"The release of Atomic Heart turned out to be a very high—profile event," Robert Bagratuni from Mundfish on the main thing for 2023

On the first Sunday of 2024, we finish summing up the results of last year with the game teams. The final interview of the series is with Robert Bagratuni, the head of Mundfish.

What was the year like for the company? What have you done that I would like to highlight in terms of achievements?

This year turned out to be a turning point in the life of the studio in a good way. After more than five years of studio formation and relentless development, our game has finally been released! And we also released the first story DLC and have already made the second one, which will be released in early February.

This year was very important for us, very emotional, busy, but it flew by in just a moment.

The release of Atomic Heart turned out to be a very loud event in 2023, Twitter was "bursting" with alerts at the release (many tweets with the Atomic Heart tag were published every second), we were in first place on Twitch, billboards with our heroes were flaunted all over the world — from New York to Tokyo.

Together, we have proved that if a talented, cohesive team wants to succeed and is ready to work hard for this, everything will work out!

The end of the year was especially pleased with the nominations and victories.

Atomic Heart has entered the:

• the top ten most popular games on Google searches (9th place);
• BAFTA's list of the 60 Best Video Games of 2023;
• top 5 games by popularity on Pornhub in 2023 (5th place);
• Top 20 most popular Xbox games in 2023;
• Top 4 single player games according to TrueAchievements.
• the Steam BEST OF 2023 in the TOP SELLERS and NEW RELEASES categories.

The game has become:

• the winner of the Steam Awards 2023 in the Outstanding Visual Style category;
• the winner of VK Music in the nomination "Soundtrack of the year";
• the winner in the nomination "Legendary video Games" according to the results of voting from the Russian Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry (RVI);
• the winner of the NYX Game Awards in six nominations:
  • The best action game on PC;
  • The best gameplay on PC;
  • The best action game on Xbox;
  • The best character design on PC;
  • The best gameplay on PlayStation;
  • The best animation on PC.

As for the nominations, Atomic Heart has become:

• Hollywood Music in Media Awards Nominee;
• The nominee of The Virtual Photography Awards;
• LUDI Awards nominee in the "Most Anticipated Game" category (nominated in December 2022, but the winners were announced in 2023);
• the nominee of the Arab Game Awards 2023 in the BEST SHOOTER category.

Of the most amazing achievements, I am really amazed that the twins have bypassed such games as Resident Evil, Genshin Impact and Mortal Kombat in the Pornhub top, giving way only to Minecraft, Overwatch, Fortnite and Pokemon characters. Is this, then, a real folk love?

But perhaps the coolest thing we have achieved is to create a huge, simply gigantic wave of creativity and motivation, thanks to which millions of young people from our country believed that it was possible and necessary to create games and work in this industry. God grant that new talented teams will be formed from this number, which will delight us in the coming years with interesting and high-quality games, inspired by the example of Atomic Heart.

How has the situation in the gaming market changed?

In my opinion, what the neural network, AI, ML is doing to the industry now is just a revolution. There can be no other word for it. New pipelines using neural networks allow you to start pre-production of the game, sorting and iterating ideas at a speed never seen before. Also, thanks to the neural network, it is possible to dramatically reduce the duration of iterations associated with voice acting and subsequent verification in gameplay, which allows narrators to better work out the material, experiment, devote more time to creativity, work with actors at a higher level, having worked out in detail the fundamental aspects of plot placement, accents, mood. This opens up huge opportunities, gives more freedom to creators, and allows them to devote more time to the creative side of the issue. The way the neural network can scan, the speed and quality with which images can now be upscaled, how quickly to explore ideas and sort through options. This is an unprecedented leap forward, and I think the game development pipeline will change significantly over the next two years.

What was the year like for the genres in which you work?

There were very few shooters this year, I can't say that I noticed any special progress in this genre. Rather, I can say that I was extremely pleased with the release of such games as Dave The Diver and Cocoon, which I really got stuck into and went through with great joy. I recommend them to anyone who has forgotten how to enjoy games. Go through these two great holiday games while you still have time!

What are the company's plans for next year?

Next year, the company plans to expand its geography even more by attracting the best specialists. The main tasks for this year are to make working at the Mundfish studio synonymous with the expression "dream job". Over the years, we have realized a lot and learned a lot, now we continue to work on processes, approaches, paying great attention to creativity and potential development, and plan to do even more in the coming year to get closer to this comparison. And, perhaps, this is our main goal for 2024, in addition to diligent development.