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 Georgy Egorov and Oleg Poroshin, co-founders of the game studio KEK Entertainment.
Georgy Egorov and Oleg PoroshinHow did 2021 go for the company?
The main thing for us in 2021 was that there was a CAKE!
In the spring, Kirill and I (our SRT) began to reflect on the concept of the company and its name. A funny story is connected with the latter. We thought for a long time what name to choose for the company, talked a lot, joked about this topic. In response to one of the jokes, someone said “cake”. The topic was picked up, they say, and what if you call it that. This thought could have remained nothing more than an idea if not for Kirill. He paid for the kek domain.games and then just put us in front of the fact. It turned out cool. Imagine: the future, we are holding an IPO on NASDAQ, and a huge CUPCAKE banner lights up in Times Square.
Then we plunged into the abyss of the venture market. We immediately wanted to make an international company, so we did not limit ourselves to Russian investors. We talked to a lot of people. From insights: a lot of non-core guys are interested in the gaming market. I think this is a consequence of hype games during the lockdown of 2020.
By the way, about the “difference in mentality”. Investors from Russia and the CIS, in conversations with us, were primarily interested in the project itself and the mathematics associated with it. Investors from Europe and Asia had most of the questions about the team (including the future one).
They say that some investors who invest in games today do not understand the subject, and in general are ready to invest in anything related to the gaming sector. Roughly speaking, there is an opinion about “stupid money” in game development. Maybe they are here, but during the fundraising we have not managed to meet any such investor. On the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised by the competence of even completely non-core ones.
As a result, two funds invested in us — The Games Fund and Play Ventures. It was very difficult to choose partners. Today we are very happy working with them. Both The Games Fund and Play Ventures support us on a bunch of issues, save time and nerves.
Now it’s only been a month and a half since the official launch of the studio, but we already have a prototype of the game “on cubes”, there are cool people in the team who are very nice to work with and … the OFFICE (yes, we are Orthodox, we want to see the faces of living people).
Out of curiosity: startup life sometimes collides with the “offline world” (repairs, leases, government agencies). And every time after the next “collision” you understand why there are such high salaries in IT.
What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?
There is still a demand for quality products, new universes and gameplay that forces people to interact with each other. And all these things are now a priority for us.
As for hype stories (for example, NFT), they cannot be the main strategy. The maximum is a cool addition.
Our niche is shooters. And it remains very competitive.
We understand the audience of tactical shooters well, as well as the basic principles of monetization of such games. We can say that this is the USP of our company.
But we don’t just want to make a cool shooter. We set ourselves a more ambitious goal — to conduct some bold experiments in the genre as part of the development. For example, to test a new soft monetization, as well as to make a successful mix of pvp and pve.
I think we will succeed. The beauty of our industry is that there is always a place for high-quality, sophisticated products.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?
We have two goals in the new year.
The number one goal is to create a dream team. A team is the foundation of any business, especially a creative one. From the very beginning, we have been working on the culture in the company, gathering people who are close in spirit. It is important to us that it is possible not only to work well with future colleagues, but also to have fun hanging out, playing games, and communicating. We spend a significant part of our lives at work, so it’s important to get high both from it and from the people associated with it.
Goal number two is to create a vertical slice of the product. We want it to demonstrate all the main USPS of the future product. This is not an easy task. We have to sharpen the visual style and check the gameplay features (we are making a pvp shooter, but we want to include a pve component).