We continue to summarize the results of 2021 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Next up is an interview with Alexander Bogdanov, CEO of Belka Games.
How did 2021 go for the company?
Throughout 2021, we have been actively growing in all directions. We can safely say that it was a good year for Belka Games.
We have significantly expanded the team. If at the beginning of 2021 there were about 300 of us, now there are more than 400, and we continue to look for talented specialists.
People have always been a priority of the company, because they are the key to a successful product. Therefore, we have strengthened the HR department over the year, introduced a CRM system for the team, revised the benefits system and introduced unlimited vacations (while in test mode).
Now our employees work from 65 cities of Russia, CIS, Europe. Our geography is expanding, and to make it easier for the guys to work, we continue to open offices in different countries (and help with relocation). This year we have opened three offices — in Vilnius, Kiev and Limassol. The plans for the next one are to open another one in Europe, but more on that later.
In 2021, we have grown by more than 1.5 times in revenue. Our goal for next year is to grow by 2 times already. There are all prerequisites for this. We are constantly improving current projects and actively developing new ones. The RnD department under the leadership of Pavel Sudakov and Ivan Gorchakov shows excellent results. We founded it relatively recently, but it has already allowed us to successfully launch two games in a global release:
- Solitaire Cruise. The game entered the top 3 in revenue among tapeworms and has undergone many major improvements since its release.
- Bermuda Adventures. The project has been released globally recently, but already shows very good metrics. We are working on regularly adding content and live ops events, experimenting with new mechanics and approaches in meta. Next year we plan to significantly increase the audience of the game.
We also have several more new projects under development at the technical launch stage.
Among other pleasant achievements: Belka Games entered the top 100 mobile publishers of the world according to App Annie, in the top 20 in terms of revenue in EMEA, and Clockmaker continues to stay in the American box office top 100.
What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?
The first thing that comes to mind is the success of the game Axie Infinity, associated with the popularity of NFT. It seems to me that this trend will change the market and will only strengthen its position. The play2earn model is already widely distributed, and more and more developers are thinking about implementing it into their projects.
This year we are also seeing an increase in the popularity of midcore and hardcore games, which looks quite logical (with the development of mobile technologies, developers can afford more in terms of implementing ideas).
The metaverses are gaining momentum. Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox continue to grow audiences. The market giants Facebook and Microsoft announced their metaverse. It is still difficult to say how this will affect our future.
I would also like to mention the release of iOS 14.5, which made major changes to the marketing strategy.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?
We will continue to actively test hypotheses in our RnD department and prepare new products for launch. As I mentioned earlier, several projects are currently in the technical launch stage. We really want to bring them to a global release next year.
There are a lot of plans for projects. In particular, we want to strengthen our presence in Asia. Therefore, we will continue to expand the team and experiment.
Social activity is very important for our team, so we will continue our charity events in 2022. We hope to cover more projects that need help.