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 Dmitry Terekhin, the founder of Nekki.
How did 2021 go for the company?
We haven’t released any new projects this year. But we have completed a two-year pre—production of the most ambitious project in the history of our company – the cross-platform team action Spine.
At the last Gamescom, we showed a cinematics that conveys the mood of the project well.
It is to this level of graphics and dynamics that we strive.
Now the Spine team consists of more than 40 specialists. We plan to bring the team to 100+ people at the production stage.
In general, the year was marked by a product strategy. For example, the position COO appeared in Nekki. It was taken by Dmitry Pimenov, with whom we have been cooperating for almost 10 years. Dima, together with other managers, developed and began to implement a development strategy in all areas and projects, as well as strengthen organizational processes.
We hope that we will see the fruits of these changes already next year, for which we have big plans for new releases. So we continue to look for strong specialists and are ready to exchange experience with colleagues in the industry. I am particularly interested in sharing experience in game design, monetization and operation.
What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?
The main trends, in my opinion, are:
- quality growth;
- the growth of mobile game budgets;
- cross-platform growth.
The relevance of all these trends confirms the popularity of Genshin Impact. With a development budget of $100 million, it earns billions. And I myself got a lot of fun from this game while I was going to my current level 50.
And, yes, it is these trends that we are aiming at with Spine.
The event of the year for me was Arcane. Finally, a really cool series was filmed for games. Amazing quality, very high level of animation. I am delighted, I watched in one breath! In general, all Netflix content is seriously getting stronger. As for such projects as Arcane, they set new quality standards, bring games to the same level as world cinema. And that’s cool! By the way, we also lit up on Netflix this year. Shadow Fight Arena had a cameo in the Jupiter’s Legacy series.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?
We want to make a big bet on working with IP. Shadow Fight is still a very big and strong brand, so we continue to develop projects in this series.
Shadow Fight 3 will get new modes, Shadow Fight Arena — a storyline. Also, for fans of Shadow Fight 2, we plan to release a new classic-style game (with shadow heroes) at the end of the year.
In addition, we will revive Vector and, if we see interest in the game, we will try to do something new in the genre of parkour runners.
Along the way, we are developing our RnD. Plus, our program for creating Cascadeur animations will finally be released in full next year, and will also receive a mobile version.
But, of course, the main focus will be on Spine. This is a very ambitious and big game that sets us the most difficult technological tasks (so together with Banzai Games, we are now looking for the strongest specialists in the industry both on mobile and on PC \ consoles).
As for the rest of the fashion trends on the market (metaverse, play2earn, NFT, etc.), we still treat them with caution and a significant degree of skepticism. But this does not prevent us from following these trends closely and even preparing a space for small experiments, because being on the crest of a wave is always exciting and cool!