He spoke about the company's successes in the past yearYuri Krasilnikov, Vice President of Business Development at Belka Games.
Yuri Krasilnikov
How was 2020 for the company?
The year turned out to be, of course, rich in "challenges" and events.
It became logical for us, in connection with what is happening in the world, to continue building a distributed team. Due to the fact that the Belka 2.0 strategy (we adopted it three years ago, our CEO told us about it in detail earlierSasha Bogdanov), it is working and the processes are well established, we managed to move painlessly to a remote location. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible for the company's employees.
It was very important for us to keep the opportunity to communicate with each other so that employees could still keep their finger on the pulse of the company's life. For example, our "Demo Days" have moved to an online format, but the traditions of congratulating newcomers, celebrating the success of projects, telling plans, admiring those who have been working in the company for a year / three / five - all this has remained in place.
At the same time, we continued to grow numerically, we had more cool people who significantly strengthened the "Squirrel". Now there are more than 320 of us! Plus, we have new offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. A couple more offices in European countries are also being prepared to open. Intense!
In last year's results, I wrote: "I hope that next year, summing up the results of the year, I will include at least one project that came out of the RnD in the product successes of 2020." Our Solitaire Cruise game, which was just born in this RnD department, already ranks 3rd in revenue in the world among tapeworms, and in many countries it has completely become a leader. While the game is scaling, RnD is already finishing a couple more projects.
The Watchmaker celebrated its 6th anniversary on mobile platforms this year. The project shows steady year-on-year growth in revenue.
Important: the team of the "Watchmaker" made a grandiose "transfer" of the project from Flash to Unity. The multi-million audience of the project received an even more beautiful product. It was a challenge for us, because live migration is a risky business. As a result, the guys coped and rightly celebrated this achievement with personalized hoodies and a small party.
Funky Bay has reached a new level of in-game art quality and continued to grow, especially in the middle of the year. So we still have big plans for the project.
In addition to new offices, a couple of softphone projects and the global launch of Solitaire Cruise, Belka Games has a midcore project in development. To implement it, we have found a very talented team that already has behind it the development and operation of a multi-million dollar midcore game. This team joined the "Squirrel", and the game being developed turns out to be very beautiful, with original mechanics. Hopefully, in 2021 there will be a reason to talk about the global launch of this game.
By the way, we are open to all kinds of cooperation and collaborations with talented developers, so I can safely write and discuss both scaling your projects and creating new ones with us.
This year we supported developers at various competitions. For example, at the "Nationwide Developer Competition 2020", which was held with the support of Unreal Engine, and at the HTML5 game competition, which was organized by WN Media and Xsolla.
What new trends in your niche do you consider worthy of attention?
There is more and more focus on LiveOps. They become larger, more elaborate, and often such in-game events can overshadow the meta-gameplay. The quality of casual projects is also growing.
What new market trends would you note in general?
Mergers, acquisitions, investments.
Switching to remote work of the entire game dev. The reason for this migration is the same as the box office growth of many games in March—May - covid19. So, paradoxical as it may sound, but the coronavirus and related lockdowns have served as drivers of both company transformations and the growth of the gaming industry in money.
I would like to note here the fact that the benefits of the games have been recognized by the World Health Organization.
Also, game dev has once again shown that he can make the world a little better. I am now talking about the global campaign #playaparttogether, in which Belka Games participated, and about the independent initiatives of gaming companies to support doctors, hospitals — those who met covid19 "on the front line".
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2021?
We will continue to develop a distributed team, now we have employees from 65 cities in 12 countries. The expansion will continue in 2021: As I said at the beginning, we have planned to open and expand Belka's European offices.
From the point of view of the products available in operation — Clockmaker, Solitaire Cruise and Funky Bay — we see great potential for growth. So next year is a year of development and our hits. And, of course, we are planning new releases.
Which third-party game releases are you interested in this year? Which ones did you pay attention to as a gamer?
Project Makeover (from the authors of Matchington Manshion) is a breath of fresh air in the niche of match3 games with meta. The game is distinguished not only by its originality, but also by a very high level of quality.
I was waiting with great apprehension for Wild Rift, the mobile version of League of Legends. My fears were replaced by raptures immediately after the launch of the game. I enjoy playing a couple of ice rinks a day.