2020 results: Nikita Zatsepin from Unity on the main thing for the year

Nikita Zatsepin, the company's Business Development Manager, told about what Unity has managed to do this year.

How was 2020 for the company?

It was a great year for Unity, a record in the company's history. This is taking into account the fact that since March we have been seeing each other almost exclusively on computer screens. In addition, the company went public in September: now members of our huge developer community can also become our shareholders and monitor the decisions made. This is certainly a great honor and responsibility at the same time.

This year has clearly demonstrated how fragile our world is, how important it is to help, give, and share with others. In October, we held the first Unity for Humanity Summit, which aims to support and publicize projects that focus on solving social problems using 3D visualization tools (such as Unity, for example).

Many people have lost their jobs this year and started thinking about changing careers. We met them halfway, made Unity training as accessible as possible, thus creating economic opportunities for an increasing number of content authors. Since the middle of this year, all educational materials on Unity are absolutely free.

What new trends in your niche do you consider worth paying attention to?

The year 2020 was exceptional for many reasons. We have all read a lot of news about antitrust proceedings and associations of application developers trying to change the status quo. At the same time, developers continue to face the problem of finding their games in crowded app stores, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the user to find the content they are interested in. This leads to the development and spread of new app stores, which are increasingly becoming involved in the main pages of news resources.

More than 5 mobile app stores have opened this year. The verified regional focus and the experience of local companies in distributing content to their own impressive user base allows them to compete with mastodons in local markets. Of course, this is a long-term game, but I'm counting on a lot of high-profile stories in 2021. The growing fragmentation of the market, as a result, increases the developer's costs of entering and operating in these markets.

Against this background, we see a growing demand for products like the Unity Distribution Portal (a solution from Unity that allows you to release and update the game through one admin panel to several Android stores at once). We officially launched the solution in September. Now it is used by more than 1000 games from 700+ studios. We expect that as a result, in 2021 it will enter the top mobile distribution services.

What new market trends would you note in general?

The gaming industry continues to grow year after year. And 2020 was exceptional in this regard for well-known reasons.

In addition to the regular growth of the mobile segment, this year there was also a significant increase in sales on both PCs and consoles. This is logical: We all stay at home.

It is also logical that gaming sessions have become longer and more frequent. Against the background of an increase in user activity throughout the week, the weekend peaks have become somewhat smaller.

A larger number of players and longer frequency sessions have led to a record increase in costs for both the games themselves and in-game purchases.

However, with the completion of the quarantine, the picture, of course, will return to normal.

Yes, thanks to the coronavirus situation, games are firmly entrenched in the mainstream entertainment industry.

I will also highlight three points.

1) Mixed reality. Now we are witnessing a fundamental shift in human life. Thanks to augmented reality, today we already interact with digital objects as an integral part of our physical world. We are increasingly using remotely executable applications in our living rooms, kitchens, at our desks, walking down the street.

2) Surgery. In recent years, I have seen that it is the operation that is becoming a key factor in the long-term success of the game. But on the development side, this leads to increasing costs for the production of content and for personnel, because it should be produced quickly: the user does not like to wait. As a result, there is a growing demand for services that allow you to shift some of the headaches associated with surgery to a third party.

3) Fatigue from royal battles. There has been a transition from the pervasive battle royale genre to something new. Millions are playing Among Us (the digital version of Mafia) and Fall Guys today. I wouldn't be surprised if the next big hit would be some kind of "Crocodile". There is a feeling that it is necessary to look for new catchy mechanics in Jackbox games. The main thing is that the gameplay should be funny to watch from the outside, because without streamers today, no truly serious hit is possible.

This year will also be remembered for the arrival of a new generation of consoles.

What else will the company rely on for its development in 2021?

In all our products, we adhere to a very simple idea: users first. Of course, this will be true in 2021.

We see that today it is possible to do things that were previously implemented exclusively with the help of astronomical budgets and huge teams, and with the help of just one developer. This includes tools related to machine learning and neural networks. Next year we will continue to develop this area.

Also in 2021, we will continue to work hard to ensure that more and more of our developers become successful.

Which third-party game releases are you interested in this year? Which ones did you pay attention to as a gamer?

I'm happy to play Among Us with my friends, and I've heard a lot of great reviews about Fall Guys.

In addition, I was happy to go through Last Of Us: Part 2, spent a lot of evenings at Crusaders Kings 3 from Paradox.

Of the big releases, I can't help but mention Baldur's Gate 3 from colleagues from Larian, and, of course, Animal Crossing from Nintendo, which came out at the perfect time for such a release.

On the phone, I spent the most time in Bullet Echo from ZeptoLab, I ran heartily into Genshin Impact, a project of incredible size, of course. It's doubly nice that this box office giant is made on Unity.