Results of 2017: Mikhail Kuzmin from HeroCraft about the main thing for the year
Head of HeroCraft Business Development Department Mikhail Kuzmin told App2Top.ru what his company has achieved in recent months and what milestones took place this year for the podcast “How games are made”.
Mikhail KuzminHow was 2017 for you?
If you look back, it’s great. I worked a lot, played a lot, spent a lot of time with my family.
Our joint podcast with Sergey Galenkin “How Games are Made” marked two important dates at once:
- we have been on the air for more than 5 years;
- the number of issues has exceeded 200.
We really like the current format of the podcast, the way it has become.
How was the year for the company?
It’s been a great year.
HeroCraft managed to increase revenue more than twice compared to last year. The dynamics at the end of the year are even better. This happened thanks to the launch and development of several key products of the company.
The most remarkable thing is that we understand why this happened, what needs to be done next. A very pleasant feeling!
There are also a lot of new people in the team. We don’t mind that there are even more of them.
Yes, our Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf game, which was released on Steam this year, received a well-deserved award in the Best Desktop Game nomination at DevGAMM Minsk 2017.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf Award for Best Desktop GameWhat event of 2017 do you consider the most important for the industry?
What I like most about the gaming industry is that important events are constantly happening in it, which almost immediately affect the market.
First of all, I’m talking about changes on platforms.
For Steam this year, an important event was the cancellation of Steam Greenlight and the transition to Steam Direct.
For iOS – the release of the 11th version of the operating system and the change of the promotion approach to recommendation.
Another major event, of course, was the appearance of the new Nintendo Switch console platform, which greatly changed the scenarios of portable gaming.
What trends of the outgoing year would you note?
I consider the rise of the battle royale genre to be an important trend, which managed to displace other genres that seemed to be firmly entrenched in the market. First on PC and consoles, and now on mobile platforms. I am sure that the surge in popularity of the genre has determined the development of multiplayer games for several years to come. At least MOBA will stop doing everything – it’s already good.
The success of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS has sparked unprecedented interest in the battle royale genre
The second trend is VR and AR.
The revolution still hasn’t happened, but in a year there have been a lot of games that can already be played. And there will be even more.
I am also watching with interest the changing approach to traditional marketing among small development teams and their publishers. You can experiment a lot in this field. We talk about it all the time in the podcast. There will be a lot of interesting things in this direction in the coming years.
Name the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most.
Definitely, the game of the year for me is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. This is the only game that gave me a new gaming experience.
