We continue to summarize the results of 2019 together with the heads of gaming companies and market experts. Next up is an interview with Nordcurrent co-founder Sergey Trofimov.
How was 2019 for the company?
2019 went well for the company. Firstly, at the end of the summer, we brought the amount of content for Murder in the Alps to the required level, and the game began to rapidly gain momentum.
Murder in the Alps
Secondly, we have practically brought several projects to the soft launch and brought one project to the release (its launch will take place in early 2020).
Well, and thirdly, we experimented a lot in all areas, starting from the approach to development and ending with how we do advertising. It was a good year.
What events in the regional and global gaming industry do you consider central in the past year?
Well, probably blurring the boundaries between mobile and non-mobile games. The quality bar has once again increased. Streaming services (for example, Stadia) add fuel to the fire. In my opinion, everything is moving towards the fact that the games will look and play the same on all devices. It will not happen very quickly, but everything is coming to this.
Speaking directly about mobile games, I would like to note the changes in advertising creatives. Both fake videos and serious large-scale campaigns with high-budget commercials, such as RAID, have become widespread.
And I also liked how Epic Games released the second chapter to Fortnite. In this regard, many interesting thoughts have appeared.
What trends do you consider the main ones in the market today?
Dominance in the charts of hypercausal games, as well as M&A from Playrix and Mail.ru . Now the situation is very strange: when we approach exhibitions to get acquainted, half of the developers make a hyper-casual game, and the second, respectively, conducts conversations with either Mail.Ru Group, or with Playrix. I am watching the market with interest.
Which third-party game releases have proved to be the most important this year? Plus, which games did you spend the most time on in 2019 as a gamer?
The most important release (but that doesn’t mean I liked it), — of course, Kojima‘s Death Stranding.
Call of Duty: Mobile really liked it. In my opinion, everything is perfect in the game: from the controls to the atmosphere.
Zooba is an example of how a well–made game in the genre of “Battle Royale”, in which, it would seem, everything has been done a long time ago, can achieve great success.
As a gamer myself, I can’t tear myself away from the completely unpopular (one might say unknown) Traffic Puzzle game from the Polish studio Picadilla. There seems to be match-3, but in fact the game is about something else entirely. I installed it by watching an advertisement. I thought I would demolish it right away, but already at two hundred some level and still playing.