Results of 2019: Vasily Sabirov from devtodev about the main thing for the year

We continue to summarize the results of 2019 together with the heads of gaming companies and market experts. Next up is an interview with Vasily Sabirov, a leading analyst and co-founder of the devtodev analytical service. He spoke about the company’s achievements in the outgoing year and shared plans for 2020.

How was 2019 for the company?

In 2019, we continued to develop our four products: the devtodev analytical system, an educational platform edu.devtodev.com , analytical consulting and outsourcing of technical support in games.

• As for the analytical service, we expanded our geography, conquered new markets and strengthened our position in the Russian-speaking game development: the number of customers more than doubled in 2019.
• All year we have been working on improving the system, listening to customer feedback, finalizing features and integrations. In fact, we have written a new system both in terms of back-end and front-end, and the logic of the service itself. The new version turned out to be much more “gaming”, and now we have super-flexible segments, a very deep analysis of the structure of the game and its economy, and pumped A/B tests are on the way.
• We continued to supplement our functionality: now users of the devtodev analytical platform have access to integrations with five advertising trackers: AppsFlyer, Adjust, Tune, Branch, Kochava, and since August of this year, thanks to a partnership with DataMagic, devtodev PRO-plan customers can compare data from their application stores with data from 10 of their competitors.
• Also over the past year, we have launched many new courses within the framework of the devtodev educational platform, starting with “Mathematics in Game Design” and ending with “Psychology in Game Development”. And in December, an online course on LiveOps in games was launched. It seems that before this course there was nothing like this in Russian yet! And how many cool projects are on the way, you would know!
• In the second half of 2018, we opened the Perm office of devtodev, which started with only two employees. Now there are as many as 11 of us in Perm, we have moved to a cool new office and are going to grow further. Our Perm office is literally the analytical hub of devtodev.
• The direction of outsourcing technical support also continues to grow and develop: we are already 60 people, and we have gone beyond a single location and time zone. The list of services has been expanded with support consulting and review processing in stores, and now not only gaming companies are among the clients.

To sum up: devtodev has been actively and comprehensively developing throughout 2019 and will continue to do so next year.

What events in the regional and global gaming industry do you consider central in the past year?
Google Stadia announcement.

Games are starting to move to the clouds. It’s not entirely clear what will come of this, but if it makes games a more accessible way of entertainment, we can say that it’s not for nothing.

Apple Arcade. In fact, the transition to the subscription model in relation to games is a shift in consciousness, and it is much deeper than it seems. We sort of reinforce the fact that a particular game is a temporary way of spending leisure time, and in just a month the following will replace this game. In the world of TV series, Neftlix wins, and in the world of games, Apple Arcade and the subscription model in general are likely to begin their growth. By the way, we at devtodev are keeping up with the trends and plan to analyze subscriptions in 2020.

What are the main trends in the market today?Hyper-casual games are no longer considered non-games.

Yes, they have too small ARPDAU and a short lifetime, but due to the fact that they organize the most important process of playing in a completely different way, they gain their audience and capture the world.

Accordingly, advertising monetization. A few years ago, its share in the total mass was lost among the share of in-app purchases. Now more and more games use advertising monetization. Even from the point of view of analytics, there is a need to learn how to calculate and predict Ad LTV and “surround” advertising monetization with a thick layer of relevant metrics. In 2020, the devtodev system will expand its functionality in connection with market demands.

Indie games. In general, this trend is talked about almost every year, but specifically in 2019, with the launch of Apple Arcade, we again drew attention to small developers who make interesting and unusual games. What are Bleak Sword, Dear Reader or WhatTheGolf worth?

Which third-party game releases this year, in your opinion, were the most important? Which games did you spend the most time on in 2019 as a gamer?

I will note four games:

WhatTheGolf? A postmodern miracle in which everything starts with the fact that you drive the ball into the hole with a club, then you drive the club into the hole with a ball, and after a few levels you already disperse inflatable cows with inflatable sheep and begin to doubt whether it is still golf.

Death Stranding. Kojima managed to find some interesting meditative state that the player enters, delivering loads from place to place. And also, what is important for the player, there is a sense of need in this world: there are no people around, but you know that they are nearby, that they will help you, that they need you.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. And again I want to talk about a game in which the gameplay is arranged in a non-standard way. A game that tells you from the very first chords: “Good evening, you’re going to die now,” and you throw the gamepad into the wall after a few minutes. Then you start to understand and enjoy this challenge. The game is not one of those that relaxes, but definitely one of those that you can enjoy (though not for everyone).

Auto Chess. And here I mean not only Dota, but also, for example, Hearthstone (Battlegrounds mode). I am glad that not all mechanics are still open, and every year something fundamentally new appears, albeit as a development of one of the old ideas. Previously it was MOBA, then “battle royale”, now it’s Auto Chess. Like a guinea pig (which has nothing to do with the sea or pigs), Dota Auto Chess is neither Dota nor chess, but it’s a pleasure to play this mode and watch its streams.