We continue to summarize the results of 2019 together with the heads of gaming companies and market experts. Next up is an interview with Alexey Savchenko, Epic Games Licensing manager.
How was 2019 for the company?
Hello everyone
The year was, as usual, eventful and eventful. In March, during the GDC, we announced a program with online services and updated the status of grants for UE4 developers to the mega prefix, at the same time raising its volume to $100 million, and the volume in one hand to $ 500 thousand.
As far as I know, the year was extremely successful for colleagues from the Fortnite department and for the Epic Games Store. If we talk about the department that deals with UE4, then in 2019 there were somehow unexpectedly many trips, even compared to previous years. There were definitely more than forty of them: we are talking about both exhibitions and visits to partner studios.
It’s very cool that new talented and capable people are coming to the department. Otherwise, of course, there would not be enough hands at all, because, for example, only in the CIS and Eastern Europe we have studios in sight — much over one and a half thousand. And this is not counting enthusiasts, indie, hobby developers and the modder community, who are traditionally harder to identify and with whom it can be difficult to establish a dialogue.
I think that next year, in addition to the development of our standard tools for working with the market, will be marked by a large number of initiatives within the framework of systemic business development and more activity in the media field. In particular, we see how successful the joint competition with Disgusting Men was, and we will repeat something like this for sure, and we will also develop the first established channels of work with the film industry (Goldfinch) and other cross-media stories. In general, there are a lot of tasks for 2020, they are all extremely interesting. It will be, as usual, fun and useful for the market.
What events in the regional and global gaming industry do you consider central in the past year?
Since March, the main stories have been the Stadia and Apple Arcade services, and the second half of the year was dragged first by rumors, and then by announcements of new consoles.
Separately, I will take out the story of Death Stranding from the releases to the events, because the level of hype and expectations went far beyond just a game, and also because Hideo Kojima again made a cross-media phenomenon, important from the point of view of culture in general and industry in particular, although not everything is with this they may agree.
In the local industry, it’s cool that the year before last Ilya Ovcharenko first introduced a number of characters to Tanya Korobkina from Eksmo, and she introduced everyone to Volodya Obruchev, who was just engaged in the Blood, Sweat and Pixels project in Russia. Now the Bombora publishing house publishes, and a lot of people from the gaming industry write books, sharing their systematic experience in a systematized “big genre”. This is extremely important, because before that it did not go beyond analytics and articles. The books also give the sphere seriousness in the outer fields.
In general, the industry in the good sense of the word is maturing and, maybe, soon it will even be able to really be called an industry in the dictionary sense of the word, because now it does not reach this.
It seems to me that from the point of view of events and phenomena, 2019 has laid a fairly wide field for optimism: there are more opportunities, the growth of the market and audience is obvious.
What are the main trends in the market today?
I have said many times, including in the past results of the year, that I don’t really believe in trends right here-trends. This is a sphere with a bunch of very diverse niches. Success in each of them can be considered success in the industry as a whole. For example, if you make a good shooter for PC and consoles, it doesn’t matter if it’s premium or fritupley, you’re good and you have a lot of options. Or, say, you make good match-3s, you’re still doing great, and maybe Playrix will buy you, why not.
So the main trend is one and he is a hundred years old at lunch — to make good games. It seems to me that absolutely everyone on the market is interested in having as many cool studios as possible.
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?
I played everything basic, but my personal preferences are: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (multiplayer part), Division 2, Death Stranding, Astral Chain, Devil May Cry 5 and Control.
It’s also important to highlight Sekiro, but I don’t play that. I am wildly infuriated and exasperated by all these break-the-joystick soul games, with the possible exception of Bloodborne, which, by the way, I also played this year. I also continue to play Hearthstone. The latest addition is steroids in general, it became interesting to play again.