Pavel Ryakkonen , Executive Director and co – founder of Nevosoft , said App2Top.ru about how the outgoing year has passed for his company.
Pavel RyakkonenHow was the year for the company?
In 2018, we completed the formation and structuring of the company’s main product portfolio. The portfolio includes both games that have been on the market for a long time, and those that have been launched recently. Some are still at the softlonch stage.
There are four basic directions:
- match-3 (Gemmy Lands, Charms of the Witch);
- farms (Charm Farm);
- citybuilders (Eco City);
- slots (Treasure Slots Adventures).
All products look decent. We consider the metrics of some of them promising. In particular, the retention of Charms of the Witch is very pleasing.
Charms of the WitchWhat events and trends of 2018 would you note?
Before me, many people have already noted in the results that Epic Games was the main news company this year. If we were presenting awards for contributions to the industry, then this year the statuette would definitely go to the “epics”.
First. She turned the Fortnite shooter modestly adopted in 2017 into a cultural phenomenon. In addition, one of the most financially successful games of 2018.
Second. Thanks to the crazy success of Fortnite, the company undertook the restructuring of the entire distribution market. She refused to release her games on Google Play. Now distributes them to Android through its own installer. After that, she launched her own Steam competitor on the PC.
So Epic Games is definitely the coolest company by the end of the year.
China was also rich in negative news stories. Our colleagues were very worried about the freezing of licensing of new games. Without it, no one will let your game into any local store. But today, nine months later, this story has finally ended safely.
At the beginning of the year, everyone was very actively discussing GDRP. Most of all, lawyers benefited from the introduction of new rules, to whom all market participants were forced to seek advice. Despite the hype, the innovations did not bring any serious changes.
The hype around crypto games has come to naught. The same applies to the cryptocurrency and blockchain market as a whole. Now it is no longer customary to talk about these things with a sigh, as, for example, it was back in the spring of this year. This is partly true in relation to VR, which has not yet become a large segment of the market.
I would call the game of the year Red Dead Redemption 2. The project earned more in its debut weekend than Infinity War in the cinema. We are talking about $725 million generated by the game in just a few days. A very impressive result.