2016 results: Sergey Babaev from Nekki on the convergence of the industry and the absence of big trends

Nekki Vice President of Strategy and Member Sergey Babaev told App2Top about the main events and trends of the outgoing year from his point of view.

Year for the company

This year has been equally successful for us. The second part of Shadow Fight 2 showed good revenue peaks and jumps on new updates and on major features, which were supported by the stores, in particular, Google Play. In addition, we have finished the second part of our Vector runner, and launched it in the free and page versions, collecting the cream from the feature of the paid version on the App Store.

It is interesting to see a very fresh project – football manager 11×11, which we have just opened to the world. This is a new experience for us – working with traffic, checking payback. Now the flight is normal, we are gradually increasing the volume and making a number of very large updates for the game itself. I hope 11×11 will become our full-fledged “marketing hit”.

But the most important thing, of course, is how Shadow Fight 3 is progressing. The early plans (to release in December-January) still shifted, but only because of the conscious expansion of the content plan. We understand that we are no longer just making an abstractly good game, but some kind of expected blockbuster. Therefore, we cannot waste money: we charge a ton of content for the release, a significant part of the functionality, and so on.

Event of the year in the world

I didn’t follow the details very closely, but at the end of the year, first of all, I remember the next problems of the long-suffering Crytek company, which again owes someone, again delayed something, again enters into a kind of strategic partnership that is designed to help her. In addition, interesting events unfolded with the slow but sure sale of Kabam. Despite the rumors about an impressive “from $800 million” deal, I’m afraid this whole process is not launched from a good life.

Trend of the year

If we talk about business trends, then, unfortunately, I don’t see any trends. You can shout that Pokémon Go has shown an AR trend, something there is a VR trend, but the truth is that there is no universal trend for this year either. We are a little bit kind so zazhralis on trends of the scale of entire markets and platforms – such as the appearance of games in social networks, the emergence of new mobile devices and the entry of stores to a new level, so small changes “in force” are not so noticeable to us, full–fledged trends that should be followed headlong, we do not observe.

Facebook’s initiatives look promising so far – the Instants Games platform with HTML5 projects (again he has a distinct chance) and Gameroom, which, in theory, can attract new developers for the platform if there is a clear transparent history of audience acquisition.

If we are talking about some non-verbal trends, then, definitely, many steps have been taken to bring the industry closer from each of its conscious participants. There are enough examples of this: special non-mass field events for the exchange of experience, and much more informative materials on industry resources, and just the willingness of everyone to enter into a personal dialogue. Well, it’s a sin not to remember the Expert Council (ECII) for the company, within the framework of which representatives of top CIS companies agreed to form a consolidated position. In general, we are moving towards a real industry: civilized, understanding that there is no objective reason for enmity within, there are only goals for world success.

Game of the Year

Depending on the emphasis for me, this is either Battlefield 1 (a full-fledged expensive blockbuster with a wonderful picture of the war), or Final Fantasy XV (an incredible adventure and a completely new experience).