The founder of the company Nekki Dmitry Terekhin said App2Top.ru , which industrial trends and games he considers the main ones in the outgoing year.
Dmitry TerekhinHow was 2018 for you personally?
It’s hard, intense. The main personal challenge this year for me was to learn to read Chinese from scratch. With a sin in half, I can already play Chinese non-localized games, read “Harry Potter” and Chinese articles about artificial intelligence.
From hobbies — after almost a 20-year break, I returned Magic: The Gathering to my life. We play with colleagues. I even participated quite well in the tournament.
How was the year for your company?
It was the first year of the life of our flagship project Shadow Fight 3. The game turned out to be very cool, and during the year it increased the necessary “meat”. And we started working on two new projects. The first is a spin—off of Shadow Fight about heroes, finally with real PvP. The second project is more long—term – a cyberpunk multiplayer action, in which we plan to bring all our technologies to a new level.
Speaking of technology: at the end of the year, we announced the PTA of our Cascadeur animation engine, which we want to open to other developers in 2019. This technology can significantly simplify the work with realistic animation of characters, and in the future, with the help of artificial intelligence, it will reduce the entire routine, leaving in the hands of the animator control over creativity.
Cascadeur
Also this year we were able to restart our 11×11 mobile football manager.
The history of our company began with football, and we want to revive this direction. Recently, we have translated football matches into 3D, which we have been dreaming about for many years. There’s a lot of work ahead, but hopefully it’s worth it.
Which event of 2018 do you consider the most important for the industry?
The events that I have been waiting for for a long time, unfortunately, did not happen. This is the opening of Google Play in China and the issuance of ISBN for new projects. In general, the year is alarming. Many studios have closed or made large-scale cuts. Tencent shares fell by a third. Supercell, it seems, are not very happy with the results of the Brawl Stars softlonch. But Fortnite is doing well.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
Probably, everyone will call PUBG and Fortnite a trend. I would note the related trend of a gradual shift in monetization from loot boxes to combat passes and cosmetics. We plan to experiment with this in new projects, and hopefully it will bear fruit.
What are the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most?
From this year’s release, I would especially like to mention my colleagues from Playkot — Age of Magic turned out to be excellent.
Another of the mobile games this year I liked operating Idle Heroes. A very simple game, but constantly finds new ways to retain the audience.
Of the major projects — Detroit: Become Human and RDR2. The gangster style is not close to me, and RDR has many other drawbacks, but the artistic implementation is just space. I believe that games are gradually becoming one of the highest forms of art.