenses. A lot of synchronous PvP, a lot of MOBA (and there will be even more), CCG/TCG and representatives of the action adventure genre.

Output by the word MOBA in iTunesAchievement of the Year

In the global market, I would like to mention the following companies.

• Sony – for actively promoting the console and simplifying work with its platform.
• Activision Blizzard and King – for the most interesting deal of the year, which opens up the possibility of a fundamentally new level of interaction between companies from two different market segments.
• Separately, I also want to mention Blizzard as a company that continues to develop its IP in a way that perhaps no one else on the market is able to do.
• Bethesda – for the cool rock and roll flick with the announcement of the mobile Shelter at E3 (!) and the subsequent explosive success of the game. I applauded at the monitor!
• CD Project – for the phenomenal quality and success of the product from Eastern Europe.
• CCP – for EVE: Valkyrie and the fact that the game will be pre-installed on all Oculus Rift.

Locally, I would like to mention the following companies:

• WG is developing extremely interestingly towards third party publishing, offering a model that may well become revolutionary.
• Mail.ru I have released Armored Warfare, and judging by the first results, I think that the company can already be safely congratulated on a successful launch.
• GSC Game World is back with us after the announcement of “Cossacks 3”. This is a very significant event, I would like to wish the team success. It is clear that the community hopes for, let’s say, announcements of other sequels.
• I note Neurohaze for the phenomenal amount of work done in some unrealistically short time by a team of six people on the project Genom project.

Special respect to Yulia Lebedeva, Lera Mallaeva, Alexander Khrutsky, Yulia Moshkareva, teams, organizers, volunteers and everyone-everyone-everyone who has been organizing shows and events throughout the year. No kidding, the level of all shows has increased this year, your work is extremely important for the entire industry, thank you very much.

Project GenomDisappointment of the Year

It was a great year, to be honest, there were no disappointments as such, although maybe I’m just such an optimist by nature, but how else, and why?

Game of the Year

Results of the year for the company

Paragon
For me personally, this year has probably been the busiest in the last five or six years.

About twenty trips to exhibitions, old acquaintances and new friends, several hundred projects reviewed, a lot of work and assistance to developers, a lot of reports and lectures. In general, it was great in every way. Now there will be a short timeout for the winter holidays, and from the second half of January – back into battle. There are a lot of plans, you need to roll up your sleeves and implement everything!