“We have firmly occupied our niche”: IGG about Castle Clash in Russia

Hi! I am sure that everyone who is at least a little interested in gaming mobile knows about “Castle Clash: A New Era”. The game was in the general box office Top 10 of Google Play for two years only in the USA. But could you tell us a little about the company and a few words about the history of the game?

Timofey FadeevHi !

IGG company has been in existence since 2006. Based in China, I think it’s no secret to anyone.

She started her journey with browser games (including Galaxy Online and Dawn of Darkness), then decided to switch to mobile, made Castle Clash.

The main inspiration of the project, what can I hide here, was Clash of Clans, but now they are completely two different games, not similar to each other. There are visual similarities, but the mechanics are radically different. We have an emphasis on heroes, and in Clash of Clans – on armies.

After the release, the game became insanely popular – first in the USA, then in Europe and Russia. Now the project has been on the market for three years, literally on September 4 we celebrated her third birthday.

After the release of Castle Clash, the company began to release other mobile lines, the company began to grow rapidly, entered the Hong Kong stock exchange. In general, everything became fine.

As you yourself noted, the game was inspired by Clash of Clans. When the project came out, there were not very many similar games, there was less competition. How much has this situation changed now? Has it become more difficult to compete with other projects within this niche?

No. I believe that we have firmly occupied our niche. There were no competitors close to us (at least, serious ones that could be paid attention to). Therefore, I cannot say that there is a lot of competition. There are a lot of strategies in principle. Even if you look at the Russian box office top (both Google Play and the App Store), there are a lot of strategic games (Mobile Strike, Game of War), but, as a rule, these are completely different projects.

Let’s talk about integration with VK. Do I understand correctly that initially there were two identification possibilities – through the login that the player enters during the first session and to which IGG ID automatically clings and through Facebook?

The main one is not on Facebook, but on Google. Our account is linked to Google Mail. This remains the main binding. VK, like Facebook, is made for the sake of social pieces. Plus, we have now added VK for the sake of getting into the catalog of the social network.

And if we talk about linking to Facebook. Was she popular? In Russia, in the USA?

In the USA, yes, absolutely. Not in Russia.

Our audience is young people, we have a lot of schoolchildren and students. There are, of course, adults, but, in general, the audience is much younger than the one that exists in the Russian Facebook. For this reason, it was strategically important for us to implement VK support.

Is the functionality of bindings to Facebook and VK identical? Or does VK have any unique “buns”?

It’s about the same there. To be honest, I’m not even sure if we are in the catalog on Facebook, since the American office is doing this. But, in principle, there are no cardinal differences – both SDKs have the same mechanics (linking an account and the ability to get into our community by clicking the button from the game, invite friends, and so on).

The situation with Castle Clash in Russia is unique, since the project has been sitting in the Top 3 box office for three years on Google Play. Within this situation (when everything is fine), was it necessary to integrate VK?

There is no limit to perfection. I always want to grow. Moreover, VK is the main social network in Russia and the CIS. There are no alternatives. There are, of course, “Classmates”, but there is a slightly different audience. Plus, VK is actively developing a gaming platform.

When we met with Maxim Babichev, visited the office on an excursion, discussed the prospects and decided that this was a win-win story. Moreover, the integration was not completely labor-intensive. So why not?

But you also noted on your Facebook page that the negotiations had been going on for almost two years.

This is Maxim Babichev, apparently, tried to contact the head office for two years, while there was no office in Russia. In China, everything was lost, because the company is huge. Apparently, in the wilds of negotiations, all this did not come to fruition. And then I appeared and the Russian office, which is fully responsible for this. When we met in person – it happened literally in August – after that everything started spinning. It has become easier because it has become possible to contact directly. And then I was already in charge of all the integration processes and other issues.

How long has the Russian office been in existence?

A year and a half. It turns out that I am one of the first IGG employees in Russia. In February, I will already be working for two years.

Now the project has as many as 15 versions on Android. Why so much?

Why are there many customers? We initially decided to make such a model so that each country would have its own client, its own server, its own operations, and that a separate office would issue updates and promotions for a specific region, as well as be responsible for technical support and so on.

Accordingly, also with Russia. It seemed more convenient this way. Castle Clash has its own client and server, we can do whatever we want here. We hold unique promotions that are not available on the global server. For example, dedicated to Victory Day or other local events. We style them, we make them for our market.

How many people are working to support the Russian version of Castle Clash?

Not so much. The entire team in Russia consists of 16 people, including support staff. But the team is distributed across all projects. Specifically, three or four people are responsible for Castle Clash tickets.

By the way, you probably looked at the behavior of players from other countries. How much does their behavior differ from the Russian ones?

The players are very different. If we talk about Asian players, then these are very impulsive comrades who absorb content quickly, quickly pour in a lot of money, rise to the top. If we compare them with our or Chinese players, they have a very short LTV. They come in very quickly, climb to the top, pour in tons of money, but very quickly, having already reached the very top of the top, they lose interest.

What does the average Russian player in Castle Clash look like?

It is difficult to say exactly about the average. We had three meet-ups in Russia: two in Moscow and two times at the Comic-Con in St. Petersburg, where we had a stand and we met with the players. They are completely different. There are adults who are over 50 years old, who are playing the game, who have a guild, who get high from all this, there are also students/ schoolchildren. Very different categories of people.

Of course, if you look at the group in VK, where we have almost 300 thousand people, then there are mostly young people there. But there are a lot of players, they have different ages.

I asked why. There is an opinion that the VK audience is not paying. But, considering that you focus primarily on this audience, and your box office figures are very high, it turns out that this opinion does not correspond to the truth.

Yes, I cannot agree with the fact that the VK audience is not paying. I was also mistaken in this and was also an adherent of this opinion, but practice shows the opposite.

The last question: what exactly do you expect from VK and are there any first results, metrics, growth of something after appearing in the VK database?

Less than a week has passed so far. This is very little. We haven’t even been married yet, we’re just on the schedule. Therefore, it is too early to judge. We are not waiting for any specific figures, everything is within the framework of the experiment. We’re trying.

Thanks for the interview!