We continue to summarize the results of 2019 together with the heads of gaming companies and market experts. Next up is an interview with the founder of Banzai Games and Cascadeur By Evgeny Dyabin. He spoke about the success of his projects.
How was 2019 for the company?
This year we were engaged in supporting the main project — Shadow Fight 3, which we are developing for Nekki, and started working on new games, which Dmitry Terekhin told about.
I would especially like to highlight our new approach to early prototyping. From the very beginning, we began to make a prototype that can be played by several players. We constantly conduct internal playtests. This is how we roll out a lot of solutions at the earliest stage. This significantly increases our chances of getting a deep-developed core gameplay.
In addition to games, we have been working on a tool for creating realistic physics-based Cascadeur animation for many years. It has been used for a long time in our animation production pipeline. We believe that with its help we can significantly facilitate the work of animators: improve the quality of their animations and at the same time reduce the routine.
This year we started a closed beta test of “Stuntman” and unexpectedly received more than 15 thousand applications to participate in it from all over the world. Including from all the largest AAA gaming companies, including Activision Blizzard, Rockstar, Ubisoft and many others.
By the way, you can sign up for a beta test on the website cascadeur.com and next year we plan to start an open beta test.
Separately, I would like to highlight the great achievement of this year — the opening of our new Moscow office. On more than 1000 square meters, we have created a truly cozy workspace.
What events in the regional and global gaming industry do you consider central in the past year?
I would note the launch of the Apple Arcade service. I am very interested in watching him. I’m rooting for him.
I myself use subscriptions of streaming video services and I believe that this approach can work for games as well. I love games for the atmosphere and innovative mechanics. Unfortunately, such projects rarely appear on the mobile market. In fritupley projects, there are other criteria for success.
I hope that Apple Arcade games will give developers the opportunity to be creative and create new and bold game mechanics, and at the same time improve the reputation of mobile games in general. But my personal opinion is that for this the service needs at least a couple of really breakthrough and hyped projects that will be widely discussed and motivate people to try Arcade.
What are the main trends in the market today?
Among the trends, I would like to highlight deep learning: neural networks are developing, and gradually penetrate into all areas of life. In this regard, we have opened a deep learning direction in the company, recruited promising specialists.
The first successes were achieved for Cascadeur. We managed to simplify the work of animators when setting the poses of the characters. The next task in the work is the automatic interpolation of animation between poses. During the year, we will try to automate the animation creation process as much as possible, eliminating the routine. Thanks to this process, the work of animators will become more creative, it will be closer to the work of the choreographer.
In games, we are also implementing deep learning — for balance and for AI bots. While working on Shadow Fight 3, we realized how difficult these tasks are. With the help of deep learning, we hope to achieve better quality and realism in the behavior of bots.
Which third-party game releases this year, in your opinion, were the most important? Plus, which games did you spend the most time on in 2019 as a gamer?
As a gamer, I play mostly console games.
I am not very original and first of all I pass games that are considered the best among critics and players. Last year I was thrilled with God of War, Detroit: Become Human and Red Dead Redemption 2.
This year I unexpectedly liked the remake of Resident Evil 2, it was also interesting to play Mortal Kombat 11 and Control, and now I’m playing Death Stranding.
I like to play something discussed, which is an art and an event in the world of games, read disputes and professional criticism. I really miss this in the field of mobile free-play games, but I hope that over time there will be games on mobile platforms that will be taken seriously by everyone.