The results of 2020: Vladimir Obruchev from Bombora about the main thing for the year
What books about game development will appear next year in Russian, — said Vladimir Obruchev, head of the direction at the Bombora publishing house.
How was 2020 for the company?
2020 was a difficult year for the entire book publishing industry, not only for our company. The closure of offline stores in the spring led to the fact that the volume of the book market decreased by about 40%, and even the active growth of online book sales did not compensate for the drop in store sales. By the end of the year, the situation had become noticeably better, but the Bombora publishing house as a whole has not yet returned to last year's sales level.
By and large, the year turned out to be quite good for the gaming industry (apparently, the theme of the published books affected). We have released many interesting books and participated in many great endeavors.
On the one hand, our young readers still love to read books about the adventures of heroes in Minecraft. We still publish a lot of books in this segment, and they enjoy constant, steady success. This is not only because of children's interest in the game itself, but also because parents use them to keep children interested in reading.
We also continued to publish books about the history of games. We're out: "Spent" about the history of GTA development, "Silent Hill. Towards the horror. Games and the theory of fear" is about not only and not so much Silent Hill itself, but about the horror genre itself using the example of the game. Hey came out again! Listen! about the history of the games of the 1970s and 90s.
One of the most important results of the year for us was the launch of a series of books about game development written by Russian-speaking authors (and it doesn't matter that such authors have to be collected literally from all over the world). We have published the books "The game as a business. From Dreams to release" by Alexey Savchenko and "The Numbers Game. How analytics allows video games to live better" by Vasily Sabirov. The developers took them very well. This pleased us. In addition, we managed to sell the rights to publish both books in English. In particular, Vasily's volume will be published in 2021 by CRC Press.
Bombora was very pleased to support the second Unreal Engine game developer contest held by Epic Games and Disgusting Men, sponsoring the nomination "For the best Story".
Well, separately, it is impossible not to mention a very complex project – an artbook for the 10th anniversary of the game World of Tanks, published jointly with Wargaming. It turned out very beautifully.
What new trends in your niche do you consider worth paying attention to?
Since Bombora is engaged in publishing books, it is necessary to talk about book publishing.
The trends are generally the same as everyone else's – a shift in Internet consumption, the growth of the electronic and audiobook segment (although in 2020 there was no sharp growth in the e-book market, which only lazy did not talk about in the spring). In general, I am pleased with the continued interest in reading, although it is still difficult for books to compete with other types of entertainment and other ways of obtaining information. In the coming year, book publishing will also be difficult. At the same time, we hope for an improvement in the situation in the spring, but this is inaccurate…
If we take the relationship between book publishing and the gaming industry, then naturally games have become increasingly noticeable in books, and this applies not only to fiction (after all, novels on Warcraft or Assassin's Creed have been published for quite a long time). I observe an active interest of book publishers in books related to games in one way or another.
What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2021?
Since book publishing is an industry with a very planned economy, in general, our plans for 2021 have been set up for a long time and are unlikely to undergo changes.
The main directions of our movement in terms of video games will remain the same:
- These are books for children and teenagers related to games;
- for fans and fans of games;
- for those who are engaged in development or want to take it up.
We will continue to actively publish books on Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox, and these will be not only works of art, but also guides on the gameplay itself.
Books on Doom and The Legend of Zelda will be released in early 2021. In addition, we have already bought the rights to books on the history of The Witcher, Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, Bioshock and many others. In the coming year, we plan to please game lovers with these projects.
Many projects are in the process of buying the rights to the Russian edition, so this is not the whole list of what awaits readers (and players) next year.
As for development, we also have big plans in this segment. We are planning to finally release such wonderful books as Level Up in Russian! Scott Rogers, The Gamer's Brain by Celia Hodent and Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom. We also have a lot of books by Russian-speaking authors on creating games, so there are a lot of interesting surprises waiting for readers here.
We also plan to continue our cooperation with Epic Games and Unity: We will continue to publish books on popular game engines – Unreal Engine and Unity – and other programs that are used in game development.
Well, in conclusion, it is worth mentioning the new book by Jason Schreier Press Reset, which will be released in English in May 2021. We also plan to release it in Russian next year.
Which games did you pay attention to as a gamer this year?
Cyberpunk 2077, where without it. But so far I haven't been able to really play, I'm waiting for the January holidays…
