Interview with Unity's Russian office

At the end of April, the Unity office opened in Russia. In this regard, we contacted Roman Menyakin, Director of Business Development, and asked about what we can expect from Unity in connection with its arrival in Russia.

Roman Menyakin

Hello, Roman! Congratulations on your appointment! 

Thanks!

I immediately have this question: what will you do as a development director in Russia?

To continue to develop the Russian direction, to work with key clients in Russia, to develop new verticals, because Unity is not only a tool for game developers. There are other verticals where we are not so well known yet. 

For example?

Work with education.

What do you mean?

There are two aspects here. 

Firstly, it is important for us that our clients have staff ready to work on our platform. 

Secondly, we are not only interested in the gaming industry. We are interested in having our tools used in architecture and cinema. 

And my goal is to build relationships with key players in each industry. Plus, of course, the development of an affiliate network, working with clients. There are many tasks, they are interesting.

You said "key companies." Who exactly does Unity perceive as key players in Russia today?

These are the biggest players, the biggest studios.

And specifically?

I would not like to name the companies.

OK. Let's move on. When you talked about education, did you mean the opening of Unity courses?

By education, in general, we mean a lot. This is both an ecosystem (search and work with commercial educational institutions, technical and architectural universities that can use our solutions for their own purposes), and training in Unity products themselves.

Are there many educational institutions today that prepare their products based on your solutions, or train the company's packages?

We have partners such as, for example, Scream School and Realtime School. Our achievements are also used in Russian universities. However, these solutions are currently used only within individual faculties for certain educational purposes.

How many are there?

There are not many of them, but, again, one of my tasks is to show those opportunities, including to universities that they are not using now, although there are universities in a number of European countries where our solutions are successfully used. 

You said about cinema and production. How closely is the Unity team currently engaged in cinema?

We originally grew out of games, so not all of our potential customers look at us from this angle. But now Unity is actively expanding its target audience. 

I used to work at Adobe, where I was engaged, among other things, in postproduction and broadcasting. And I know firsthand that Unity has been used in a number of large projects.

Did you do the effects?

No.

Previously, when you had a huge scene that was all shot on a chromo, the result could only be seen after a while at the post-production stage. Currently, a number of major projects use Unity to visualize scenes right on the set. In other words, the director can immediately see the result as close as possible to the final version.

Let's go back to the gaming industry. Let's imagine that I am a Russian game developer who decided to work on Unity's toolkit. How will the appearance of the Russian office affect me?

Opening an office in a particular country implies a focus on the market, on local users. We want to offer more ways to purchase Unity, we want to make it easier to access information. 

At the moment, we are working on the full localization of the website, in parallel, the translation of all technical documentation is underway, we plan to participate in all local industrial events and create our own local events.

In particular, I invite everyone to DevGAMM and White Nights, where we will be present. We will be running a separate stream on DevGAMM all day, our CEO is coming. All these events were made by the efforts of our Russian office. 

Listen, how many people work in the Russian office?

The Russian office is me and Natalia Sviridova, Marketing Director. 

Are you going to increase it? How soon will Russian-language technical support be available, for example?

I can't make promises right now. We will develop the office according to market demands.

I see, thanks for the interview!