Conversations on Russia – Part Three
It has taken a while to get this one up, apologies! This is the third and final part of my series of interviews with Russian game developers which all told form my ‘Conversations on Russia’. These conversations led to this piece on The Reticule being written. In this final part I talk to Alexander Scherbakov of Dreamlore Interactive (Stalin vs Martians.)
Chris – How has the economic crisis impacted on the Russian PC market? Are there any types of games which are still performing well?
Alexander – As you know, Russian/ex-USSR market is very different from European market. The retail prices are different. But the market could absorb almost everything. Most of the Russian/Ukrainian developers lived off the domestic market. The market which now lies in ruins. The Russian online market is still doing very well and still growing. The traditional PC market we had is almost dead. By the New Year 2009 holidays local publishers were selling half from what they expected (compared to the same period of 2007). By the end of spring, they were selling 5 times less, than during the spring of 2008. Right now (compared to Fall 2007) the publishers are selling like 7 or 8 times less.
At first it looked like the low-quality titles will be thrown up by the market, people will buy only quality (or somehow remarkable) titles, and from the customer’s/critic’s point of view everything will be healthier. But right now it looks like, well, “7 or 8 times less” and that’s it. Yes, you can’t sell unremarkable supercrap without any USP as the publishers used to, since the retailers won’t order that. But everything else is just selling bad. Even AAA titles.
So why it happened? Because Russian economy suffered badly from the crisis. Not a bad as some of the Baltic states or Ukraine. But bad enough: inflation of ruble, prices getting higher and higher (which is completely different from Europe, where the prices are mostly falling a bit), the salaries are normally getting cut.
Previously, the people could come to the store, notice a promising game and make an [impulse purchase], the game is cheap anyway. $10? Okay!
Now the customer comes to the store, notices a game, goes home and downloads it from a torrent tracker, ’cause the games don’t look that cheap anymore. $10? Will spend it on something else.
Next thing: large retailer chains were all credit-bound. So now they don’t really like taking new titles, ’cause its so hard to sell them, and the publishers don’t like to give them new titles because of significant delays with payments (and yes it sounds like a dead circle). You basically give a copy of the game to a retailer chain, but you won’t get paid. There are still small retailers and they comprise I don’t really know how much, perhaps about 70% of all retailers. But you still have troubles with them. And people don’t want to buy games anymore.
Chris – How are developers responding to the new economic climate, are they focusing on online games or simply cutting down the number of titles they release to the market?
Alexander – Most of the developers can’t respond. They’re making a game. The publisher funds them and keeps in mind that they will sell this number of copies guaranteed and that number of copies if they’re lucky. And suddenly they realise they will sell 20% of the expected minimum. They close the project.
The fully independent (funded not by the publisher) developer makes a game and keeps in mind the same number of copies, minus revenue split with the publisher. Suddenly, Grim Reaper knocks at the door.
Chris – Do you think that there are any developers at risk of going out of business? Will they do so because of they have failed to adapt to the economic changes?
Alexander – I think 80% of developers are at risk. As I already mentioned, most of the local developers made games for the local market. And you can’t make ends meet when you’re selling 5 or 10 thousand copies. Or even less. And obviously it’s hard to get funding.
And there’s more. Publishers don’t invest in new projects. Well, almost. They know they will hardly earn anything from the domestic market, and most of them can’t invest (or find it risky) into the worldwide-oriented projects.
There’s not much ways to survive for a developer in ex-USSR, if you’re not GSC or Katauri, or your father is an oil tycoon/politician. First option is going online or successfully going online. Second, is working directly with a Western (or Eastern!) publisher. Third option is outsourcing, but this one is pretty hard right now, not much orders nowadays.
Chris – Is it healthy for the Russian games market to have a publisher like 1C dominate the market as much as they do?
Alexander – In fact, 1C is not dominating the market. Indeed, it is still the leading publisher. But we also had few other relatively large publishers: Akella, Buka, ND Games (Noviy Disk) and, to a lesser extent, Russobit-M (aka GFI).
One thing you should understand about 1C is that, in fact, there are few branches of that company. First of all, 1C is a business software developer/publisher. Their main business is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. A huge number of companies in ex-USSR utilise 1C’s solutions. 1C has a branch 1C: Multimedia. You all know it simply as 1C. It was a games branch of the company. Obviously, 1C: Multimedia was (and still is) the largest publisher in Russia, because of the parent company’s money. The had a huge number of titles published and developed, but as far as I know, 1C: Multimedia was never profitable. Right now we have a huge crisis and parent 1C cannot afford to feed the almost non-profitable games branch. So 1C: Multimedia had to merge with SoftClub, the company specialising mostly in videogames, distributor of SCEE and Blizzard. Basically, right now it is 1C/SoftClub and it is very questionable who’s dominating in this tandem. But their not really dominating the market, which has extremely hard times as we speak.
Other publishers are fighting for survival. ND Games prominently closed their production department, so they don’t fund games anymore, work mostly like a distributor. And in fact their distribution right now is quite possibly the strongest (stronger than 1C’s). Russobit-M is very isolated, but they invest in games development right now. Buka seems to be dead than alive, Akella is struggling hard.
Speaking of the pre-crisis days, there was a domination of few publishers, which formed the Russian market. And they formed the system which was quite unfriendly to the developers. That’s actually a really complex issue, and it will take a long time to discuss, but in my opinion, the publishers made much more bad stuff, than good stuff. First of all, they formed the system where independent developers hardly could grow. They were never interested in that and the vast majority of developers were absolutely dependant on the publisher’s will. Second, they did everything to create unfavourable conditions for work with the publishers abroad. For example, they had a tendency to give publishing rights to Western publishers on almost any terms, just to get the game released outside of Russia. Which leads to a problem, when independent Eastern European developer comes to a publisher and gets offered a deal which will be much, much less favourable then the deal offered to a Western European/American developer. And we’re speaking not about the budget, which is sometimes quite understandable, but about royalties. The publishers expect that wild Eastern Europeans will say yes to any revenue split offered, because that’s how our glorious Russian publishers liked to work.
Chris – What kind of game would you be looking to develop now in order to cope with the present economic demands?
Alexander – Personally me and my good friends at BWF (we’re working together) are obviously thinking about the online direction, and possibly will have something to unveil pretty soon. Speaking of Dreamlore, in early September we released our visual novel (it is something like an interactive comic) Eugene Onegin and possibly will finish and release a new title in this genre early next year. Because we just have to do it. I don’t really know what will come next, but I’m thinking about a small browser-based online game as an option.
Conversations on Russia – Part One
Over on The Reticule I recently published an article looking at Russian Games Development which was based on conversations with a bunch of people directly involved in developing games in Russia. Here I will be publishing the conversations that led to the article. First up is Aleksey ‘The LxR’ Luchin from Ice-Pick Lodge.
These are all Aleksey’s words
First off, let me note, that I’m not exactly into analyzing the gaming industry or the market, and there are just some thoughts and conclusions I made, based on my experience in the Russian game development industry. The industry here is rather young compared to the ones in Europe and America, and thus, while we don’t produce many quality or AAA titles, there are some advantages to this situation. Since the market is rapidly developing and due to the fact, that doing business in Russian is different in its paradigm, the work patterns and traditions, that the Western industry has accepted and follows, are still forming here. This fact lessens the control over the development process, and leads to developers being able to experiment with the game more. Also, there are many small start-up studios that appear in the industry every day. All-in-all, I’d say the Russian market is a distorted reflection of the good old days when game development wasn’t an industry, and all there was were a lot of small “basement” studios that made games for the fun of it, for themselves. The obvious drawback here is that the quality of games that come from Russian is in general worse than abroad – the games suffer from bugs, strange design decisions, often hard and requiring skill to beat the game and patience to look through the flaws to see a gem. This transitional stage, when the market is beginning to get investments, but still hasn’t formed strict rules is the most fertile soil for new ideas and unusual games, the fresh blood, that the more hardcore part of gamers has been screaming for. Hopefully, this soil will become the foundation of the gaming Renaissance, that Nikolay and I have been talking in our RockPaperShotgun interview.
Conversations on Russia – Part Two
This is the second part of my series of interviews with various figures involved in the Russian game development scene. In the first part I talked to The LxR of Ice-Pick Lodge. This part is my conversation with Anatoly Subbotin of 1C Company.
Chris – There are some great new titles coming out of Russian development studios at the moment, do you think that they are pushing the boundaries of game design more than larger Western developers?
Anatoly - For many years in a row Russia was considered to be the place for outsourcing. But the situation is changing drastically and fast. Some of the Western publishers are now even developing their games in Russia. We’re not talking about outsourcing, but full-scale game development done by a Russian studio. Of course the thing that the situation is changing and more companies are doing full-scale development doesn’t mean that there aren’t any companies providing quality outsourcing services. The level of experience and professionalism of Russian teams allows them to produce more than just outsourcing.
1C:Ino-Co has recently finished Majesty 2 for Paradox Interactive, Nival Interactive has done Heroes of Might and Magic V, Gaijin Entertainment has developed IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey recently co-published by 505 Games and 1C.
4-5 years ago game development in Russia was more a hobby than business. But things are changing fast and our industry is moving towards international standards. There are still some peculiarities though. Many Russian developers still put a lot of effort in the creative side of their project, many teams still want to deliver something original. This is the reason why a big number of innovative products come from Russia.
Russian games are starting to attract attention of the gamers and the press because the quality is getting higher and higher. King’s Bounty: The Legend and Men of War are one of the most highly-ranked games that come from our country.
Chris – If this is so, why do you think Russian studios are able to do this?
Anatoly - Russian game industry is growing, becoming more mature and much more professional. It is getting really similar to the one in Western Europe or USA. More and more Russian developers start working directly with Western publishers and create games for them. This brings foreign experience and methods.
Game development in Russia is becoming more professional and more expensive. In terms of costs it is becoming comparable to Western standards.
Russian game industry is younger that the one in the UK, Europe or USA. Unfortunately we also do not have any special colleges or universities that teach game art, design or anything related to games. Almost all of the people involved in the so-called first wave of our game specialists came from other IT spheres, or not even IT. The first Russian GDC (called KRI) was only in 2003.
A huge drawback for the local game market was the Russian financial crisis in 1998. The industry had actually to make another start after this one.
All of these factors have influenced our game industry, but now after more than 10 years we have quite a number of strong publishing houses, talented development studios and games that can try and compete with the ones coming from the West.
Now the older generation has enough experience not only to produce high-quality but to train newcomers as well.
Chris – How important do you find the PC gaming market in Russia?
Anatoly - PC games still occupy the biggest part of the market, but the situation has changed a lot recently. The share of console titles is getting bigger each year. Quite a number of Russian teams, including 1C’s internal studio (SeaWolf), has started developing console games. I think that this tendency will keep on evolving in the upcoming years. Although PC games will still remain a huge power on the local market.
Chris – Are there any challenges you face when releasing PC games in Russia and also in Western countries?
Anatoly - The biggest challenge and difficulty all publishers are facing now is the global financial and economic crisis which influences all spheres of life including game industry.
The world financial crisis has a huge impact on the Russian economy and on many fields of life inside the country. First of all the purchase power is decreasing. The sales go down as a result. And this refers almost to all types of products including games.
To make things worse that happens not only with entertainment products – the whole Russian economy is on wane, inflation is high, consumers are not actively buying anything. Another issue is ruble weakening in comparison to US dollar and Euro.
Apart from that we are pretty confident about our position on the local market. On February 24th 1C has announced the deal with Soft Club, one of the leading companies on the Russian game market. We plan to join our efforts in different business trends – sales, acquisition, distribution, localization, merchandising and transport logistics. Both companies expand each other very well. 1C is the leading PC publisher in Russia and Soft Club is strong in console games sales. Together we plan to withstand the economic crisis more efficiently and moreover develop our business in the future more rapidly.
The Roundup – 29th September
So it has been quite a while since I last had a roundup of my work here, I think it is about time I did another one, don’t you think?
Firstly my stuff from Resolution, I just want to thank Lewis and Fraser first off for letting me unleash hell with these two pieces (hell, fortunately, was not unleashed). Firstly was my roundup of the Experimental Gameplay Project’s ‘Bare Minimum’ theme and secondly I went off and interviewed Kyle Gray where we talked about Henry Hatsworth and the EGP.
Over on The Reticule I gave some impressions on the FIFA 10 demo then proceeded to take an angry swipe at Games for Windows Live which is one of the most infuriating pieces of software I have ever had to deal with.
In order to calm myself down I talked about the Tiger Woods Online closed beta which has unfortauntely recently come to a close. I am looking forward to the open beta! Bringing us right up to date is my review of EA’s Need for Speed: Shift
This will be back when I feel like I have a decent number of things to share with the world.
The Roundup 7th August
The Roundup is back for another hit of my writings from the past two weeks, and making a welcome return some links to interesting pieces written by other people.
Hit the jump to see what I have in store this week.
First off some piece from other people. I have to mention Phill’s piece on Resolution about the Third Person Disconnect which is a very interesting analysis of how the third person perspective in games. On Gaming Daily Steve has talked about the aggrevation poor console to PC control porting causes. Fortunately this was something Overlord did very well, check out a review from Mark on that here.
Looking a bit closer to home with The Reticule we have some fine pieces of work, the best I think is this piece by Greg which looks at game pricing. He has also started a Hearts of Iron 3 game diary which is looking very good. Meanwhile Ben has interviewed Mark Darin of TellTale Games.
Now don’t go thinking I haven’t been doing anything! First up is my Gaming Daily piece where I looked at the importance of bots in games. On Resolution I contributed (along with Phill and Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer) to a discussion about why we play games. Some very interesting comments all round there.
Over on The Reticule I have given Anno 1404 a Verdict along with judging Bookworm Adventures 2. Both are very good games, especially Anno which I really hope more people look at and try out. Finally I also looked at the open world scenarios of Fuel and Burnout Paradise, you can read that here.
The Roundup – 21st August
A bit late in the day for this, but here is another one of my world famous editions of ‘The Roundup!’ (not actually world famous – Ed) Hit the jump for some pieces of writing I want to bring attention to and a roundup of my own work.
Firstly I want to highlight this Games Set Watch column where Kevin Gifford looks at how online gaming sites are ignoring the stories that often break first in print magazine. Very good piece of journalism there. Also from GSW is Phill’s latest column about PC ports of console games.
From Resolution comes Lewis’ look at Half-Life 2 mod ‘Curse’. Good to see some lesser known Half-Life 2 mods getting some exposure.
From The Reticule I have to highlight Greg’s hands-on preview of the new Operation Flashpoint which looks outstanding.
Time for my own stuff and I start off with a rant about Games for Windows Live which has ruined my experiences with Street Fighter IV and nearly done the same with Fallout 3.
On The Reticule I have Hearts of Iron 3 and grabbed a sneaky quick interview with DoubleBear Productions I also played Ashes Cricket 2009 and while I really enjoy the game, I can’t recommend it to many other people.
That is a wrap, look out for more of The Roundup in a fortnight.
Conversations on Russia – Part Three
It has taken a while to get this one up, apologies! This is the third and final part of my series of interviews with Russian game developers which all told form my ‘Conversations on Russia’. These conversations led to this piece on The Reticule being written. In this final part I talk to Alexander Scherbakov of Dreamlore Interactive (Stalin vs Martians.)
Chris – How has the economic crisis impacted on the Russian PC market? Are there any types of games which are still performing well?
Alexander – As you know, Russian/ex-USSR market is very different from European market. The retail prices are different. But the market could absorb almost everything. Most of the Russian/Ukrainian developers lived off the domestic market. The market which now lies in ruins. The Russian online market is still doing very well and still growing. The traditional PC market we had is almost dead. By the New Year 2009 holidays local publishers were selling half from what they expected (compared to the same period of 2007). By the end of spring, they were selling 5 times less, than during the spring of 2008. Right now (compared to Fall 2007) the publishers are selling like 7 or 8 times less.
At first it looked like the low-quality titles will be thrown up by the market, people will buy only quality (or somehow remarkable) titles, and from the customer’s/critic’s point of view everything will be healthier. But right now it looks like, well, “7 or 8 times less” and that’s it. Yes, you can’t sell unremarkable supercrap without any USP as the publishers used to, since the retailers won’t order that. But everything else is just selling bad. Even AAA titles.
So why it happened? Because Russian economy suffered badly from the crisis. Not a bad as some of the Baltic states or Ukraine. But bad enough: inflation of ruble, prices getting higher and higher (which is completely different from Europe, where the prices are mostly falling a bit), the salaries are normally getting cut.
Previously, the people could come to the store, notice a promising game and make an [impulse purchase], the game is cheap anyway. $10? Okay!
Now the customer comes to the store, notices a game, goes home and downloads it from a torrent tracker, ’cause the games don’t look that cheap anymore. $10? Will spend it on something else.
Next thing: large retailer chains were all credit-bound. So now they don’t really like taking new titles, ’cause its so hard to sell them, and the publishers don’t like to give them new titles because of significant delays with payments (and yes it sounds like a dead circle). You basically give a copy of the game to a retailer chain, but you won’t get paid. There are still small retailers and they comprise I don’t really know how much, perhaps about 70% of all retailers. But you still have troubles with them. And people don’t want to buy games anymore.
Chris – How are developers responding to the new economic climate, are they focusing on online games or simply cutting down the number of titles they release to the market?
Alexander – Most of the developers can’t respond. They’re making a game. The publisher funds them and keeps in mind that they will sell this number of copies guaranteed and that number of copies if they’re lucky. And suddenly they realise they will sell 20% of the expected minimum. They close the project.
The fully independent (funded not by the publisher) developer makes a game and keeps in mind the same number of copies, minus revenue split with the publisher. Suddenly, Grim Reaper knocks at the door.
Chris – Do you think that there are any developers at risk of going out of business? Will they do so because of they have failed to adapt to the economic changes?
Alexander – I think 80% of developers are at risk. As I already mentioned, most of the local developers made games for the local market. And you can’t make ends meet when you’re selling 5 or 10 thousand copies. Or even less. And obviously it’s hard to get funding.
And there’s more. Publishers don’t invest in new projects. Well, almost. They know they will hardly earn anything from the domestic market, and most of them can’t invest (or find it risky) into the worldwide-oriented projects.
There’s not much ways to survive for a developer in ex-USSR, if you’re not GSC or Katauri, or your father is an oil tycoon/politician. First option is going online or successfully going online. Second, is working directly with a Western (or Eastern!) publisher. Third option is outsourcing, but this one is pretty hard right now, not much orders nowadays.
Chris – Is it healthy for the Russian games market to have a publisher like 1C dominate the market as much as they do?
Alexander – In fact, 1C is not dominating the market. Indeed, it is still the leading publisher. But we also had few other relatively large publishers: Akella, Buka, ND Games (Noviy Disk) and, to a lesser extent, Russobit-M (aka GFI).
One thing you should understand about 1C is that, in fact, there are few branches of that company. First of all, 1C is a business software developer/publisher. Their main business is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. A huge number of companies in ex-USSR utilise 1C’s solutions. 1C has a branch 1C: Multimedia. You all know it simply as 1C. It was a games branch of the company. Obviously, 1C: Multimedia was (and still is) the largest publisher in Russia, because of the parent company’s money. The had a huge number of titles published and developed, but as far as I know, 1C: Multimedia was never profitable. Right now we have a huge crisis and parent 1C cannot afford to feed the almost non-profitable games branch. So 1C: Multimedia had to merge with SoftClub, the company specialising mostly in videogames, distributor of SCEE and Blizzard. Basically, right now it is 1C/SoftClub and it is very questionable who’s dominating in this tandem. But their not really dominating the market, which has extremely hard times as we speak.
Other publishers are fighting for survival. ND Games prominently closed their production department, so they don’t fund games anymore, work mostly like a distributor. And in fact their distribution right now is quite possibly the strongest (stronger than 1C’s). Russobit-M is very isolated, but they invest in games development right now. Buka seems to be dead than alive, Akella is struggling hard.
Speaking of the pre-crisis days, there was a domination of few publishers, which formed the Russian market. And they formed the system which was quite unfriendly to the developers. That’s actually a really complex issue, and it will take a long time to discuss, but in my opinion, the publishers made much more bad stuff, than good stuff. First of all, they formed the system where independent developers hardly could grow. They were never interested in that and the vast majority of developers were absolutely dependant on the publisher’s will. Second, they did everything to create unfavourable conditions for work with the publishers abroad. For example, they had a tendency to give publishing rights to Western publishers on almost any terms, just to get the game released outside of Russia. Which leads to a problem, when independent Eastern European developer comes to a publisher and gets offered a deal which will be much, much less favourable then the deal offered to a Western European/American developer. And we’re speaking not about the budget, which is sometimes quite understandable, but about royalties. The publishers expect that wild Eastern Europeans will say yes to any revenue split offered, because that’s how our glorious Russian publishers liked to work.
Chris – What kind of game would you be looking to develop now in order to cope with the present economic demands?
Alexander – Personally me and my good friends at BWF (we’re working together) are obviously thinking about the online direction, and possibly will have something to unveil pretty soon. Speaking of Dreamlore, in early September we released our visual novel (it is something like an interactive comic) Eugene Onegin and possibly will finish and release a new title in this genre early next year. Because we just have to do it. I don’t really know what will come next, but I’m thinking about a small browser-based online game as an option.
Conversations on Russia – Part Two
This is the second part of my series of interviews with various figures involved in the Russian game development scene. In the first part I talked to The LxR of Ice-Pick Lodge. This part is my conversation with Anatoly Subbotin of 1C Company.
Chris – There are some great new titles coming out of Russian development studios at the moment, do you think that they are pushing the boundaries of game design more than larger Western developers?
Anatoly - For many years in a row Russia was considered to be the place for outsourcing. But the situation is changing drastically and fast. Some of the Western publishers are now even developing their games in Russia. We’re not talking about outsourcing, but full-scale game development done by a Russian studio. Of course the thing that the situation is changing and more companies are doing full-scale development doesn’t mean that there aren’t any companies providing quality outsourcing services. The level of experience and professionalism of Russian teams allows them to produce more than just outsourcing.
1C:Ino-Co has recently finished Majesty 2 for Paradox Interactive, Nival Interactive has done Heroes of Might and Magic V, Gaijin Entertainment has developed IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey recently co-published by 505 Games and 1C.
4-5 years ago game development in Russia was more a hobby than business. But things are changing fast and our industry is moving towards international standards. There are still some peculiarities though. Many Russian developers still put a lot of effort in the creative side of their project, many teams still want to deliver something original. This is the reason why a big number of innovative products come from Russia.
Russian games are starting to attract attention of the gamers and the press because the quality is getting higher and higher. King’s Bounty: The Legend and Men of War are one of the most highly-ranked games that come from our country.
Chris – If this is so, why do you think Russian studios are able to do this?
Anatoly - Russian game industry is growing, becoming more mature and much more professional. It is getting really similar to the one in Western Europe or USA. More and more Russian developers start working directly with Western publishers and create games for them. This brings foreign experience and methods.
Game development in Russia is becoming more professional and more expensive. In terms of costs it is becoming comparable to Western standards.
Russian game industry is younger that the one in the UK, Europe or USA. Unfortunately we also do not have any special colleges or universities that teach game art, design or anything related to games. Almost all of the people involved in the so-called first wave of our game specialists came from other IT spheres, or not even IT. The first Russian GDC (called KRI) was only in 2003.
A huge drawback for the local game market was the Russian financial crisis in 1998. The industry had actually to make another start after this one.
All of these factors have influenced our game industry, but now after more than 10 years we have quite a number of strong publishing houses, talented development studios and games that can try and compete with the ones coming from the West.
Now the older generation has enough experience not only to produce high-quality but to train newcomers as well.
Chris – How important do you find the PC gaming market in Russia?
Anatoly - PC games still occupy the biggest part of the market, but the situation has changed a lot recently. The share of console titles is getting bigger each year. Quite a number of Russian teams, including 1C’s internal studio (SeaWolf), has started developing console games. I think that this tendency will keep on evolving in the upcoming years. Although PC games will still remain a huge power on the local market.
Chris – Are there any challenges you face when releasing PC games in Russia and also in Western countries?
Anatoly - The biggest challenge and difficulty all publishers are facing now is the global financial and economic crisis which influences all spheres of life including game industry.
The world financial crisis has a huge impact on the Russian economy and on many fields of life inside the country. First of all the purchase power is decreasing. The sales go down as a result. And this refers almost to all types of products including games.
To make things worse that happens not only with entertainment products – the whole Russian economy is on wane, inflation is high, consumers are not actively buying anything. Another issue is ruble weakening in comparison to US dollar and Euro.
Apart from that we are pretty confident about our position on the local market. On February 24th 1C has announced the deal with Soft Club, one of the leading companies on the Russian game market. We plan to join our efforts in different business trends – sales, acquisition, distribution, localization, merchandising and transport logistics. Both companies expand each other very well. 1C is the leading PC publisher in Russia and Soft Club is strong in console games sales. Together we plan to withstand the economic crisis more efficiently and moreover develop our business in the future more rapidly.
Conversations on Russia – Part One
Over on The Reticule I recently published an article looking at Russian Games Development which was based on conversations with a bunch of people directly involved in developing games in Russia. Here I will be publishing the conversations that led to the article. First up is Aleksey ‘The LxR’ Luchin from Ice-Pick Lodge.
These are all Aleksey’s words
First off, let me note, that I’m not exactly into analyzing the gaming industry or the market, and there are just some thoughts and conclusions I made, based on my experience in the Russian game development industry. The industry here is rather young compared to the ones in Europe and America, and thus, while we don’t produce many quality or AAA titles, there are some advantages to this situation. Since the market is rapidly developing and due to the fact, that doing business in Russian is different in its paradigm, the work patterns and traditions, that the Western industry has accepted and follows, are still forming here. This fact lessens the control over the development process, and leads to developers being able to experiment with the game more. Also, there are many small start-up studios that appear in the industry every day. All-in-all, I’d say the Russian market is a distorted reflection of the good old days when game development wasn’t an industry, and all there was were a lot of small “basement” studios that made games for the fun of it, for themselves. The obvious drawback here is that the quality of games that come from Russian is in general worse than abroad – the games suffer from bugs, strange design decisions, often hard and requiring skill to beat the game and patience to look through the flaws to see a gem. This transitional stage, when the market is beginning to get investments, but still hasn’t formed strict rules is the most fertile soil for new ideas and unusual games, the fresh blood, that the more hardcore part of gamers has been screaming for. Hopefully, this soil will become the foundation of the gaming Renaissance, that Nikolay and I have been talking in our RockPaperShotgun interview.
The Roundup – 29th September
So it has been quite a while since I last had a roundup of my work here, I think it is about time I did another one, don’t you think?
Firstly my stuff from Resolution, I just want to thank Lewis and Fraser first off for letting me unleash hell with these two pieces (hell, fortunately, was not unleashed). Firstly was my roundup of the Experimental Gameplay Project’s ‘Bare Minimum’ theme and secondly I went off and interviewed Kyle Gray where we talked about Henry Hatsworth and the EGP.
Over on The Reticule I gave some impressions on the FIFA 10 demo then proceeded to take an angry swipe at Games for Windows Live which is one of the most infuriating pieces of software I have ever had to deal with.
In order to calm myself down I talked about the Tiger Woods Online closed beta which has unfortauntely recently come to a close. I am looking forward to the open beta! Bringing us right up to date is my review of EA’s Need for Speed: Shift
This will be back when I feel like I have a decent number of things to share with the world.
