Yesterday, a new mobile game from Nival – Defenders appeared on the App Store (it was released on PC under the title Prime World: Defenders). In connection with the release, we talked about the fate of the project with Sergey Galenkin, EMEA Marketing Director of the Prime World team.
Sergey Galenkin
Hi! Please tell us a little about the Kiev division of Nival. When did it appear, what did it do before, what tasks do it face now?The Kiev office appeared in the fall of 2011 and since then has been working on the game Prime World: Defenders.
Now the studio is working on mobile versions of the game, an add-on for it and is conducting preliminary work on a new project.
Before Prime World: Defenders, Nival released two casual games in the Prime World setting on the mobile market. Were they also developed by the Kiev division? If so, can we say that today one of the tasks of Nival Red is to promote the Prime World brand? Is your game studio being developed using other IP addresses (and if so, can they be named)?The previous satellite games were made by the Minsk studio Nival, our experimental division.
Nival Red makes medium-sized games based on the IP of Nival – also essentially satellites, but of much higher quality.
We are not ready to announce yet what new project Nival Red is working on.
Prime World: Defenders was released on PC in June. How successful was the game? Can you share any figures?The game sold much better than we expected and gathered a significant audience – both legal buyers and pirates.
Today, the main platform for tower defense games is mobile devices. In this regard, the question is – why did you decide to release the game on desktop systems, and not on mobile?On PC and, in particular, on Steam, player feedback is much better.
We were able to collect all the wishes and comments of users and promptly implement them into the game. Unfortunately, there is no such mechanism on iOS.
Defenders, like most tower defense projects, is a paid game. At the same time, one of its main features is the presence of maps. Most card butlers are free games that earn on IAP. Why was the choice made – to do a paid project after all?We believe that players on mobile devices are willing to pay for good games.
And the first results of PW: Defenders in the Russian App Store confirm this – the game has already reached the third place in the overall top.
In addition, the mechanics of Defenders are much more complicated than those of ordinary card games, so the audience of the game is a little more literate and ready to pay for games right away, and not later.
We do not focus on one business model and will continue to experiment in the future.
How much does the mechanics of the PC version of Prime World: Defenders differ from the mobile version? What turned out to be the most difficult when porting?It doesn’t differ at all.
Defenders was originally created with an eye on mobile devices and therefore there were no problems with porting. We have fixed bugs, added maps, improved the tutorial and the interface, but all these changes will be released in the PC version with the next patch.
Are you planning to develop it as a service after the launch of the project?We are already working on an add-on for Defenders :)
How long have you been working on the PC version? Did the porting start back in June or was it started earlier?We can’t talk about pure porting, because we immediately thought about the mobile version.
We have been improving and refining the game.
How many people worked on the game?15 people in development in Kiev, plus an operator department in Moscow.
And the last question. It’s about the market. Now there is almost a Renaissance of the tower defense genre on it. Anomaly 2 was released just the other day, Kingdom Rush Frontiers, Pirate Legends TD, Little Bit Evil were among the big ones before that. Now here’s Prime World: Defenders. Is it possible to call the appearance of such a large number of expensive projects in this genre a trend? Or is it something else? Perhaps just pearls washed ashore by a previous wave?Tower Defense is essentially a simplified strategy, where the focus is shifted from combat to preparation.
This approach allows you to focus on unusual mechanics without compromising management – it would be difficult to add a card system to RTS and not break anything.
And TD is popular because they are best suited for mobile devices.
Thanks for the interview!