The Odnoklassniki game producer told App2Top how the year went for the social network, as well as which projects and trends he considers the most important.
Vladimir TomkoHow was 2017 for you?
For me personally, the year went well, actively and very smoothly. That is, it is quite difficult to single out any special moments.
If we talk about games, I was very happy when Microsoft announced that Age of Empires – Definitive Edition will be released in October this year. But when I started playing the closed beta, I realized that I would probably have to wait for the release until the end of Q1-Q2 2018.
Overall, in terms of games, the year was just great!
How was the year for the company?
The year has been fruitful for the company. We have launched a new section “Services and discounts”, analytics for groups in mobile applications, strengthened the video platform: our program “OK in touch” is broadcast on the Moscow 24 channel.
As part of the gaming direction, we have completely redesigned the web and mobile web storefronts, as well as the showcase of games in messages.
As last year, we developed our mobile HTML5 direction, attracted new developers, helped new mobile HTML5 games with traffic and, in general, we are satisfied with the result.
What event of 2017 do you consider the most important for the industry?
The financial success of CryptoKitties. This event opens up completely new opportunities for the gaming industry.
CryptoKitties
Cryptocurrencies in most countries are not yet regulated as money, but, nevertheless, they are.
The game shows us that a new market is being formed with a fairly high entry threshold for the player, but also with large profits (both for developers and for players) and transparency – a market for games using blockchain and operating not with local hard currency, like crystals, but with an existing cryptocurrency with a multibillion-dollar capitalization.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
Of course, one of the most popular trends of 2017 were blockchain, cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding of projects through ICO/TGE. Almost everyone rushed to this area in the hope of discovering a new El Dorado.
For a long time, representatives of the gaming industry have been trying to come up with something within this sphere, but due to a number of serious limitations of the blockchain (Ethereum was mostly considered by everyone), gaming stores where you can trade things from different games, betting e-sport platforms and casino projects on tokens to enter markets where gambling for real money is prohibited, it has not reached. And just the other day, the CryptoKitties game was released, which opened the door to a new gaming market. I expect that in the next month there will be a large number of clones of this game, as well as new, original projects.
In addition, the trends of the outgoing year can be called:
- massive rethinking of the three-in-a-row genre towards Gardenscapes by Playrix;
- returning to the well-forgotten old: Blizzard announced the launch of the classic World of Warcraft mode and successfully released Starcraft: Remastered, Microsoft is developing definitive versions of all its Age of Empires, Nintendo launched the SNES Mini console with old games, the Call of Duty series returned to its origins in Call of Duty: WWII;
- mass adaptation of loot boxes (gacha) as a universal monetization model;
- the market for native mobile games is becoming so crowded that platforms are forced to come up with new ways to provide visibility to various new games: Apple has completely redesigned its store in favor of local and personal preferences, Google has also followed this path, adding to its store a large number of sections with personally recommended games and reminders to play what you have installed;
- accelerating the penetration of HTML5 technology into the gaming industry: this year, the number of modern mobile and social HTML5 games has increased significantly, including thanks to the huge playing audience in Instant Games from Facebook.
Starcraft: RemasteredName the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most.
There were a lot of such projects, but I would like to highlight just a few:
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – a breath of fresh air in open-world shooters (the game quickly became the most played on Steam);
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice – the game very atmospherically showed the inner world of a person suffering from psychosis. Excellent sound handling, very cool immersive experience;
- Assassin’s Creed Origins – the game was made longer than usual. It turned out to be a good AC, which is pleasant and joyful to play;
- Horizon Zero Dawn is a cool setting, a cool ent, a very beautiful world, great characters and a good pace of narration, in general, this is one of the best experiences from the singleplayer this year;
- CryptoKitties is the first successful popular blockchain game. Everything is fine here, starting from the profit that this product generates for its developers and players who are seriously engaged in crypto kittens, and ending with the market that this project may have opened the door to. Well, the kittens are still cute, yes.