The founder of the Belarusian studio Total Games Alexey Meleshkevich told about the main trends of the last twelve months.
Alexey MeleshkevichHow was 2017 for you?
Very intense. I left the company that I had been creating for 10 years, left the team, my projects, plans related to all this. And he opened a new company, started new projects.
How was the year for the company?
This year it turned out that I worked with several companies:
- Melesta (now Melsoft, which I left);
- with my new company Total Games;
- I helped and continue to help little Leda Games to make their new three-in-a-row.
I also had an interesting experience in a hardcore startup to create a smart electric skateboard controlled without a remote control.
Speaking more specifically about Total Games, this is an attempt to apply our strongest competencies in creating games using blockchain technologies. There are two projects in development now: mobile farm and mobile online poker.
Farm from Total GamesWhat event of 2017 do you consider the most important for the industry?
I think the most important thing is the latest changes in mobile stores. Let me remind you that the design of the App Store has changed radically, and a new ranking system has been introduced in Google Play.
On the one hand, stores now provide even less opportunities for marketing outside their platforms, on the other hand, they are trying to solve the problem of the top, when ten projects receive 90% of the market (or so), thereby depriving a significant part of the audience of high–quality content that does not have the opportunity to break through to the top of the charts.
I think this is a very positive change for the industry, which will make the marketing of projects much more effective, although it will redistribute market shares globally.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
During my 15 years in the computer game industry, I have experienced several Big Things arrivals and market shifts.
The whole of 2017, in my opinion, passed under the sign of Bitcoin, ICO and cryptocurrencies. The new The Big Thing is the blockchain, and the new opportunities it brings. In the long term, this technology (not to be confused or identified with dead bitcoins or ethereums) will enter firmly into our lives, as the Internet entered at one time. And those companies that ignore them will simply die.
Poker from Total GamesName the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most.
To be honest, I spend most of my time on projects close to my work. At the moment, my former project is My Cafe: Recipes & Stories is already a third-party for me, but I still consider it the best, despite the design problems that the guys have not solved so far. I hope they will get their hands on it and they will remember the solutions we have developed that can eliminate the problems of monetization and the return of players.
It would be a sin not to mention Playrix with Gardenscapes and Homescapes. The best three-in-a-row at the moment.
I also spent quite a lot of time on Last Day On Earth. Great game, well done!
Well, by the nature of his activity, he played about 13 thousand games of online poker on his phone. Here the best poker for me is the World Poker Club from the disinterested penniless from Crazy Panda.