Exclusive: Interview with Crazy Panda

At the end of September, Little Bit Evil from the domestic Crazy Panda team appeared on the Russian App Store. In connection with the release, we asked project manager Viktor Koroteev and Crazy Panda Executive Director Nikolai Vanin to talk about the game and its promotion. 

Hi! To begin with, please tell us a little about yourself, about Crazy Panda. How long have you been on the gaming market?The company is three years old.

At the moment, we have ten projects in different stages of readiness: from monsters like Poker No. 1 World Poker Club and Zaporozhye, to an unpolished Dominator and an unannounced mobile project. The backbone of the team is already well-known and experienced specialists with extensive experience in console/PC/social/mobile development and management. However, we have raised a lot of specialists from scratch, which I am very happy about, because the lack of smart and accurate guys in the country is the main problem.

The other day you released Little Bit Evil. This is your first mobile release. Here we immediately had two questions. First, why did you decide to come to the mobile market after all? If we had released our first mobile project when it was written, this interview would have taken place in 2011.

Not everything that is written should be released. We experienced a boom in publishers and did not become their hostages, we experienced a boom in “one-day games”, “slingshot games”. If we had followed all the trends of the market that was still wild at that moment, we would not have been able to work on really high-quality and original games.

Second – why only now?Today, the market already has some forms and the endless premature ejaculations from one-day developers are replaced by expensive, beautiful, independent projects with real support, marketing, development strategy.

By the end of the year, we will release several high-quality social and mobile games at once – you just need to wait.

Since you have been engaged in social games, it is clear that you are well versed in free-to-play. However, Little Bit Evil is a harsh paid. You are asking 229 rubles for the iPad version of the game. Therefore, our next question is why did you start your expansion into the mobile market with the original IP, and even far from what you did before? Why, for example, didn’t they just sport, for example, Dominator: The art of winning?This is a classic genre with millions of fans around the world.

We are focused on development and do not limit ourselves to one distribution model or one genre.

Since we have already started talking about pricing policy, we can’t help but ask why we chose 229 rubles (we are talking about the iPad version), and not, for example, 169 rubles (that’s how much Kingdom Rush Frontiers costs)? What did you start from when choosing a price?Pricing is a policy, and not a word about it.

By the way, as far as we noticed: IAPs in the game are made, rather, “for show”. This is so unusual in modern games. In the latest Infinity Blade, everything is much tougher. Was there no temptation to load the project with mandatory IAPs?At the moment, there is exactly as much iap in the game – as there should be.

Now the project is in the Russian top-grossing at 32nd place and is among the top ten paid programs on the domestic App Store. The indicators are excellent. How did you promote your project?Now the project is No. 1 paid games in the Russian Federation, forty minutes ago we overtook Angry Birds Star Wars 2.

You have outdated data (the time interval between sending questions and receiving answers was less than a day – approx. App2Top.ru).

The project turned out to be very solid in all aspects, because not only developers, but also bizdev and marketing worked on it, laying the foundation for further actions. The promotion strategy was created at the TK stage – we immediately decided that the quality of the game would be the main selling point, and also identified the features on which the focus would be made. This is to the question of experience.

Have you resorted to the help of Facebook (and if so, how closely do you work with this social platform in terms of promotion)?We are in daily contact.

Facebook single-handedly changed the gaming market in the country in 2012. So far, no local platform has even come close to Facebook in their developer support. Akin, Nikki, Julien, Sean – please wait a little bit longer and game will appear in your store too. Thank you, much love!

In the near future, Facebook will introduce a new program for working with mobile game developers, so I advise everyone to follow the news of the platform more closely.

On the web, you can find a gorgeous video on the game. How effective is it in terms of promotion?Before the video, as well as before the whole project, specific tasks were set.

The main thing is to demonstrate our advantages and features. Judging by the number of positive reviews, we did not miss. The video, by the way, was made by the “Trailer Studio”, for which a special thank you to her.

How long has Little Bit Evil been developed?The game was made by an experienced team, so the development went according to plan and was completed just in time.

How many people worked on the game?It is difficult to outline the circle of those involved.

The project team of 7 people worked, the whole company participated, more than 100 people.

Looking at the game, it seems that this is such a casual blockbuster. Was that the idea? We represent our player well, so there is exactly as much casualness in the game as there should be in tower defense.

Of course, we focused on creating a high-quality international project. Whether it will become a blockbuster is up to the users to decide. 

By the way, did you expect to get into a kind of Renaissance tower defense in time? Kingdom Rush Frontiers was released in June, Pirate Legends TD in August, now here’s your project?It’s very cool that the genre has taken root perfectly on mobile devices.

Naturally, we monitor the release grid and synchronize plans with platforms and other developers. 

We really liked Little Bit Evil, its style, its humor, so we can’t help but ask: is it worth waiting for your own mobile Dungeon Keeper from your team?Thanks for the feedback!

You should expect cool games and cool project support from us. Dungeon Keeper is already being made (EA announced it in August, approx. App2Top.ru ), so we are looking forward, as are players around the world.

The official website of the game: littlebitevil.com