Alisa Chumachenko: Sberbank Games will launch its marketplace and publish games for consoles

Alisa Chumachenko, CEO of the Sbera gaming direction, spoke at the WN St. Petersburg’21 conference. She spoke about the ambitions of Sberbank in the international and local markets, and also shared the three main pillars on which the company will rely. Among them is the creation of a personalization platform, a voice assistant for games and your own marketplace.

Alisa Chumachenko at WN St. Petersburg’21

Personalization Platform

The first and largest of the three pillars of “Sberbank Games” is a platform for personalization of games for individual groups of users.
The idea of creating a platform came to Chumachenko when she realized that all titles show the same content for all users. Instead, she wants games to adapt to every gamer.
“All SberGames games will change in real time depending on who is playing them. This is a huge leap to my dream,” Chumachenko notes.
With the help of the personalization system, the game will be able to “highlight” the player convenient paths or interesting mechanics for him. All this will increase the level of satisfaction of users.
As an example, Chumachenko cites shooters. For example, the player prefers to use sniper rifles. The game will read the pattern of his behavior and offer him the skills necessary for pumping or “highlight” suitable weapons in the built-in store.

Chumachenko also notes that her team has learned how to make “smart push”. For example, the game will send notifications to the user when he flips through TikTok so that he can definitely notice them. This will increase retention.
According to Chumachenko, the best example of a personalized platform is Netflix. “Sberbank Games” want to go in this direction, but at the same time “fall through” into the content itself and adjust it to the user in real time.
The Sbera ecosystem will help in the implementation of these plans. The company not only collects and processes data, but also buys it. There are slightly more than 100 million “Sber IDs” in the system. Based on the data about these users, Sberbank Games will be able to understand what and how they play.
As a result, the personalization platform will be able to offer players not only smart notifications, but also dynamic pricing and constantly changing gameplay.
The global goal is to learn how to manage the level of user satisfaction in real time. According to Chumachenko, in 5-10 years, “Sberbank Games” want to learn how to create generated worlds for specific gamers.
All the features of the personalization platform will also be available to the developers of “Sberbank Games” for free in the first two years after the release.

Voice interfaces

Sberbank Games is currently working on its own voice assistant, which will help users better adapt to the game. The system is trained based on the content of a certain project and the actions of gamers, after which it begins to communicate with them.
They describe their voice assistant “Sberbank Games” as “a friend who brings you into the game.” He will be able to answer questions, support, psychologically calm, sell services, train, teach mechanics and even flirt.
The assistant was originally conceived as a multi-game tool. As a result, it will become an open platform, and for developers of “Sberbank Games” its use will be free for two years.
According to Chumachenko, the use of the game assistant “Sberbank Games” will be especially relevant for the creators of hardcore titles.

Marketplace

The last, but no less important pillar in the structure of “Sberbank Games” is the creation of its own gaming marketplace. Chumachenko calls it a “connector for publishing.”
It will work as follows: the developer connects to the system, after which “Sberbank Games” publish the game to all available sites, and also connect it to their ecosystem.
There will be a variety of projects in the Sbera marketplace: mobile, HTML5, single and multi-user. The company plans to include cloud gaming in the store, as well as some PC games (they will be available for Russia, the CIS and, possibly, Eastern Europe).
Chumachenko notes that as the publisher of Sberbank Games, they are going to interact with developers in four main areas: internal development, ordering games from third-party studios, classic publishing with prices below the market average, as well as M&A deals.

The ideology of “Sberbank Games”

Chumachenko believes that now there is a crisis in the gaming industry. And not financial, but ideological. According to her, many large companies have forgotten why they basically make games, and think only about profit.
The main goal of “Sberbank Games” is to entertain users. The company puts the audience and the retensh at the head.
Since monetization is not the main priority, the company intends to experiment more and try to create new mechanics or improve existing ones.
According to Chumachenko, Sberbank has a large budget for R&D, and the company gives its producers relative freedom to introduce new features.
Sberbank plans to launch a program for indie developers, as well as schoolchildren and students who want to create their own games.

Statistics of the global video game market

Children’s games

Projects for children (including preschool age) they will become one of the priorities of Sberbank Games. As part of this direction, the company is launching the “Useful Games” program.
According to Chumachenko, such titles should be useful, free and safe.
Now there are 15 children’s games in the pipeline to the company, each of which will be tested by a neuropsychologist. Based on this, “Sberbank Games” are going to remove mechanics from projects that can have a bad effect on children.
As part of the “Useful Games”, the company also entered into cooperation with Soyuzmultfilm and a number of other companies to create games based on popular children’s IP.
Sberbank Games will not only independently develop children’s titles, but also order them from third-party developers.

A look at the market

Chumachenko notes that the Russian gaming industry today is a very adult market. There are a lot of specialists and publishers on it, but because of the focus on profit, there is little innovation.
Sberbank Games plans to gain a foothold in two main parts of the Russian gaming market at once — mobile, as well as consoles and PCs. To do this, the company intends to publish titles for all devices and platforms.
Sberbank also has ambitions to enter the world market, but priority will still be given to Russia. However, it is still unclear whether the company will be able to gain a foothold in Asia.

Statistics of the Russian video game market

Sberbank Games intends to achieve its goals at least in Russia with the help of the Sber ecosystem, which includes 50 companies. The availability of large resources and access to the audience allows us to talk about the realization of ambitions in the local market.
In the end, Chumachenko noted that games are a content business. That is why she believes that it is impossible to know for sure which projects are worth developing. Due to the fact that the creation of midcore and hardcore titles takes from two to six years, it is impossible to predict which games will be popular with the audience upon completion of development.