"We built the company without external investments": an interview with Crazy Panda. It's turning 10 years old

At the end of July, the Moscow-based game developer and publisher Crazy Panda celebrates its 10th anniversary. We discussed the company’s history with its founders, Bogdan Kuznetsov and Oleg Pronin.

About the Company's History

App2Top.ru: Tell us a little about yourselves.

Bogdan Kuznetsov

Bogdan: My name is Bogdan Kuznetsov. Oleg Pronin is answering questions with me. We are the founders of Crazy Panda.

I handle all business matters, and Oleg is responsible for technology. Together, we make the final strategic decisions.

That’s now, but how did you get into the industry?

Bogdan: My first encounter with the industry was at Cybico. It was a handheld game console where the task was to release one game per day.

After that, I worked on online games for various brands, and then I joined "Rambler Games" where I met Oleg.

Oleg Pronin

Oleg: My story is simpler. I started work at Rambler, and by a happy coincidence, ended up on the "mini-games" project, where I met Bogdan.

So, before Crazy Panda, you worked together on mini-games. Why did you decide it was time to create your own business?

Bogdan: A new social market was opening up, and the entry barrier was minimal—many were tinkering with something on the side for fun and extra income. We had a good background and thought it was worth trying.

Is there any anecdote or nice story about how you decided to create an independent company?

Oleg: No anecdotes or stories. We started the company without external investments, learned from our own mistakes, changed courses, celebrated successes, and grew from failures.

Bogdan: The company was born from our passion for games and the willingness to take risks. We decided to do what we love despite the uncertainty and instability of the industry.

By the way, why did you name the company Crazy Panda? You always have a panda with a big stick of dynamite in your logo.

Bogdan: Firstly, pandas are cute and evoke only positive emotions. Secondly, pandas are unique and rare. We like to believe that our people are just as exceptional. Crazy – because there has always been and still is a bit of madness in us, and we are crazy about games!

Oleg: As for the dynamite, it initially emphasized the uncertainty of our venture and the crazy component. After our first success, we realized that the dynamite symbolizes our ability to "ignite".

You started with social platforms. What did the market look like back then?

Bogdan: Look, in May 2007, Facebook launched a platform that allowed third-party developers to release games on it. Zynga was among the first to explore this market.

The first simple games on "VKontakte" appeared by mid-2008. The gaming platform on "Odnoklassniki" came in 2010. By that time, Zynga was already reporting $300 million in annual earnings from Farmville alone.

For most domestic developers, two points were obvious at the time:

First, a new interesting market quickly emerged in the West;
Second, it was also forming in the CIS but lagged behind the Western market by a couple of years.

Inventing the wheel made no sense at the time, so many companies worked on a simple strategy: take what was successful in the West and do the same in Russia.

Initially, this model worked very well.

But you didn’t start with farms, which were very "hyped," but with poker, launching World Poker Club.

Bogdan: Yes. If poker was one of the most profitable niches in the West at the time, it was not yet as popular in the CIS. So, for us, it was an obvious choice, albeit not without risks.

World Poker Club on VKontakte in the early 2010s

Am I right in understanding that this was an extremely successful project at the start since by 2013 the team had grown to 80 people?

Bogdan: World Poker Club was the eighth poker game on VKontakte, and within a few months, the project ranked high on Odnoklassniki and Moy Mir. VKontakte wasn’t so easily conquered; it took a little more time because there was already a strong player there.

What came after the success of World Poker Club? Did you decide to take on more classic social platform games like farms?

Bogdan: Actually, we started working on our first farm, "Zaporozhye", even before the release of World Poker Club because it was the next big and interesting niche. By the time Zaporozhye was released, "Wonders City" was already in production. We had lots of ideas supported by the successes of our first projects, and we wanted to try different genres—farms, city-builders, mid-core strategies.

For the first couple of years, you developed games for social platforms. When did you decide it was time to move to mobile?

Oleg: We decided immediately when mobile appeared. But the first project was released later, when both World Poker Club and Zaporozhye were successful and had a loyal community.

The first "mobile" idea was to make a cross-platform game. We planned to prepare a functional core for the future immediately, so as not to recreate all the basic features (authorization, billing, social interaction, etc.) from scratch in each project. Thus, in 2013, World Poker Club was released on iOS and Android.

Bogdan: However, our mobile debut was not it. Our first mobile game is now known as Evil Defenders, but in fact, the first version of this project was a paid game Little Bit Evil. We took our favorite tower defense genre and "flipped" it, allowing players to take the side of evil.

After Evil Defenders, we saw new prospects for ourselves in the mid-core mobile direction and began developing two projects simultaneously, which were also later released globally—Pirate Tales and Stellar Age.

Evil Defenders

What was it about Evil Defenders that made you realize, "here it is, a new perspective"?

Bogdan: The release of Evil Defenders was one of the warmest—most heartfelt: we received a huge amount of positive feedback from all over the world, played the game for hours, and debated the best way to play it. We learned a lot from creating this project and realized we wanted to continue working in this direction.

On Working with Platforms

Despite the success in mobile today (according to AppMagic, the company's monthly revenue from iOS and Android is around $400-500 thousand), social platforms are still very relevant for you. Can you share how much percentage of all income comes from the web?

Bogdan: It’s true, web brings a significant percentage of total income, but I'm not ready to disclose how much. Now, the audience is actively moving to mobile platforms, so the ratio will definitely change.

Oleg: We will continue to support the projects launched on social networks, delighting players with updates. As for future titles, the plans are solely for mobile.

What about PC and consoles, where Evil Defenders was previously released?

Bogdan: Nintendo, like Steam, are separate markets requiring a unique approach.
For the Switch launch, we chose Evil Defenders because the game is beautiful and complete, and we wanted to feel out the platform, see how comfortable it is to work with. It was fascinating, but we decided not to dilute our expertise and focus on mobile.

On Poker and Social Casinos

Let's return to World Poker Club. For a long time, it was your main revenue locomotive. Yet until recently, you didn’t enter the social casino space. Why?

Oleg: Actually, we tried. We had several approaches to slots. The first time we developed them for social networks, and that was a while ago. The last time, we decided to "play big" a couple of years ago. We gathered a large international team, invited renowned producers from Tel Aviv, spent about $2.5 million on development, and created a very beautiful and promising game by metrics. It was released in 2019 and is currently available in stores as Crazy Crazy Scatters.

Crazy Crazy Scatters

Bogdan: During the development of this project, we realized that the slots market is so different from the rest of game development that you need to build a separate company for this!

Plus, it’s a pretty challenging niche right now. It's saturated with offers. Even if you make a solid product, bringing it to the big leagues is very difficult.

We are currently open to collaboration in this market; if someone is seriously interested in such a partnership, you know who to contact!

You just mentioned that the slots market is very different from the entire gaming market as a whole. In what way exactly? Why, in your words, do you need to make a separate company to develop them?

Bogdan: The first challenge we faced was the lack of slot project experts in Russia. Top professionals can be found in Israel, the USA, and Eastern Europe, while experienced specialists (artists, developers, testers, etc.) are in Ukraine and Belarus. In the end, development becomes international by default. In Russia, you’d have to build the whole culture from scratch.

Slots are a conveyor belt, a factory for producing and tuning a mass of content. To create a competitive app, you need multiple teams that will continuously release new machines.

Next, you must ensure sufficient traffic to test the stream of releases and only keep the best content.

In total, slots are a big separate business requiring serious effort and finances.

At the same time, poker is not an easy genre (especially in terms of promotion). But in this niche, you are very successful. Can you share a bit about its specifics?

Bogdan: Casual poker is different from traditional mobile games and gambling, making it a niche product. This combination adds extra complexities to promotion.

On one hand, poker is a game known to many offline, from friendly gatherings to broadcasts of major championships. The audience expects specific mechanics and comes for them. On the other hand, this very recognizability makes all pokers similar from the user’s perspective. The success of the app depends on fine-tuning monetization and the player’s emotional experience.

Talking about purchases and investments, it can be normal for poker to break even only after a year. In the next two years, there might be an additional 100% ROI on top. It sounds promising, but these are "long-term funds," and the return model might change several times over such a period.

What do you think about the game market in the social casino niche today?

Bogdan: The peculiarity of the market is that it’s already divided among major players. Entering as a newcomer is nearly impossible. Sometimes even major players’ new releases cannot withstand competition and fail to gain enough audience. Each app has loyal players, precisely those whose user experience aligns with expectations in the context of a specific game. It’s quite challenging to lure a "whale" away: they've already tied their winnings and emotions to their usual game. Of course, there is "wanderer audience," which can be bought, but it’s "wanderer" for a reason, and retaining it is often challenging and likely ineffective.

On Product Strategy and Mid-Core

We've talked a lot about poker, but also mentioned "Zaporozhye" and Evil Defenders. It seems like every new Crazy Panda project is significantly different from the previous one. Why is that?

Bogdan: That was never a set goal. For example, when we moved from poker to making "Zaporozhye," it was important for us to try out a new genre, to expand the audience and our horizon of possibilities.

We succeeded, but mobile changed our plans; we saw the opportunity to create games we love on a new promising platform.

After the success of Evil Defenders, a third direction emerged—mid-core strategies. There are many more possible variations in mechanics, settings, and plots here than in the first two genres. We are currently searching for a successful combination.

You say you are looking for new combinations. What, in your opinion, is the feature of creating mid-core games?

Bogdan: The mid-core market is a conglomeration of numerous genres; it's always in motion. Moreover, it’s a market with a large dispersion: the best titles earn colossal money, but there are very few of them. A significant factor here is that you cannot quickly and cheaply create a mid-core project, say, with a week's work by a team of five.

In light of Stellar Age, your strategic blockbuster, what do you think about the 4X strategy genre?

Bogdan: The 4X strategy genre is the jewel of mid-core. Although not the most massive, it is nonetheless one of the most profitable in terms of income from each player. Its gradual evolution leads to increasingly complex gameplay, adding mechanics, content demands, visuals, and, of course, the development team.

Stellar Age

Speaking of the entry threshold, can we say that the mid-core has a lower entry threshold than slots and poker?

Bogdan: It’s hard to answer unequivocally. On the one hand, social casinos require a lot of special knowledge, the market is stable, and it’s hard for a newcomer to reach the top. Additionally, you need to clearly understand your pipeline, development features, the importance of art, and more.

Mid-core is more diverse; you can surprise the player with a combination of genres, add a large feature that complements the core mechanics, and build your community by new rules.

On the other hand, as I noted earlier, mid-core is demanding of the team and timing. Here, finding an idea, balancing, and creating mechanics and a backlog of updates take much more time, and there is no silver bullet.

For creating games in each genre, a specific team is suitable, so it’s important to base your approach on your capabilities and goals.

About the Company Now

We’ve talked about the history and products of the company, but haven’t addressed this point: how does Crazy Panda work today?

Oleg: There are several teams in the company, each working on one project.

Some functions and processes are cross-project, such as analytics, marketing, infrastructure development, HR, finance, etc.

Such a structure is necessary to maintain the development teams’ independence and freedom in decision-making while allowing cross-project teams to transfer expertise from one game to another and connect with more people in the event of major tasks.

The management of all projects and departments regularly meets to stay informed about the current state of affairs and make timely important decisions.

We strive to support a culture of knowledge exchange, so specialists from similar professions from different projects share expertise and at least recognize each other by face.

When it comes to AppMagic, is it an internal Crazy Panda project or a separate business of Maxim Samorukov, who is the company’s CPO?

Bogdan: AppMagic has always been and still is a personal business of Maxim. We only support him in this endeavor: such solutions make our work and the work of our colleagues more convenient.

The service’s history started with our constant need for a wealth of information about the gaming market: which genres earn how much, who has what market share, how much money is needed to enter a niche, etc.

Maxim devoted quite a lot of time to manually compiling data in Excel for accurate conclusions. Obviously, if there is such an unmet need, there is a demand for a solution to address it.

Decade Results

Let’s steer towards the results of 10 years of the company. How has the company changed over this time?

Bogdan: The most noticeable change is that the company has grown. Not only do we have several very different project directions, but a team of more than 200 professionals!

We’ve established processes that suit us and acquired plenty of convenient solutions that allow us to focus on the main thing—developing and operating games.

Given these changes, I’m glad we managed to maintain the open culture and spirit of a small company, where everyone plays games, not just those they make.

At the same time, you decided to change the corporate style. Why?

Oleg: When we started, the company name and logo weren’t as important. Now the company has changed, become more mature. It’s time to reflect these changes. The new logo is closer in spirit to what Crazy Panda is now.

Old and new Panda

We have already updated the logo on the website and are using the new corporate style at WN Summer, I hope we're recognized.

Thank you for the interview!

Also on this topic:

Got a news tip? Share it with us, write to press@app2top.ru