Results of 2018: Maxim Donskikh from Game Insight about the main thing for the year

Maxim Donskikh , President of Game Insight , said App2Top.ru how the outgoing year has passed for his company.

Maxim Donskikh

How was the year for your company?

Year as a year. Good. We worked, had fun, launched new projects and developed already launched ones.

In general, when games are made for several years, and there may be as many more in softlonches of different scales, it is not always easy to name the achievements of a particular year. For example, we have launched a great new citibuilder Trade Island: Big City Tribez. This is a continuation of more than six years (if we count the previous casual expertise of the team, then more than a decade) of the development of our The Tribez line.

Trade Island: Big City Tribez

A few more games were brought to the state of softlonch, in some cases — to open beta. Something of this should definitely shoot in 2019.

They continued to develop Guns of Boom with all their might. This year was dedicated to an ambitious goal, which we formulated for ourselves as follows: “The game should become a part of life for players.” The team has learned super-dynamic operation, rolling out something new several times a week. We haven’t seen such intensity since the heyday of social games.

Our efforts in the field of esports are aimed at the same goal. We finished the first season with the finals in Los Angeles in a great way and together with ESL we are preparing for the start of the second season, even more ambitious. Suffice it to say that for the first time in history, a mobile game will be on the main stage of several iconic esports events that gather entire stadiums, such as Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice.

What event of 2018 do you consider the most important for the industry?

The events that most affect our industry are usually not written about in newspapers. They occur in the depths of the algorithms of advertising platforms and app stores.

What trends of the outgoing year would you note?

I can’t say that these are the trends of the current year, but they are clearly becoming more noticeable.

Firstly, the voice of the players became very loud. It is increasingly difficult to ignore it, even for such large publishers as EA. Whether it’s dissatisfaction with the loot boxes or the change in TTK (time to kill) in the last “Battle”, the active community is increasingly able to push its dissenting opinion. Even on mobile platforms, where the audience is much more casual and less organized, this must be taken into account. And that’s great! The slogan of Game Insight has always been — We are all about players.

Secondly, I will note the movement of large AAA games from the classic retail model “sold and forgot, you’re doing the next part” towards the model of operating games as a service. And it seems that as soon as the hybrid business model settles down, there will be no need for new Call of Duty and Battlefield every year. As a player, it will be a great relief for me.

What are the third-party projects of this year that you liked the most?

The most important game of the year for me is Brawl Stars. It’s like Red Dead Redemption 2, but even more important, because it not only gives a slice of the most relevant game design, but also shows what it will be like in the future. Having abandoned their crown chests with timers, Supercell again reinvented the ways of serving content to the player.

I can also single out Into the Breach for a fresh look at tactical games, but these are probably personal cognitive distortions.