We continue to summarize the results of 2019 together with the heads of gaming companies and market experts. Next up is an interview with Anton Reinhold, Director of Business Development at Nexters Global.
How was 2019 for the company?
The year turned out to be a turning point for the company, we were able to grow several times. This allowed us to look at ourselves in a new way.
We are thinking about how we still have to change in order to continue to grow. We started thinking about how to change the processes within the company, approaches and relationships. The goal is not to break what already works, but to be able to rebuild in accordance with growth.
It has been a very productive year. It was cool, but we can’t stay the same as we were, so we’re changing to make next year even better.
As part of this growth, we:
- we give employees the opportunity to grow within the company;
- looking for new employees;
- we explain to them on what principles decisions are made in the company.
What events in the regional and global gaming industry do you consider central in the past year?
It seems that 2019 was not so rich in incredible events.
First of all, the Huawei story comes to mind. The company became one of the victims of the trade war between China and the United States (recall, the US Department of Commerce banned Huawei from purchasing spare parts from American companies without government approval. Google also banned the smartphone manufacturer from using Android OS in its devices worldwide. — Ed.). Some developers then started developing applications for Huawei in order to quickly enter the Chinese market. At that moment, it became clear to us that fundamental changes could occur in the market due to this conflict.
The second story that comes to mind is related to the release of iOS 13 (in 2019, Apple significantly simplified the work with subscriptions for users, an easily accessible Subscription Manager appeared. The company also began to warn iOS users about a renewable subscription when deleting applications. — Ed.). Many companies, whose monetization model was based on subscription, became extremely feverish, even large players.
We also noticed, thanks to a number of events, that Russian-speaking developers have begun to represent a very serious force in the global gaming arena. Now the overthrow of the hegemony of Chinese and American game manufacturers in the sales charts no longer seems so improbable.
What are the main trends in the market today?
If we talk about fritupley, then I would single out three trends:
- the market is maturing. This implies the strengthening of giants and the growth of the quality of products. On the other hand, there is less and less chance for a small studio without significant expertise (and this applies not only to game development) to do something breakthrough;
- increasingly, different gameplay and different monetization models are mixed with each other. This means that it is worth waiting for the appearance of new original projects that can both surprise players and change the industry as a whole.;
- the hyper-casual direction continues to develop despite pessimistic prophecies: new studios appear, leaders change, benchmarks are updated. I think it will be even more interesting next year.
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?
Important releases include RAID from Plarium and AFK Arena from Lilith Games. These games turned out to be in the top: they are big, noticeable and very cool. Another high-profile releases should include Call of Duty: Mobile: shooters work, they are ready to play on mobile devices.
As a gamer, I can mention Archero, I still play periodically. On the console this year I only played Metro Exodus, I like this series.