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 Ilya Salamatov, founder of META Publishing.
How did 2021 go for the company?
Let’s just say we haven’t had a quiet time since the very start. Now we are two and a half years old, and this year has turned out to be especially significant for us. Firstly, we continued to expand the product line by signing cool projects and cool teams. Secondly, the year turned out to be outstanding in terms of the scale of the projects being launched.
Of course, the main project was Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. This is the largest “premium” Russian game in recent years, and its launch was extremely successful. The game is selling very well, and it will be like this for a long time (and it also won the “Desktop Game of the Year” category at App2Top.ru Awards 2021). We learned a lot from this release, although we had to prepare it in a very short time.
We have also prepared and launched the announcement of our next big project. The Aftermath trailer was exclusively released on the IGN channel and has currently collected more than half a million views. This is a great result for a completely new IP.
It is impossible not to say about the launch of the physical puzzle Time Loader from the studio Flazm. The title was very warmly received by critics (and, by the way, was also nominated for App2Top.ru Awards 2021). Next year, Time Loader will be released on consoles.
What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?
One of the key points is the growth in the number and quality of releases on Steam. This year, more than 10 thousand games were released, of which at least a couple of hundred turned out to be really good. But not all projects are destined to be successful.
The game, which three years ago could have been safely released, successfully sold and gained a decent audience, can now “not go in”. At the moment, the bar has once again risen, because the public is fed up with high-quality projects. People want a new experience. Well, or something large-scale and unusual. Moreover, due to the availability of the same Unreal Engine and large asset libraries, many people are able to do beautifully, which is even more confusing. It is very important that at the heart of the game, its art direction and a bunch of other factors.
This translates into the fact that now we need to take an even more careful approach to finding and signing projects, building brands and how gamers and platforms see the game. We try to integrate deeply into the creation of the game, share our own best practices with the teams, help build processes and bring to light the best that is in the product. It seems to me that this approach is the future.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?
We will expand in every sense — the course is exactly that. Both in terms of the scale of the projects (Aftermath and Pathfinder are just the beginning) and in terms of the size of the team. And of course we are preparing for our next Pancake Week promotion, which this time will be much bigger!