"There was a trend for deep narrative projects and simlife games," Ilya Grabelnikov from META Publishing about the main thing for 2022

We continue the series of interviews in which we summarize the results of the year together with experts and top managers of the gaming industry (and related ones). This time we talked with Ilya Grabelnikov, Chief Distribution Officer of META Publishing.

What was the year like for the company?

The year has not been easy, at a furious pace, which is logical in the current realities of the market.

The main thing that we managed to implement was several large launches that turned out to be profitable (in March we released the HordeCore scroll shooter, and in August — the Spirit of the Island role-playing simulator).

HordeCore

We also conducted a couple of great deals and launched several Steam sales (Isometric Sale, for example).

By the way, we have already planned several sales for next year.

Isometric Sale
I am very proud of the META Publishing team, which was able to implement most of its plans in 2022.

From your point of view, what has changed in the gaming market for publishing in a year?

Competition in the market as a whole has grown, and the level of indie developers has grown greatly, some of them today may well launch projects independently, without the help of a publisher.

Production, in my opinion, has slowed down as the market demands for content have increased. What could have passed earlier in the “and so it will do“ format is no longer working and requires serious processing.

Has the practice of working with developers changed?

Of course, the developers have increased the level of understanding of the market, the level of understanding of the problems and difficulties that await them on the way to release has increased qualitatively.

Any qualitative growth leads to an increase in the developer’s requirements for publishers, which adds “peppercorns” and helps the publisher to grow qualitatively and work on himself.

Accordingly, the developer-publisher relationship this year became closer to the symbiosis format, which had a positive impact both on the quality of products and on the market as a whole.

Speaking about the games that game teams are developing today, are there any trends in the areas that they choose and offer?

The trend for deep narrative projects and simlife games was quite obvious this year.

Next year I see a return to the trend of survival games and multiplayer “fun and colorful” projects.

What are the company’s plans for next year?

Next year we plan to launch two or three new projects in the genres of Life Sim and Puzzle Adventure (all of them will be multiplatform and designed, among other things, for a multiplayer experience).

We also plan to launch the first multiplatform project in our history with online cross-co-op and try to connect three platforms (PC, console and mobile) in one game. We hope that the connection of additional platforms will be successful and we will show a qualitatively new level of projects among indie publishers around the world.