Mobio Talks: Interview with Nevosoft at White Nights 2016

Mobio Talks withinWhite Nights Moscow 2016, which took place on October 11-12, took several interviews with the conference speakers. We are starting to publish a series of these interviews. The first interlocutor of Anton Krokhmalyuk, Marketing Director at Mobio, was Pavel Ryakkonen, Executive Director of Nevosoft and organizer of White Nights.

Tell us about White Nights: what kind of conference is this, what successes have you had this year, how many people have registered, how long have you been doing?

This is our second time in Moscow. I don’t have exact statistics on how many people are here today, but we can definitely say that there are significantly more than a thousand. In this regard, we are very happy, people are coming, and we feel the value for ourselves from participating and from communicating with colleagues on the shop floor.

Are there any fundamental differences in the organization of the conference in St. Petersburg and in Moscow? You have historically organized a conference in St. Petersburg and gathered an incredible number of participants.

I would not say that there are any big features from the point of view of the organization. The main feature is a different venue. In Moscow, in terms of cooperation with the venue, it is much easier. The Congress Park is located in the very center of the city and is specially equipped for events. In St. Petersburg, we are holding a conference at the Baltic House. This is such a theatrical place, an old building, protected by UNESCO, which imposes certain restrictions. In this regard, it is more difficult, of course.

White Nights in St. Petersburg 2015

And why did Nevosoft decide to make its own conference at all? You develop games, and this is a completely different business.

If I remember correctly, we started media activity in 2012, and then the conference was mainly devoted to the mobile market. Now the conference is dedicated to the gaming business in general. At that time, we could not find a single conference with a focus on the mobile market not only in Russia, but in the world in general. We have identified this area for ourselves as one of the priorities for the development of the company, as well as for the purpose of pumping B2B relationships and the industry as a whole. At that time, we had been on the market for 10 years. We knew a lot of people, a lot of people knew us. And in this regard, it was not particularly difficult for us to simply invite our friends and colleagues to visit us, to St. Petersburg, for white nights. That’s how it all started. Now the conference is much bigger, now it takes place three times a year: in St. Petersburg, in Moscow, next winter it will be in Prague.

After such a large amount of time, can you tell what exactly Nevosoft received from the organization? Maybe some new doors have opened? It ‘s not a simple matter to organize a conference .

Yes, it really is not easy at all. It takes both time and effort, but in the end, when everything works out, it gives some support, including emotional support. The main profit is a much larger number of partners with whom we can interact and conduct business. Since the conference, we, as organizers, do it ourselves: we work with both sponsors and participants. There are contacts and outputs at almost all levels. On the other hand, it is still a commercial business project, it is quite successful, each conference brings tangible profits. I am convinced that if you make a commercial product, it should work for profit. If there is no profit, then there are some problems. But, in general, we are doing great so far.

When will the profit from White Nights outstrip the profit of Nevosoft, and you will start dealing only with conferences?

I’m afraid this will never happen. After all, games are a priority in any case, and the potential and current income from games are greater. Games are our everything .

We will be watched by a lot of developers who did not make it to the conference. Why should they come next time? Who will be interested in visiting White Nights, and what can you do here at all?

That’s just recently launched a newsletter on app2top.ru , also our resource dedicated to the gaming industry, according to the participants, and wrote why attend conferences at all, especially if there is some illusion that I already know everything? First of all, it’s not enough just to know something, you need to communicate with people, because in the process of communication there are moments that you haven’t thought about yet, but it would be worth it. There are possible partnerships that would not normally arise, it turns out to catch insiders that can be projected onto your company. I attend not only our conferences, but also others. Sometimes new ideas come, because there is a large concentration of thematically oriented people in one place. This certainly contributes to the generation of ideas and their transformation. Live communication and meetings have a certain effect. Another important point is that if there is something that the company is going to bring to the market, whether it’s a service provider or some kind of network, the conference is the best place to tell the whole community what you have, why you need to use it, and why it’s such a cool solution. When it is presented remotely, this effect is not always obtained. And here people can ask directly, get answers and clarifications. If we talk specifically about the launch of new games, developers come again, show their projects, potential buyers look at these projects, some other partners, other partnerships with other developers arise. The key point is communication, which leads to tangible and real results.

You mentioned that you go to conferences yourself. What foreign events can you recommend? What inspired you when you started making White Nights?

We started making White Nights to a significant extent following the example of Casual Connect. When we were still very young developers, it was the first major international conference that we went to. The guys made a really cool event, we watched them and studied. Now we are trying to do better than they have. I could also recommend Game Connection. They have some really useful activities for developers .

I would like to talk to you now as the executive director of Nevosoft. How did 2016 end for you, what would you like to celebrate? Successes or failures?

2016 is not over yet, but in general I would say that the year has passed smoothly. There are no big ups, and there are no failures. Several promising projects are under development. I would like everything to happen faster, but it turns out not only for us — everyone does everything a little longer than we would like. So, probably, these releases will be next year.

You said at the last conference that 90% of developers don’t earn. Could you answer the question why?

High competition. Even if we do not talk about the quality of the product, there are many good products that do not earn money, because they simply cannot break through in such a saturated, highly competitive market without serious support for advertising and product promotion budgets. Especially at current traffic prices. If you look at the number of developers actively working with mobile platforms, the statistics may be even more than 90%. Although, if you look just at business, not necessarily at IT, at least at startups, there are also more than 90% die in the first year after the start. So there’s nothing special here, just business.

And how do you still get into these 10%? You have been organizing a conference for many years, a huge number of speakers have passed through it, most of them have some success stories. Nevosoft, for sure, started from the bottom, with two or three people, and now they have grown to a large company that earns a lot of money. What do you want to mark as the main quality of this success? Taxes, investments, luck, team?

I would note three main points that apply to any business. Firstly, the right team that is able to produce a quality product; the right product – you need to do what meets the expectations of the market, well, and the right time to launch this product. When all three factors converge, success is obtained. When something is lame, then some problems begin. We started with 4 people who still work in the company. We were making the right product — simple games that will be distributed over the Internet in the future. For 2002, this idea was not particularly popular in Russia. When we told our friends that we were going to make games that we would distribute over the Internet, then if someone liked them, they would buy them, it did not look like something necessarily successful. Most often it was said that no one would buy games. It should be recalled that in Russia, in the environment in which we all lived at that time, there were a huge number of trays with CD-ROMs with free software for every taste. But it seemed to us that the direction was right. Well, and then everything worked out.

Is it possible to say that by analogy, developers now need to look at some new areas, for example, VR and AR, because there is not so much competition there yet?

You can watch, but carefully and cautiously, because some new technologies are emerging, but not all of them are becoming really popular among the target audience. First of all, you need to think not about the technology, not about the device, but about the target audience for which you are making a product. If you are making a product for a specific audience, knowing that they are using this device, everything is great. If the device looks cool, but there is simply no target audience that will play this product, there is no point in making such a game. The target audience will not use this content, but will do something for the long term ahead, they say, someday there will be players, and everything will be fine, for a novice startup it is a serious risk, because maybe it will not appear.

Each White Nights conference begins with an introductory report, where you show interesting figures, statistics on the past year. Can you from your presentation today, which will be posted on app2top.ru , highlight the main points that have personally impressed you, and do you think that they are the key ones this year?

Firstly, the trend that was noticeable before is the vastness of the Asia—Pacific region. It is growing, despite the fact that for European, American and Russian companies, China, as the leader of the Asia-Pacific region, is still a very specific market.

Another interesting feature I would call the volume of fake traffic. This is more than $4.5 billion in losses for non-existent traffic, bots, and so on. I even admit that these are somewhat optimistic views, because the problem of bots and unfair traffic is significant and not only for the gaming industry, but in general, for the advertising industry as a whole, and there is no complete understanding of how to deal with it.

The third one I would designate consolidation, a large number of mergers and acquisitions.

All developers see the number of users and the amount of money that can be earned in Asia. In your opinion, how much more accessible has this market become for Russian developers?

Come to the White Nights conference. We have representatives of Asian markets, Asian publishers, platforms, you can talk to them, and somewhere they can help if the project seemed interesting to them. There are such guys not only at White Nights, but at other conferences too. I wouldn’t say that the market has become much more accessible. As he was incomprehensible and mentally distant, let’s say, from the view of the European and American developer, so he remains so special. Its transparency has increased somewhat due to the fact that it is large, they are trying to learn more about it, to see what products show themselves well there.

Well, and the final question for you. You said that the next White Nights will be held in Prague. Why Prague, and what should the participants expect?

We had this idea for a long time — to make an event in Europe. Last year we did White Nights in Helsinki, this time we decided to do it in Prague, because Prague is a very attractive place for business: a large number of Czech developers, Slovakia, Poland are nearby. In principle, there will be a lot of developers from Eastern Europe, whom you will not often meet at conferences, both in Russia and in Western European, especially in American ones. There will be new people there with whom you can talk, discuss something, find a partnership. In this sense, the location of Prague is very interesting. Prague itself is a very attractive and beautiful city. Business is business, but the trip should also bring some kind of aesthetic pleasure. I invite developers, publishers, service providers, come to Prague for our White Nights conference. It will be in early February. See specific dates on app2top.ru , we will write everything in the near future. Come, it will be cool!

This interview, as well as all subsequent ones, will be available on the Mobio Talks YouTube channel. Stay tuned for new publications.