We continue to summarize the results of 2019 together with the heads of gaming companies and market experts. Next up is an interview with Yuri Krasilnikov, Vice President of business Development at Belka Games.
How was 2019 for the company?
The company has a second locomotive. I’m talking about the Funky Bay game, the mobile version of which was launched last year. The “harvest” of our farm with expedition mechanics has grown more than seven times in a year, and now Belka Games has got rid of the “One Project Company” cliche.
Funky Bay
By the way, about this “one project” — “Watchmaker”.
It has more than tripled compared to December 2018. It is important to note and praise the product team here. They managed, according to the Playliner service, to be the first in the match-3 genre games to launch “combat passes” — a feature more typical of midcore games. Here both the pitch and the implementation were extremely important. The team succeeded.
Combat pass in the “Watchmaker”
The team has also prepared a huge in-game content update at a completely new level of quality (including in terms of art).
A new city in the “Watchmaker”
This year, she also gave out a lot of live events that you can be proud of.
For example, another charity in-game event in partnership with UNICEF. We are planning more next year.
The fact that we focused on the Watchmaker and Funky Bay in 2019, judging by the results, was the right decision.
New products inside Belka Games are now emerging in a dedicated RnD department, which was formed six months ago. Despite the short term, there are already the first results. 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.
In addition to product successes, we can boast that this year we managed to complete the analytics department (you can read about it here), as well as highlight cross-project leads who oversee, for example, the quality of UI/UX on all the company’s projects. All this affects the quality of our games: it is growing. Along with it, the location of users to us is also growing.
Both the community direction and the support have also done a great job over the year. When you make games as a service, it is important that all aspects of interaction with players are closed. Not only in-game, but also built “around” the project.
We have also significantly strengthened the marketing department both point-by-point (according to the positions we previously had in the staff) and in new roles in the team. For example, “dedicated analyst” or “creative producer”. All this allows us to increase our games and their recognition among players. This can also include a significant event for us — a partnership with AppLovin, which will allow us to grow even more aggressively next year.
Despite the impressive growth (from 136 to 204 people), we manage to be aware of what is happening with colleagues “at the next desk.” Once a month we gather everyone for the so-called DemoDay. At this internal event, project leads talk about what happened in a month, what is planned for releases. As part of the event, we also congratulate friends and colleagues on significant dates, for example, we celebrate the three- and five-year anniversary of employees at Belka Games, and, of course, we represent newcomers. After that, everyone communicates in an informal setting, the chief system administrator turns the disks on the remote like a Dj, in general, it’s fun. In my opinion, this is a very important find, and the fact that such events have become monthly allows us to make it into our highlights of the year.
DemoDay
In general, the year turned out to be rich in activity: we received guests from Unity, UNICEF, Google, and other companies, exchanged experiences, and gained new knowledge.
We held our own internal event — BELCON4, we are preparing BELCON5 before the New Year. Well, I can’t help but mention the external hackathon BELKATHON, the results of which we were very satisfied. More than 150 teams took part in it, 60 projects were submitted and four winners in five nominations were awarded.
And sweet — sweet! We became friends with Nestle, and it turned out, in our opinion, a very organic collaboration. In general, if you are also crazy about games and love them — velkam in Belka.
What events in the regional and global gaming industry do you consider central in the past year?
Globally, it is important that there was a “razban” of issuing licenses in China. Some kind of process has appeared, and Western players can again plan to enter the Chinese market.
I am very interested to see what the two projects will eventually result in.:
- Google Stadia — will the market turn around or will we still have to wait for something new in cloud gaming;
- Half-Life: Alyx — and whether it will reach the release, what will happen after that with the VR market.
What are the main trends in the market today?
Attempts by mobile platforms to make subscription stores inside themselves is a bright trend. Apple Arcade and Google PlayPass seem to have become the main “rockers” for mobile. We are waiting for the first statistics of services. It will depend on whether the queue will increase and new releases there or the initiative will sink into oblivion.
Personally, it seems to me that, even in case of failure at the start, the platforms will make several more iterations to get this hurdy-gurdy to full.
Plus, everyone predicted the death of the hyper-casual direction, and he is more alive than all the living, and even transforms beautifully, finds development. For example, Archero is very expensive to play.
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 spend a lot of time in our games, in particular, in the “Watchmaker”. And I play both pre-release builds and on the prod. There is also a very sticky project in RnD, I support retention there.
If we talk about third-party projects, then I spent a lot of sessions in Call of Duty, and it seems to me that Activision directly lifted up the plan for shooters and did a “good deed” for all action developers: first they aggregated a ton of audience loyal to the brand, then they showed that you can play comfortably on mobile. Now all the brothers will go to look at alternative projects in the genre. Isn’t it wonderful?!