Results of 2019: Andrey Mikhlin from Gismart 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 Andrey Mikhlin, the head of the game dev direction at Gismart.

How was 2019 for the company?

Since this year, we have been developing not only entertaining mobile applications, but also developing hyper-casual games, as well as publishing third-party products.

Gismart as a company has grown significantly in 2019. We have almost doubled our staff. This year, about 130 specialists have joined us, of which about 80 are in the new game dev direction. The total number of employees approached the 300 mark. For six months of work, we have managed to test more than 300 prototypes of games, make about 20 soft-launches and release five games in a global release. The total number of downloads of all our products has exceeded half a billion installations.

Our first gaming hits — Cool Goal!, Domino Smash!, Happy Hockey!, Oil Tycoon and Cleon – Warrior Fall — rose to the top of the list of free games, including in the USA and China.

We have expanded our geography: an office in Beijing has been added to the offices in Minsk and London, and a game dev office in Kiev will open in January. We have already started recruiting and interviewing Unity developers, 2D and 3D artists, producers and QA specialists.

We actively participated in the main game dev events in the world: GDC, Casual Connect, White Nights, DevGAMM and Games Gathering. In addition, we independently held several mini-conferences on game development and publishing, and also organized our first major external hackathon Gismart Summer Hack, which gathered more than 150 participants and 30 projects.

We have ambitious plans for the upcoming 2020. In the new year, we will continue to engage in hyper-casual games and entertainment applications, as well as begin the development of several casual products.

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

To me, as a developer of games for mobile platforms, the most important events seem to be the announcement and launch of Apple Arcade and Google Stadia. This is something that can significantly change the gaming industry as a whole. Apple Arcade completely rethinks the user’s interaction with games and makes it possible to enjoy the gameplay without wasting extra time and resources. As for Google Stadia, this service changes the approach to hardware, saving players from having to constantly upgrade their devices.

Of the significant events for the industry , I will also note:

• announcement of new consoles from PlayStation and Microsoft;
• reduction of the actual lifetime of console generations;
• Nintendo Switch Update;
• the release of the Resident Evil 2 remake;
• The 20th anniversary of the cult game Heroes of Might and Magic III.

The niche of hyper-casuals in which Gismart operates has also undergone changes and reached a new level. More recently, we have watched the opening of this direction by a few visionaries and indie developers. Then large companies (Ketchapp, Voodoo) came into the development of hyper-casual games, which took it to a new level and brought their experience into building effective processes. Now the bulk of professional players (both publishers and developers) have entered the market, and the niche has finally formed.

In the conditions of increased competition, indies no longer have the opportunity to survive on their own, they cooperate with major publishers to bring games to the tops. Although hyper-casuals cover the widest possible audience of users, including those who do not consider themselves gamers, the games themselves still become more difficult. Meta appears in them, more attention is paid to the long-term retention of users. I think this trend will continue next year.

What are the main trends in the market today?

For me, the most important trend is the revenue growth of the mobile games market both in Asia, especially China, and in the USA and Europe. We pay great attention to the Chinese market and have achieved significant results. Now we are helping third-party projects to enter new promising markets in Asia, taking into account our expertise through the publishing program.

Contrary to the forecasts of skeptics, the hyper-casual games market is showing growth. Developers continue to work on a variety of gameplay, on the “accessibility” of the gameplay for users, which attracts an even wider audience.

Which third-party game releases turned out to be the most important this year? Plus, which games did you spend the most time on in 2019 as a gamer?

I personally spent the most time for Clash Royal. The developers of this game have a lot to learn for many years. From the favorite, I will also note RDR2 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.