In the past year, several bright and successful successors of the iconic Papers, Please have emerged. We spoke with representatives of Darts Games, Brigada Games, Trioskaz, and Solarsuit Games about the popularity of this new direction and the challenges faced during development.

The editorial team at App2Top posed the most pressing questions regarding publishing to representatives from Skystone Games, Indie GO Fund, HeroCraft, and Polden Publishing.

It has been confirmed that Electronic Arts (EA) will be leaving the stock market. The company will soon return to being private. App2Top discussed why EA might have made this decision with market experts Dmitri Burkovsky, Roman Safiulin, and Nikolai Shubin.

For the past few years, there has been a trend in Russian game development towards creating games based on Slavic mythology, including Russian fairy tales and epics. We discussed the specifics of working with this theme with representatives from Morteshka, 1C Game Studios, Far Far Games, Game Art Pioneers, Divovision Games, and Watt Studio.

In recent years, there’s been a noticeable trend towards cozy games: more and more projects under the “cozy” tag have been released on Steam each year. What exactly is this trend, and is it worth pursuing in game development? We discussed with Alexander Blintsov, Dmitry Muratov, and Kirill Oreshkin.

Moving forward with our study of what’s happening in Russia’s web games market. This time featuring platforms like Yandex Games, VK, and Pikabu Games.

In recent years, there has been a surge of activity in the web games market. This is true for Russia as well, where this segment has historically held a strong position. App2Top spoke to market experts Alexander Shchevelev, Eduard Kumykov, and Yan Yankelowitz about what drives developers’ interest in web games and how much one can earn from such games.

In late July, the non-existent “International Satanism Movement”* was added to the list of extremist organizations in Russia. Considering that many games use imagery related to the occult, we spoke with lawyers from Futura Digital, Semenov&Pevzner, and i-Legal about the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision for the gaming industry.

Is there a transition from mobile to Steam, and if so, what might this phenomenon be attributed to? The editors of App2Top spoke with teams that have experience with both platforms: HeroCraft, Brickworks Games, Lipsar Studio, Kylyk Games, and Nekki.

Hardly anyone writes or talks about the genre of mobile games called “color-by-numbers” (coloring, paint by number). Even so, games in this genre collectively generate about 30 million installs per month. What is happening in this niche and is it worth entering? We discussed this with Beresnev Games, ZiMAD, and Belka Games.

App2Top brought together the heads of Hit‘n’run Digital Studio, KPD, FlyinDogs and SERIES to talk about the situation in the visual novel market. We discussed the cost of development, the competitiveness of the market and the myths associated with the niche.

App2Top brought together representatives of AdQuantum, Appska, Tenjin, AppsFlyer, Adjust and Appier to talk about the current situation in the mobile game advertising market. We discussed AI, the transition to the web, traffic prices and much more.

The visual novel market is diverse. There are applications with storefronts, there is a large segment of horror and no less large — short stories “for adults”. But within the framework of the current round table, we decided to dive into such a niche as visual novels for web platforms. Our experts and guides in this niche were representatives of Dats Games, Arcanum Games and Yandex Games.

In mid-February, OpenAI introduced a new generative network that is capable of generating very high-quality video by text format. It’s called Sora. We talked about its prospects in the gaming industry with teams that have already implemented other neural networks into their pipeline. Our experts include representatives of Charisma, Playkot, Lost Lore, Skywaylab and ZiMAD.

At the end of January, Apple announced a number of innovations in iOS. These include support for third—party stores and payment systems. However, those who want to use the new functionality will have to pay for each installation. We talked about the innovation with experts from Skich and INFUSION GAMES.

Against the background of loud statements that “hypercage is dead“, changes in business strategies by leading hyper-casual publishers and statements by analysts about the crisis in the niche, we talked about the situation with five market experts.

Premium projects usually have a section with titles, where they indicate, if possible, all those involved in the creation of the project. However, for some reason this is not accepted in mobile development. Why did this happen and what can be done (and whether it is necessary) to fix the situation, we asked the leading mobile gaming companies.

This spring, Dota Auto Chess has become a major phenomenon in the market of free-to-play PvP games. The game, which started as a mod, managed to get not only a native version, but also two clones — from Valve and Riot Games. Together with the game producers, we analyze the reason for the popularity of the game.

In 2018, the trend towards decentralization of digital PC retail has become more noticeable. More and more companies are leaving Steam and moving to their own sites. In parallel, near-gaming services have become more active. They set about launching their own grocery storefronts. We talked about the reasons for the current situation with experts of the gaming market: Sergey Galenkin, Ivan Pomytkin and Nikolai Bondarenko.