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 Alexey and Afanasy Ushnitsky, the founders of MYTONA.
How did 2021 go for the company?
This year has been very busy and fruitful for MYTONA. Despite almost two years of being removed and online, the guys continued to develop powerfully and achieve cool results. Many talented people from different cities and countries have joined our team. At the same time, we have almost no discommunication, and we still feel like a startup.
This year we have worked a lot as a publisher. We started the year 2021 with a major announcement of our joint The Day Before AAA project with Fntastic. We plan to release the game next year. By the way, it is in the top 10 most anticipated games on Steam.
We also released our joint project Propnight with Fntastic on PC. The players and streamers met her well. On the very first day, Propnight became the best in sales on Steam, and on Twitch it entered the top games in terms of viewers. Many people are interested in its main feature — a combination of the genres of prop hunt and classic survival horror, where survivors can turn into different objects and hide from a maniac. We believe that Propnight has a great potential to become a hit. We will continue to improve and promote it.
In the past year, we have released many projects. Some of them are still in early access, but they are already very close to a global release. It’s really cool that our team is super versatile and flexible. The guys showed that they can create projects of different genres from hyper-casual games to metaverse applications.
Speaking of metaverse. Even before the hype on metaverses, in 2018 we thought about an affordable and simple application where you can communicate at a distance with friends and family. And so in December, before the New Year holidays, we released our MYTONAVERSE metaverse application and entered the market in this new genre. The development was led by our New Zealand team. She made a cool platform for online communication, which perfectly replaces the usual calls and messengers. Users can meet in hubs, hold business meetings, equip their homes and get to know each other. We have big plans for this app. Initially, this is the introduction of NFT and blockchain technologies, and then there will be something else interesting.
We want to tell you a little about the new cool projects in the softlonch. This month, a new colorful match-3 game Tasty Makeover was released. We tried to make a project that meets the next generations of new games in the match-3 genre. The team did a great job on the mechanics of match-3 itself, the narrative and characters, the sound, and judging by the first good reviews, the players liked the new project.
We also tried ourselves in the Puzzle RPG genre. In the fall, our new cool game Portal Kingdoms was released. Retention, user conversion and DARPU are at a fairly high level in it. These are excellent benchmarks and a good start for a game in this genre. Portal Kingdoms recently had a powerful update with multiple fixes, optimization, rebalancing, improved hero summoning and monetization.
Another of our match-3 games — Royal Journey — was released in re-softlonch seven years later. The team was glad to return to the development of Royal Journey, and for many guys the news about the unfreezing of the old project was a pleasant surprise. We were also surprised by the first KPI of the game. We think she has every chance of success.
Our team likes to experiment, so we created Boom Guys. This is a super casual pvp shooter with Pay2Skin mechanics, which is currently in the softlonch. The game turned out to be cool, and we have a lot of ideas to improve it. For example, in the latest updates, a battlepass and a new system for obtaining heroes have been added.
Our other shooter Outfit, we can say, has been reborn. The long-awaited Battle royale mode has recently been added to it. We have high hopes for the new regime. Let’s see how the players will meet him.
We want to tell you a little more about our flagship games Seekers Notes and Cooking Diary. Both projects continued their qualitative development. Seekers Notes recently redesigned and “refreshed” the characters, as well as added new modes. Cooking Diary has a social hub where players can chat and interact. At first glance, this feature looks great. We also entered the Huawei market. The team sees good prospects in this site.
We would like to note that this year both projects have gained a lot of experience in IDFA and advertising cases. I am glad that our long-term projects still have room to grow and develop.
We also developed our own internal products. Our team has created an internal tool that provides us with functionality for administration and interaction with players, analysis and research of key indicators of our games. In addition, there are products that help our support departments and other departments. Under good conditions, these developments can go out into the world and cover various areas of the game development industry.
We are also proud of our local social network MYTOWN, which we launched at the end of the year. There are many features available on the portal: posts, group creation, currency “mytoins”, achievements, a store of merchandise and goods, etc. The portal team now continues to polish and improve the functionality, and a mobile version of MYTOWN will be released soon. Internal communications, especially during online communication, are very necessary for the team.
As for the HR part, we are pleased with the victory of MYTONA Teamdays at the “Game Dev HR Awards 2021” in the nomination “The most innovative project”. The guys hold cool events for rallying and communication of the Myton people while working from home. This is the second victory in the team’s piggy bank. The first was for the challenge project for the self-development of MYTONA Heroes.
What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?
It is impossible not to note the big boom in NFT gamification. The first projects based on the “play to earn” model appeared, and this trend will only continue. For example, in Axie Infinity, the turnover of trade between players has reached colossal figures. It is clear that this direction is the future and now it is a new level of player interaction. Blockchain technologies are becoming the norm in modern games.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?
We will support and improve all our projects qualitatively. We will gradually launch softlonch games into a global release and bring them to the tops. We have big plans for the development of our MYTONAVERSE metaverse application. As mentioned above, we will release updates for it, which will be sharpened for NFT.
Also next year we will continue to work hard as publishers. Propnight will continue its development as a game service, including releasing a mobile version for it. And of course, next year there will be a major release of our first AAA project The Day Before.
In general, we will continue to work closely with the entire MYTONA team and improve communications. The guys have fully adapted to the remote, but still we are thinking about going to the offices for those Maytonians who want it. As planned, we will organize coworking zones for those who have chosen a mixed type of work. In general, we will monitor the situation and decide according to the circumstances what is best for the team. This year, it was also noticed that it was difficult for juniors to find a job during the pandemic. We would like to create good opportunities for Junes to develop in our team.
Taking this opportunity, we wish everyone a Happy New Year! We would like to wish you good health, success in business, and well-being to your families. May 2022 justify all our hopes and realize ambitious plans!