Interview with Herocraft

The strategic genre on mobile platforms has a strange fate. On the one hand, there are numerous builders and farms in sight, which can formally be attributed to strategies. On the other hand, there are almost no more or less classical representatives of the genre on smartphones and tablets. 

Actually, we decided to talk about this topic with Pavel Prokonich, CEO of Herocraft.

Pavel ProkonichWhy are there so few classic strategies on mobile platforms (considering that farms and builders are still a little different)?

After all, at first glance, the same tablets seem to be specially created for TBS projects.Until recently, it was believed that mobile devices and hardcore games were not very compatible things.

On the one hand, the developers were dominated by the stereotype of the length of the session. It was believed that people play on mobile phones for 5-10 minutes, no more. For complex projects, this is clearly not enough. On the other hand, the market was quite small, and it is very difficult to recoup a high-quality niche project on it. And, of course, the devices themselves played an important role. The small size of the screens and the available control methods did not allow the developers to turn around. Classic strategies imply a large amount of information on the screen and a complex user interface.

Recently, the situation seems to be changing. Announcements of strategic and tactical games are constantly popping up. What happened to the market? And isn’t this appeal to the genre temporary?Of course, there have been complex strategic projects on mobile platforms before.

For example, Revival is our clone of Civilization, which we managed to cram even into push–button phones with a screen resolution of 128×128 and a memory capacity of several hundred kilobytes. However, the situation has changed dramatically only with the advent and popularization of tablets, which are gradually becoming the main home gaming device even for hardcore gamers. The market is growing, now there is a place for niche projects, including strategies.

But we still haven’t heard about real-time strategies on mobiles. What is the reason for this? Is it difficult to make a user-friendly UI, difficulties with monetization, a high entry threshold, something else?Attempts to make a high-quality successful RTS are being made.

They rest mainly on the user interface and management. Many people are trying to design classic control, adopted in real-time strategies, on touchscreens. Naturally, this is inconvenient and repels users. We need to look for new approaches to management, new game concepts. For example, in Majesty we have implemented the concept of indirect management, excluding micromanagement at the level of individual units. Playing with one finger on touchscreens has become simple and convenient.

There are no problems with the UI in Strategy & Tactics: World War IIKabam and Storm8 games are very popular today.

These are really complex projects with many nuances, moreover, they can be called strategies to some extent. What is their trick, in your opinion? How do they manage to keep and make millions of users pay? And does this audience overlap with fans of classic strategies?Kabam is one of the first who began to make the main bet on games that are atypical for the casual market of social networks and mobile devices.

They understood that the audience of these platforms would steadily increase, including at the expense of players accustomed to more hardcore genres on the PC. The movement in the right direction, backed up by experience and professionalism, has largely caused the current situation. General trends in the development of the gaming industry also played a significant role. As for retention, in addition to the fact that Kabam makes high-quality games, of course, the most important aspect is the creation of a loyal community. The player, his attention and time are the main currency of the modern digital world. Understanding the needs of users, their psychology, and generally establishing feedback with their players are now key aspects of the work of any major publisher. 

I would not talk about a significant intersection of the audience. The now popular terms midcore and midcore gamers did not appear from scratch. The same Kabam spent a lot of time studying and comparing hardcore and midcore audiences. We can say with a high degree of confidence that in many ways the players of these groups differ very much. And if there is an intersection, then it can be said to be unidirectional. I.e. many of those who play, say, HOI on a PC can play Clash of Clans on an iPad, but few who play hit from SuperCell will play HOI.

Is HeroCraft going to work in this direction? If so, can I go into more detail?We do not consider it reasonable to compete with monsters like Kabam or Supercell, so we will try to occupy our adjacent niches.

For example, in the near future we will launch a global strategic project Fate of Nations. This game can already be played in a browser on a computer, and in a couple of months mobile device users will be able to evaluate it. 

We also have a real-time multiplayer strategy in development. The game has not been announced yet, but I can say that it will be a classic RTS in which you can fight opponents online.

The other day you released Strategy & Tactics: World War II. This is such an honest wargame, which has a lot of Risk, from Hearts of Iron. Can you tell me a few words about its creation?We started this project several years ago together with Paradox Interactive as a mobile version of HOI.

From the very beginning, it was decided not to make a direct transfer of this global strategy. It was about adapting, simplifying many elements of gameplay, aimed at ensuring that the project would not become an unsuccessful port of a game beloved by many, but would start a whole series of serious strategic games that simultaneously take into account the features of mobile platforms and modern audiences and maintain continuity with classic hardcore games. For a number of reasons, shortly before the launch of the game, it was decided to abandon the use of the name Hearts of Iron. At the moment, World War II is the first project in the Strategy & Tactics line, which will offer players a wide variety of strategy games.

Pinup from Strategy & Tactics: World War IIBoth Strategy & Tactics: World War II and Majesty are distributed using the freemium model.

At the same time, today everyone is talking about free-2-play. They say it doesn’t make sense to make games with a different type of monetization. Is it so? Have you ever thought of making Strategy & Tactics free? Let’s just say it’s true that games with the f2p monetization model are mostly earning now.

However, we at HeroCraft are confident that the segment for premium games still exists. This is largely due to the attitude of the players themselves to free games. Part of the hardcore audience initially considers any free project with payments as a pay-2-win game. WW II is not suitable for the f2p model, but in the future we will probably launch one or more Strategy & Tactics series games as free.

Strategy & Tactics: World War II has just been released, it’s too early to talk about its sales, but mobile Majesty has been on the market for a long time, many have heard about it, many have played it. Can you share its results or your conclusions on its promotion, approaches?I have already touched on the topic of Majesty a little earlier.

The project is quite successful for us, the game is still unique in its kind. We haven’t done anything special to promote it for a long time, but sales are still stable. At the same time, the game was originally developed for Java phones. :)

Question about plans: what are you going to please the players in the near future?We have about 30 diverse projects in development, from very small casual games to multi-user 3D worlds.

However, we are going to focus on projects for hardcore players. This year, several strategy games, a couple of RPGs and even a text quest will be released.