Results of 2021: Yulia Trofimova from Alawar 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 Yulia Trofimova, Marketing Director of Alawar.

How did 2021 go for the company?

The year for Alawar was very productive in terms of projects. We have not only released the 2D detective Song of Farca, which is a publishing project for us, but also a game of our own development – the platformer They Always Run. For our internal development team, such a project is a completely new experience in terms of genre and scale. By the way, They Always Run was presented at the PC Gaming Show as part of E3.

Partnership with Epic Games Store has also become a new experience for us. We started publishing on this site for the first time. We plan to do this in the future.

We experimented a lot with the casual direction, for example, we released our famous Farm Frenzy in an updated format.

In 2021, we opened a new direction – the mobile development department of Alawar Mobile in St. Petersburg.

Also this year we started the process of identity change, because our current logo is already about thirteen years old! We realized that we had grown out of it. We want something more suitable for our projects, values and views. We have not officially presented the new logo and style yet, we continue to work on them.

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

In 2021, cloud gaming services and subscription models continued their development. We have actively taken off on this wave. Today, our games are available both on streaming services and by subscription.

I consider it an important event that Adobe has stopped supporting Flash. In our catalog there were games made using this software. We had to withdraw them from sale.

NFT digital tokens reached the peak of popularity, even films began to appear in the form of them, for example, “Zero Contact” with Anthony Hopkins.

The team of Russian esports team Spirit became the best in the Dota 2 World Championship for the first time in history. This can be a powerful impetus for the development of esports in Russia.

The year 2021 was marked by the release of several series based on game projects: “DOTA: Dragon’s Blood“, Arcane: League of Legends.

By the way, Alawar has already had experience in the adaptation of games. In 2019, together with Kinodom Production, we released Beholder — Official Short Film, starring Evgeny Stychkin.

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

The development and publishing of midcore games remains an important direction for us. In 2022, we are preparing for the release of the third part of the Beholder dystopia together with the German studio Paintbucket, and we are also looking for new teams and projects for publishing on PC, consoles and mobile.

Next year we will also continue to release casual games, experiment with new mechanics, work on mobile projects, follow industry trends and invest in the development of the company.