Results of 2021: Ivan Kozyev from Crazy Panda about the main thing for the year

We continue to summarize the results of 2021 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Next up is an interview with Ivan Koziev, director of analytics at the Crazy Panda game studio.

How did 2021 go for the company?

The biggest breakthrough for the studio was the growth of key projects — the World Poker Club and the social farm “Zaporozhye“.

Considering that this year the World Poker Club celebrated its eleventh anniversary, and Zaporozhye celebrated its tenth, we assess the growth of both projects as a great success.

A certain contribution to the growth of games was made by the transition of the studio to new technical solutions, which we implemented at the end of last year. This year we have continued to improve the user experience in terms of using and implementing new technologies.

Of course, we have been developing not only classics. At the beginning of the year, we released the ZombieShop softlonch. This is a store simulator in a zombie apocalypse setting. Already at the start, we got incredibly cool metrics. Now the project team is working hard on new content and features.

Also, for a significant part of the outgoing year, we accumulated expertise, preparing for the first tests of the game in a new genre of shooters for us. Shooters are a big, complex and complex story. We have two full teams working on a new project in parallel. Now they are still experimenting with gameplay, mechanics, visuals and other components.

Speaking in general about internal developments, it is important to note two significant achievements for us this year.

The first is a fully self—learning AI based on machine learning technologies. This is not an academic development, but a full-fledged part of one of our new products. Our goal was to train not just an opponent for the player (this is just not too difficult, since AI often has more information available than the player). Our goal was to make an AI that would be an interesting, lively opponent — flexible, ready for surprises and able to surprise. The goal was achieved. As the feedback from the players showed, they have great difficulty distinguishing AI from a live opponent.

The second achievement is that we have learned to attribute users indirectly and have maintained a high awareness in making decisions in marketing.

This year we also celebrated the birthdays of the World Poker Club and Zaporizhia in a big way. In the first case, a huge poker tournament was organized with online and offline stages, the atmosphere of an underground casino and the final table in the middle of a real boxing ring, and in the second – a full-fledged online event inside Zaporozhye with quests and offline merch.

What event or trend of 2021 do you consider central within your niche?

The main change of the outgoing year, of course, should be called the release of iOS 14.5 and Apple‘s new privacy rules. The landscape of mobile games, especially those that relied heavily on marketing transparency, has changed a lot. Everyone had to adapt quickly, even those who had no direct relation to marketing on this platform. For example, the competition for the user in the Android ecosystem has become more complicated, where the return on investment assessment has remained clear.

For me, as an analyst, this is an extremely interesting situation, which suggests the need to develop new tools and methods to replace the old ones.

Obviously, the trend towards depersonalization and anonymization will continue, and this is correct from the point of view of the attitude towards users. For example, Facebook changed its approach to attribution in a similar way at the end of October this year. Google is going to introduce requirements similar to those introduced by Apple on informed consent for personalization and end-to-end identification. We are also actively working to anonymize the data used and collect only the information that helps to improve the user experience.

We also found out this year that we can work efficiently and productively on the remote. If last year we were still thinking about the possibility of returning a significant part of the team to the office at a reasonable time, then this year we finally decided that we would remain a remote company. Probably the only drawback was the lack of lamp evenings in the office and large crowded corporate parties. We care about the health and safety of our colleagues and their family members.

What will be the stake in the development of the company in 2022?

We will support and actively develop the current flagship projects. In addition, we plan to launch several new games in uncharacteristic genres for us. Future releases are a big challenge for us. At the same time, there are new opportunities.

We also plan to continue to focus on the high quality of our products.

By the way, now we are actively recruiting people into teams, expanding expertise and prototyping, looking at other platforms.