Founder and CEO of tinyBuild Alex Nichiporchik said App2Top.ru how the current year has passed for his company.
Alex NichiporchikHow was 2017 for you?
2017 turned out to be the most eventful travel year. I used to fly somewhere once every 10-15 days. This year – at least once a week. It’s a funny feeling when you “live” in more than one place. I have sets of clothes in the USA and Holland, and I fly between them with a backpack. As soon as Wi-Fi appeared on this 10–hour flight (Amsterdam – Seattle), suddenly the days stopped being wasted. But it is physically very difficult, and by the end of the year I had to seriously take care of my health. This is now a priority for me for the next year – to be able to maintain a crazy rhythm of life while being healthy.
And all travel is connected with professional growth. I produce bigger and bigger projects, consolidate and expand partnerships, and make friends from the industry all over the world. It seems to me that despite a lot of bad things that happened in the world, it was the most intense and positive year in my life.
How was the year for the company?
Scary. We made three more bets.
1) Expansion of the porting studio. Thanks to this, we started releasing games on the Nintendo Switch, and there will soon be a lot of announcements.
2) Investments in AA projects, the first of which – Hello Neighbor – paid off on day 1. Moreover, it seems that merchandising will bring most of the profit.
Hello Neighbor
3) People. We hire the best people in the industry. Our SRT – John Coomes – worked on Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation, Monday Night Combat. Our producer worked at Riot Games. We also secretly invested in a couple of studios that are working on unannounced projects.
The first two bets paid off. The third is the transition to the next year.
What event of 2017 do you consider the most important for the industry?
PUBG output. This is a phenomenal story that will help break the “wheel” of AAA convoys. AAA companies now understand the importance of creative personalities from the indie or modder segment and will take more risks.
The second, it seems to me, is the failure of Star Wars Battlefront II. It is very good that the community united and opposed the loot boxes.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
Steam is becoming a very complex platform, and there is increasing toxicity. At the same time, many developers feel great with sales through their websites. Creating communities outside of Steam for PC games is an important trend for me, because we saw it ourselves in the past year.
Name the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most.
I’m amazed by the Nintendo Switch breakthrough. And I can’t believe I was able to bring back the feeling of childhood (the one when I locked myself in the summer at the dacha with games for the first PlayStation), playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the plane.
I was generally pessimistic about the platform, but it turned out to be the biggest breakthrough.
In the CIS, it is difficult to assess the importance of Switch, but when you go to any store in the USA, you almost always see signs – Nintendo Switch Sold Out. And at that moment you realize that there is a huge audience of loyal fans who appreciate what you are doing.