The executive director of Pixonic Igor Klyukin said App2Top.ru about how the outgoing year passed for him.
Igor KlyukinHow was 2017 for you?
I finished the planned development of the Berlin office and returned to Moscow — I have a lot to do on new projects. The stocks of cheeses, wine and meat cuts brought with him, to which he managed to get used in Europe, quickly ran out.
I remember an April vacation in Los Angeles, where I toured the places of the film industry. Among other things, he visited Universal Park, the Disney office and the Warner Bros. film sets.
In October, I flew to Helsinki for a week-long Gaming Executive course at the local Aalto University. I wanted to visit it a couple of years ago, but I could only in 2017. A couple of years ago, training would have been much more valuable, now I just “consolidated” the accumulated experience. The most valuable thing was communication with colleagues from other companies, during the course we became friends and managed to discuss a lot without unnecessary “bills”.
During the year there were several shocks, which, in general, hardened the character, and, I hope, ultimately helped personal growth.
How was the year for the company?
Pixonic has again rebuilt itself to work on several projects at once. In addition to War Robots and the publishing direction, this is the released War Robots VR: The Skirmish, and several other internal developments, the release of which we have planned for 2018.
If I have always appreciated our project management skills, now I can say that we have significantly improved in the development of new projects. I even made a presentation on this topic at DevGAMM’17 in Minsk.
And yes, War Robots continues to grow and break records in MAU and profit, the team of this project has grown not only in quantity, but also in quality.
War RobotsWhat event of 2017 do you consider the most important for the industry?
Last year I mentioned Pokémon GO as a successful and original project that also attracted a lot of attention outside the gaming community. This year I will celebrate two events:
- the success of PUBG, because it gave development to the Battle Royale genre, and there will be a bunch of games in 2018.;
- loot boxes that have become entrenched in monetization and scandals around it, since this topic has gone far beyond the gaming industry and the gaming community.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
As I said earlier, loot boxes are firmly entrenched among the main mechanics of monetization, while causing a noisy discussion around them, the results of which we will see in 2018.
Hype around VR and AR has subsided, there is less hysteria and more cases (AR support by major players like Apple, Google and Facebook). I hope that now quality will replace quantity.
And this year I have a stronger feeling that soon we will all face a tough competition with gaming companies from Asia for places in the top of the USA and Europe. We need to prepare for this now.
Name the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most.
There are many projects, but I will name one. Last Day on Earth from Kefir! — the guys broke into an unoccupied niche well, showed impressive results, and according to the stories, developed the game in a short time.
And their game design is generally brilliant! The lack of content and multiplayer was beaten as if it all exists, and even at the highest (sometimes unattainable) level: clan bases, taming horses, capturing oil rigs, PvP… The “promise” of all this excites the imagination and awakens tremendous interest in the player.