Indie development for PC, staff shortage and GameMaker problems: interview with Kirill Zolovkin

About the shortage of personnel

• There are many talented producers in the mobile market. However, when switching to console and PC development, they still have to retrain and discover new aspects for themselves. Starting with popular engines and development pipelines and ending with the specifics of stores and promotion.
• Now a large amount of money is pouring into the Russian market, new investors are emerging and more and more M&A transactions are being conducted. Because of this, the need for personnel is growing. However, they haven’t grown up yet. Many of the future specialists are now studying at universities or taking courses. As a result, there is a personnel shortage.
• Another problem is that some startups that have received funding and feel the need for personnel are starting to inflate salaries even for novice specialists. This leads to the fact that some developers inadequately begin to evaluate their skills: “People pretend to be seniors, but in fact they are juniors or middles.”
• Thanks to the money that the mobile industry has brought over the past five years, it has become much more comfortable to work in the indie segment. Now a developer can leave a large company, get a more comfortable place and make a conditional dream game.

About the role of the producer and the training of specialists in this field

• Zolovkin is confident that in the next five years there will be production centers in Russia related to game development. For example, Alexey Savchenko, after leaving Epic Games, suggested collecting a list of people who could become potential mentors. This can be called the first step in this direction.
• Zolovkin himself notes that now many people still do not understand what the role of a producer is. Today, the Russian industry is on the verge of the appearance of its own “Narratorics” for producers.
• According to Zolovkin, when Maria Kochakova launched Narratorika, everyone laughed and did not understand why narrative designers were needed at all. Now many companies are looking for people for this position, and Playrix and Belka Games are opening entire departments.

founder of Heart Core

About the problems of other specialists

• According to Zolovkin, today many game designers do not understand the basic terminology. This leads to problems in communication, because it becomes difficult not only to set a task for a game designer, but also to understand how he will solve it.
• Also, many young game designers face difficulties in deconstructing game mechanics. This is a basic skill that any specialist in this field should have — take a separate game, try to decompose it into its components and describe how its main elements work.
• As for 2D artists, many of them do not want to master new tools like Blender. Because of this, their value in the market does not grow in any way. Also, the experience of a specialist who has been drawing for mobile titles all his career is likely to be irrelevant for console studios.
• If we talk about level designers, they should have basic knowledge in this area and be able to adapt to different tools. According to Zolovkin, Hammer is still the best editor for creating levels. Current solutions are better suited for practice — built-in Unreal and Unity editors with plugins, as well as World Machine. However, in terms of convenience and number of tools, the best, oddly enough, is still Hammer.
• At the same time, a level designer should have a keen interest in other tools like the same World Machine and new technologies. Otherwise, it will be difficult for him to gain a foothold in the industry and adapt to different processes, regardless of his experience.

About courses for developers

• Today, most of the teachers on the market are employees of large companies. They build their programs based on their own pipelines and experience. This helps to hire young professionals who are already trained in the necessary processes.
• According to Zolovkin, there will only be more courses in the future. We are not even talking about large schools, but about internal programs from large companies. For them, this is a way to find novice specialists and train them from scratch to work with their processes.

It's one thing — you do it for someone, and another thing - you do it for yourself and you know exactly what the teacher and the program will be. You adapt specialists and give them a theory that is important for your activity. Plus, I'm sure there will be more courses and competitions on Unreal. Accordingly, it will be possible to close at least the hard part about working in modern editors for console and PC developers.

Kirill Zolovkin

founder of Heart Core

About the intricacies of commercial development for PC and consoles

• Some specialists do not understand the realities of a large development. They can make prototypes on Unreal Engine or Unity, but they lack basic programming knowledge and understanding of the commercial development process.

When you make a commercial product, especially of such a class as Encased, you invest five years not even in the game, but in technology. You write it, you rewrite it, it turns out to be in production hell. This is a serious job where you lay the output of future DLC, the ability to scale and port.

Kirill Zolovkin

founder of Heart Core

• Zolovkin cites Gripper as an example. After collecting a new team and changing the CTO, I had to rewrite almost all the code for several months — for example, so that the game could be controlled normally with the keyboard and mouse. This is the result of errors when creating the initial architecture of the entire project.
• When designing, it is necessary to pay attention to the following parameters: versatility, readability and scalability. People who come to games from other areas simply do not know these subtleties due to lack of experience.
• There is very little professional literature on game design on the market today. According to Zolovkin, the best source of information on Unreal is the list of materials on the official website. Useful courses are also periodically found on Udemy. However, there is still no system base with which to train specialists.
• Large companies can help resolve the situation. Today they are opening entire departments dedicated to Unreal development. In a few years, they will be able to cultivate specialists, which will lead to the appearance of more valuable personnel on the market.

About GameMaker and the transition to Unreal

• For a long time, GameMaker belonged to Playtech Holding, which did not invest resources in the development of the engine. Because of this, he was in stagnation. Big updates were released every two years, and critical patches could be expected for months.
• At the same time, GameMaker has always had a fairly extensive toolkit that made it possible to make high-end games. Zolovkin’s team made the first version of Gripper on GameMaker, but many at conferences looked at the game and thought that it was developed on Unreal or Unity.
• Despite the wide opportunities and a large community, Playtech did not develop the engine in any way. The situation began to change only after Opera bought GameMaker for $10 million in January of this year.
• Now updates for the engine are released monthly. According to Zolovkin, the key change is a new monetization model and the appearance of an unlimited free version.
• At the same time, Zolovkin did not completely abandon GameMaker. He still thinks it’s a good engine, but sometimes a developer needs a “rocket launcher”. That is why the Heart Core studio decided to switch to Unreal.
• Each of these engines solves its own problem. Unreal is the best option for creating console games. However, for the development of experimental 2D titles or small indie projects, it is better to choose GameMaker.

Gripper is an upcoming action RPG in a post-apocalyptic setting from the studio Heart Core. The player controls a car (in the new version — a bike) with a hook, with which he snatches their parts from opponents, traveling through different biomes.

At the end of February 2022, Heart Core will present a new Gripper demo to the public. Now the team is working on creating an updated image of the game associated with changes in the approach to the narrative. The full release of Gripper is scheduled for early 2023.