Pavel Ryakkonen , Executive Director and co – founder of Nevosoft , said App2Top.ru about how the outgoing year passed for his company and about the main deals of 2017.
Pavel RyakkonenHow was the year for the company?
For Nevosoft, the outgoing year 2017 was very fruitful.
We have launched a number of projects in sotflonch. Three of them are made in new genres for us and are designed for audiences with whom we have not worked before. For example, we have released slots and are currently experimenting with midcore.
What is especially nice is that, having started the launch of our game “Treasure of the Worlds Slots” from Russian–language social networks, we have already managed to receive awards from the main platforms – from Odnoklassniki and VK.
1) Odnoklassniki included the game in the selection of “The Best games of 2017” and gave the award “The Most Atmospheric Slots”.
2) VKontakte also included the project in its selection of “The Best Games of 2017”, and also called it the “cross-platform game of the year”.
Now we are preparing games that have already been launched as part of the softlonch and another large project for the main release. There is still a lot of work to do.
What event do you consider the most important in 2017?
The success of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS. He once again demonstrated to skeptics that not all genres and mechanics have been invented yet.
I also want to note the success of the guys from Playrix, they are great fellows.
An important event for Russian gaming companies was the beginning of the “Google Tax“. Its introduction proved to be an additional incentive for a number of teams to move abroad. Now the Cyprus gaming industry is experiencing unprecedented growth.
It is also worth noting the signing of the so-called HTP 2.0 decree by the Belarusian authorities at the end of the year. We will closely monitor the development of this, of course, correct initiative.
The event that could potentially be the most important by the end of 2017 was the release of the game Star Wars: Battlefront II. More precisely, the scandal around the loot boxes that the game caused. And regulatory measures have already been taken by Apple.
What trends in 2017 would you note?
There were a lot of trends.
Ongoing M&A transactions. Among the examples that immediately come to mind are the two largest purchases made by the Australian Aristocrat: the acquisition of Plarium for $500 million and Big Fish Games for $990 million.
There are also actively ongoing acquisitions within the industry itself. This year, I actively bought and invested, for example, Supercell. Developers were also acquired this year by Zynga, Paradox and EA.
This year, many gaming companies have gone on IPO: Rovio, Remedy, Netmarble, Next Games, Nitro Games.
Blockchain, ICO and cryptocurrencies have become another bright trend. Today, this is, in general, a popular topic, it has affected the gaming business. A number of companies have already announced their desire to introduce cryptocurrencies into their gaming projects. The topic turned out to be so hot that we even made a separate discussion panel at White Nights Moscow, where this topic was discussed, it was interesting.
The relevance of this topic confirms the success of CryptoKitties. I’m sure a lot of clones of this game are being made right now.