Vice President of Cubic Games Sergey Babaev said App2Top.ru about the successes and plans of his company and the blockbuster Pixel Gun 3D.
Sergey BabaevHow was 2017 for you?
The sensations from 2017 are very positive, intense and at the same time extremely simple. If you try to describe it somewhat crumpled, but honestly, everything that was good last year remains, but has reached a new level. For the rest, I evaluate personal results based on business results. So, for example, the new DTF has become better and bigger in my subjective opinion this year, but objectively exceeded 1 million unique users per month.
How was the year for the company?
1) About the organization of work
Over the past year, a lot has changed in my usual way of working. Working at Cubic Games has become a real challenge for me.
The development and support of our flagship Pixel Gun project is highly distributed across teams and countries: the head office is located in Cyprus, but you have to interact with people from different parts of the world, different time zones. The main language in the team, of course, is English. Before that, I worked with colleagues, let’s say, of the same cultural code with me, and now I have to openly study, change approaches to interaction with the team.
In other words, the dynamics of life has increased dramatically. On the other hand, it is these factors that allow the project to develop at such a rapid pace.
2) About the flagship and its successes
In short, 2017 ends extremely successfully, the growth on all fronts is almost 2 times. I have a somewhat lyrical explanation for this, but I will share it anyway.
By modern standards, we at Cubic Games have a rather unusual approach to development. As a rule, it is customary to make cosmetic jewelry changes on an already completed project, it is accepted mainly for the “do not breathe” project. In contrast to this approach, our guys risk testing the boldest hypotheses about what can positively affect the project. And sometimes they just do what they themselves would be interested in, not relying only on business tasks.
Would you like to be accompanied by a fighting phoenix or a cyber dog in battle? Easy! And a personal castle with turrets, trampolines and a battering ram? No question! Maybe another mode in addition to the ten that already exist? Get it!
PixelGun 3D is a project that over the years of active development has turned into a game that has absolutely everything.
How many mechanics have been introduced into the core gameplay this year alone – I won’t even take it upon myself to count. The number of various weapons in the project has long exceeded several hundred. The company has talented game designers from different countries with different cultural codes, which apparently helps to invent unusual and sometimes crazy types of combat in a good way. And such content is introduced into the game literally with every update simply because of the presence of unusual ideas.
Of course, not all experiments this year were exceptionally successful.
For example, in one summer update, we checked whether it was worth removing old mechanisms from the game, guns or modes that were unsuccessful in our opinion. Our hypothesis was that for the core audience, the presence of this non-content is not so important. We thought the game would get better if we removed it.
But – this is especially true for projects with high retention (with us it reaches the 10% mark on the 90th day) – users quickly get used to their environment and negatively relate to any attempt to take away from them, it would seem, even the most insignificant content. Therefore, the team often “turns on” the game, leaving the core audience in the comfort zone and simply offering a new kind of entertainment.
In contrast to this story, there are moments when the introduced feature and its accompanying content (like a craft lobby or a vip account) did not ignite by itself, but was justified a few months later within the framework of temporary events.
In general, the year was held under the auspices of very successful experiments in the field of commercial offers: promotions, events, sweepstakes and the like. We still communicate on a business resource where people are interested in the industry as a market, realizing that a successful game (reviews + metrics + revenue) is not only an interesting gameplay, but also a binding around it, so I don’t hesitate to give such arguments. Strapping is a big, complex and demanding task of a special mindset. The employees of the game dev perfectly understand what I’m talking about.
There is a lively response to these changes directly from the audience, because it would be strange to evaluate the “fan” of the product only by commercial criteria. Our estimates this year generally reached the 4.9 mark (from update to update), the peak online recently grew to 90 thousand simultaneous users, the peak DAU was slightly more than 2 million users, and the total player base confidently exceeded 100 million. We also made a mark in the US box office Top 10 in record positions in the entire history of the project (7th place on iPad and 11th on iPhone).
If we talk about the genre of first-person shooters without false modesty (and not about action projects in general), then Pixel Gun has once again consolidated leadership in this niche in mobile.
3) About development and strategy.
Back at the end of the summer, many drawings were carried out by different CGS, several interesting prototypes were collected. Now several more projects are being developed in our studios around the world, both in the familiar cubic setting and in other niches and settings new to the company. Here, as they say, follow the news.
What event of 2017 do you consider the most important for the industry?
From the point of view of games, perhaps an important step is the support of AR in Apple products, and the trend from the gaming experience itself, which all companies have paid attention to, is the success of survival games on mobile platforms, but I will express the respect of the Kefir studio a little later.
I don’t want to repeat myself too much, many have already said the obvious before me: notable events were the launch of the Nintendo Switch and the stunning success of PUBG. I can only join these words.
A number of transactions that took place this year also deserve attention. For example, with the company Plarium. There have been rumors for a long time, but now it’s a fait accompli. In general, if you carefully study the news, then sales, mergers and so on are in a sense also a trend of 2017.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
Of course, if we talk about trends in general, then it should be noted the extraordinary penetration of cryptocurrencies and blockchain into the minds of the masses – from experienced investors and businessmen to ordinary employees of companies and people who are generally infinitely far from IT and exchanges. Of course, a certain wave is slowly but surely engulfing the gaming market: ICO of gaming projects have been outlined, gaming cryptocurrencies have appeared. What are the cryptos worth, who earned $ 2.5 million in a week on the game mechanics of a decade ago. Where all this will come globally – I can’t judge yet, but there is a trend bordering on hysteria. I have not succumbed to this trend so far and keep all the money in the old way, without investing in the crypt. Maybe someday I’ll regret it, but, in general, I’m not inclined to do this.
Name the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most.
The main project of this year for me is Last Day on Earth: Survival from Kefir!. The guys actually made a representative of the genre on mobile. Moreover, they were among the first and definitely the first to do so correctly and so successfully.
Of course, it is impossible not to note the incredible success of Homescapes. But from the real leaders of our Playrix market, nothing else was expected.
I am also sincerely glad for the company Nekki, which I love to this day, and the cool results of Shadow Fight 3. It is important that the stated bar for the most honest AAA class is taken. The efforts spent by the team and even, I’m not afraid to say, the years were not in vain.