In GOD we trust
Previously, colleagues talked about what is happening in the Russian gaming market as a whole, talked about the prospects and gave interesting figures. Today I want to tell you more about how one of the most significant and interesting divisions of the Mail.Ru Group gaming area is arranged - the game operations department (or simply GOD, as the employees call it).
But first - a few nostalgic paragraphs about the development of the Russian online games market from the point of view of operating games.
About 10 years ago in Russia there were practically no online games. The most famous was Ultima Online; someone played in Tibia, there were rumors about the existence of a super-realistic game in Korea [Lineage], which even someone of someone’s acquaintances played in ... In the former CIS there were games from infinitely talented domestic developers who made teams in several people quite serious projects for that time - Another World, Shadow Worlds, etc.
My colleagues and I just played enough in the network mode of "Cursed Lands" from Nival and were looking for something new. Our choice fell on Shadow Worlds, a game from St. Petersburg developer Sergey Voronov. Quickly enough, we got into the game, and soon we became completely acquainted with Sergey, discussed the details and launched the second server of the game.
At that moment I worked in two jobs: at the university I kept the computers of users in working condition (about 4000 computers), and also worked as an expert in the field of information technologies. Work with the project has become the third, but the most interesting. At this point there was Fight Club, Sphere and Everquest were launched; but these projects passed me by. I had my own passion - I enjoyed working with the game, communicating with the players, giving them new emotions.
')
We had a fairly small community, and almost all the key players I knew in ICQ, on the forum and in the game. We organized meetings at which players could chat live. Interestingly, the meetings were completely calm in nature - those who in the game promised each other “problems” communicated happily during a personal meeting on the topic “Do you remember how we are with you ...”.
Then came the moment when a German came out to us with a proposal to start the game in Germany. His brother had a rather large online auction in the country, at which it was decided to advertise the project. At the peak of our work with the project, we had 2 servers in Russia and 2 in Germany. The game was completely free. The concept of free-to-play was not there yet. We decided to make money on the game by selling premium accounts, which give owners a number of goodies compared to other players.
At some point I learned from our players that several clans are going to leave to play Dark Age of Camelot. It was a completely different world, completely 3D. It was not easy to get an account into the game then: in Moscow it was possible to buy access from some guys who needed to meet at the metro, etc.
I was so impressed with the game that I contacted the publisher and agreed on the purchase of rights to Russia. Price tag wrung space. He turned to several specialized investors who were engaged in the publication of games. "What? Online? But who needs it? This is not a popular trend, ”“ We make console games, we don’t need it. ” For non-core business was too risky. As a result, the transaction did not take place. I continued to communicate with publishers, I was looking for an opportunity to attract high-quality products to Russia, but some asked for too much money, others refused, arguing that Russia does not have an online market and successful launches.
At that time there was another problem on the market: the shelves of shops, stalls were full of pirated products. The pirates themselves translated the games and sold them. Online piracy also began to appear: theft of game servers or the creation / use of game server emulators. Dozens of pirated servers Lineage 2 invited to their experience multipliers, working clan halls and other things. The earnings model was simple: play for free, buy money or artifacts from the pirate holder.
At the same time, the browser games market progressed: Fight Club, Territory ... From the client games I can only remember the Sphere. The clones of BC came out with the regularity of mushrooms after the rain, found their small audience, but no more.
Attempts to launch licensed online games in Russia began. Appeared Everquest (Akella), Guild Wars (Buk), Lineage II on disks from Buki. The global growth of the online industry in Russia has begun.
In early 2008, I started working at Nival Online.
The history of the gaming unit Mail.Ru Group began in 2006, when the company launched its own portal Games@Mail.Ru. In 2009, the company included Astrum Online Entertainment holding and its studios - IT Territory, Astrum Nival (previously - Nival Online, in which I worked), Time Zero, Dark Joker (Kiev), ITT Nord (Peter). When combining the company, they retained their own traditions and "chips", a developed internal culture, and continued the development of existing large projects in almost unchanged composition. Therefore, today the same people work in the studios, which allows us to preserve and accumulate the best experience in the industry.
Today, Mail.Ru Games (the gaming unit of Mail.Ru Group) is the leader of the Eastern European online entertainment market. Almost 1000 people work in the gaming division of the company; branches and studios are open in Russia, Ukraine and Germany. The internal structure of a business unit essentially reflects the key areas of its activity: our studios (IT Territory, ITT Nord, Allods Team, Mini-games, Pushkin, Dark Joker) mainly work on creating all kinds of own games (client, browser, social, mobile). ), and the edition of licensed projects in Russia is engaged in the game operating department. In addition, the division has specialized departments: mobile gaming, social gaming, and games.
The combination of the strongest Russian developers and specialists has allowed us in just a few years to launch popular projects in almost all genres of online games: these are client-based MMO games: (Allods Online), browser-based: (Legend: Legacy of Dragons, Three Kingdoms, RIOT ), social: (“Favorite Farm”, etc.) and mobile hits: (“Juggernaut: Revenge of Sovering”).
Today we have more than 70 online games in our portfolio, including home-produced hits that are popular in Russia, America, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, as well as foreign blockbusters for which we were publishers.
All foreign game projects that appear in Russia under the brand Mail.Ru Group, pass through the department of operating games. Employees of this particular unit take responsibility for this or that project and choose a future one, a hit from the huge mass of online games.
The operating department is one of the largest divisions: more than 150 people work here. These include the following departments: game project management, web development, design, localization, monetization, operation, game community support department, user support department ...
In development, we went through different stages. We began by accumulating experience using the example of operating the first large projects (Perfect World) on the market (we gained invaluable experience that helped us launch our projects), systematic development with a relatively small number of projects, and gradual mastering of new tools.
Then we tried a different strategy: we rapidly increased the game portfolio, practically captured all the market niches, every week we had a new launch - either the PTA or MBT of the new game. The team showed that it is able to work in the mode of wild workload, launching projects one after another.
Today, the strategy of our department is to select only the best projects that become a real hit. So, in 2012 we launched only two games - Warface and Dragon Nest, both of them are actively developing, winning fans, and Warface set a world record among online shooters in the number of players on the same server at the same time (more than 145,000 people). In January 2013, we announced a new project - ArcheAge, which today can be called the most expected in Russia.
Game selection is a crucial and very important stage; how well we carried it out will be seen already a short time after the launch of the new project. Excessive rush to anything.
When choosing the type of game, we try to look to the future. Already there are a huge number of users who do not want to dive into the game with the head, hardcore, as it is almost always assumed with large MMORPG. Often a person wants to enter the game for half an hour - to relax and unwind after work / study.
As for producing countries, most often we work with China and Korea. However, we don’t stop at Asia and consider the games of Europe and America.
First, the game passes through our experts: 10 people play for several weeks (in their free time), then each gives his own assessment according to a fairly large list of criteria. At the same time, it is necessary to look at everything through the eyes of the player, even if the audience of the players is girls, as was the case with ParaPa.
Roughly speaking, according to a list of certain criteria, we evaluate: do we like this game, and do we believe in it.
When the decision is made, a producer is appointed who starts all the processes necessary to start a project, including transferring the main materials to the operating team (documentation, localization tools, administration tools, shard specifications, etc.). Next, the game is given to the localization department for translators, editors and testers. Technicians purchase and configure server hardware. The art department begins to prepare the designs of the promotional site, the main site, the forum and other graphic materials. Web department makes up the site, connects various services required for the project. Community managers and support study the game in detail and compile game guides - both external, accessible to players, and internal, for use in the company. Marketing prepares activities to attract future players.
We always strive to launch the working version of the game for internal testing as quickly as possible. This allows us to quickly catch all possible errors that we immediately ask the developers to fix (for example, at this moment it may turn out that the developer did not provide support for entering the Cyrillic alphabet). Next comes the hard work with the regular release of new builds, their testing, fixing errors, making the necessary changes.
When the game is ready, we make a quiet start - “Friends and Family”: at this moment the game is available to the company's employees, their families and friends. If this test also passes the test, we run the PTA. The whole process from making a “do it!” Decision to the onset of the PTA in ideal conditions takes about six months. For large projects, the term may increase to a year. Much depends on the amount of localization. For example, in shooters there is less text, and everything goes faster, and the MMORPG requires the translation of millions of hieroglyphs.
During the startup phase, little predictable difficulties may arise. For example, there are difficulties in localization, when a game client stops working due to the loss of a tag in the text. It is also important not to make a mistake with the reserve of server capacity. You need to be able to quickly increase capacity. So it was with us, for example, with Warface: when we started, we let almost all the stocks of the company's servers on it.
At this preparatory stage can be considered complete. Then begins the life of the game with a huge audience of players, but that's another story.
In the following posts we will talk more about other areas and projects. By the way, if you have questions about the work of the game operating department, how we choose projects or about the launch process, ask them in the comments.
Evgeny Mikhno,
director of operating Mail.Ru Games
But first - a few nostalgic paragraphs about the development of the Russian online games market from the point of view of operating games.
The Big Bang Theory
About 10 years ago in Russia there were practically no online games. The most famous was Ultima Online; someone played in Tibia, there were rumors about the existence of a super-realistic game in Korea [Lineage], which even someone of someone’s acquaintances played in ... In the former CIS there were games from infinitely talented domestic developers who made teams in several people quite serious projects for that time - Another World, Shadow Worlds, etc.
My colleagues and I just played enough in the network mode of "Cursed Lands" from Nival and were looking for something new. Our choice fell on Shadow Worlds, a game from St. Petersburg developer Sergey Voronov. Quickly enough, we got into the game, and soon we became completely acquainted with Sergey, discussed the details and launched the second server of the game.
At that moment I worked in two jobs: at the university I kept the computers of users in working condition (about 4000 computers), and also worked as an expert in the field of information technologies. Work with the project has become the third, but the most interesting. At this point there was Fight Club, Sphere and Everquest were launched; but these projects passed me by. I had my own passion - I enjoyed working with the game, communicating with the players, giving them new emotions.
')
We had a fairly small community, and almost all the key players I knew in ICQ, on the forum and in the game. We organized meetings at which players could chat live. Interestingly, the meetings were completely calm in nature - those who in the game promised each other “problems” communicated happily during a personal meeting on the topic “Do you remember how we are with you ...”.
Then came the moment when a German came out to us with a proposal to start the game in Germany. His brother had a rather large online auction in the country, at which it was decided to advertise the project. At the peak of our work with the project, we had 2 servers in Russia and 2 in Germany. The game was completely free. The concept of free-to-play was not there yet. We decided to make money on the game by selling premium accounts, which give owners a number of goodies compared to other players.
At some point I learned from our players that several clans are going to leave to play Dark Age of Camelot. It was a completely different world, completely 3D. It was not easy to get an account into the game then: in Moscow it was possible to buy access from some guys who needed to meet at the metro, etc.
I was so impressed with the game that I contacted the publisher and agreed on the purchase of rights to Russia. Price tag wrung space. He turned to several specialized investors who were engaged in the publication of games. "What? Online? But who needs it? This is not a popular trend, ”“ We make console games, we don’t need it. ” For non-core business was too risky. As a result, the transaction did not take place. I continued to communicate with publishers, I was looking for an opportunity to attract high-quality products to Russia, but some asked for too much money, others refused, arguing that Russia does not have an online market and successful launches.
At that time there was another problem on the market: the shelves of shops, stalls were full of pirated products. The pirates themselves translated the games and sold them. Online piracy also began to appear: theft of game servers or the creation / use of game server emulators. Dozens of pirated servers Lineage 2 invited to their experience multipliers, working clan halls and other things. The earnings model was simple: play for free, buy money or artifacts from the pirate holder.
At the same time, the browser games market progressed: Fight Club, Territory ... From the client games I can only remember the Sphere. The clones of BC came out with the regularity of mushrooms after the rain, found their small audience, but no more.
Attempts to launch licensed online games in Russia began. Appeared Everquest (Akella), Guild Wars (Buk), Lineage II on disks from Buki. The global growth of the online industry in Russia has begun.
In early 2008, I started working at Nival Online.
New game history
The history of the gaming unit Mail.Ru Group began in 2006, when the company launched its own portal Games@Mail.Ru. In 2009, the company included Astrum Online Entertainment holding and its studios - IT Territory, Astrum Nival (previously - Nival Online, in which I worked), Time Zero, Dark Joker (Kiev), ITT Nord (Peter). When combining the company, they retained their own traditions and "chips", a developed internal culture, and continued the development of existing large projects in almost unchanged composition. Therefore, today the same people work in the studios, which allows us to preserve and accumulate the best experience in the industry.
Today, Mail.Ru Games (the gaming unit of Mail.Ru Group) is the leader of the Eastern European online entertainment market. Almost 1000 people work in the gaming division of the company; branches and studios are open in Russia, Ukraine and Germany. The internal structure of a business unit essentially reflects the key areas of its activity: our studios (IT Territory, ITT Nord, Allods Team, Mini-games, Pushkin, Dark Joker) mainly work on creating all kinds of own games (client, browser, social, mobile). ), and the edition of licensed projects in Russia is engaged in the game operating department. In addition, the division has specialized departments: mobile gaming, social gaming, and games.
The combination of the strongest Russian developers and specialists has allowed us in just a few years to launch popular projects in almost all genres of online games: these are client-based MMO games: (Allods Online), browser-based: (Legend: Legacy of Dragons, Three Kingdoms, RIOT ), social: (“Favorite Farm”, etc.) and mobile hits: (“Juggernaut: Revenge of Sovering”).
Today we have more than 70 online games in our portfolio, including home-produced hits that are popular in Russia, America, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, as well as foreign blockbusters for which we were publishers.
Games Operations Department
All foreign game projects that appear in Russia under the brand Mail.Ru Group, pass through the department of operating games. Employees of this particular unit take responsibility for this or that project and choose a future one, a hit from the huge mass of online games.
The operating department is one of the largest divisions: more than 150 people work here. These include the following departments: game project management, web development, design, localization, monetization, operation, game community support department, user support department ...
In development, we went through different stages. We began by accumulating experience using the example of operating the first large projects (Perfect World) on the market (we gained invaluable experience that helped us launch our projects), systematic development with a relatively small number of projects, and gradual mastering of new tools.
Then we tried a different strategy: we rapidly increased the game portfolio, practically captured all the market niches, every week we had a new launch - either the PTA or MBT of the new game. The team showed that it is able to work in the mode of wild workload, launching projects one after another.
Today, the strategy of our department is to select only the best projects that become a real hit. So, in 2012 we launched only two games - Warface and Dragon Nest, both of them are actively developing, winning fans, and Warface set a world record among online shooters in the number of players on the same server at the same time (more than 145,000 people). In January 2013, we announced a new project - ArcheAge, which today can be called the most expected in Russia.
How do we choose games?
Game selection is a crucial and very important stage; how well we carried it out will be seen already a short time after the launch of the new project. Excessive rush to anything.
When choosing the type of game, we try to look to the future. Already there are a huge number of users who do not want to dive into the game with the head, hardcore, as it is almost always assumed with large MMORPG. Often a person wants to enter the game for half an hour - to relax and unwind after work / study.
As for producing countries, most often we work with China and Korea. However, we don’t stop at Asia and consider the games of Europe and America.
First, the game passes through our experts: 10 people play for several weeks (in their free time), then each gives his own assessment according to a fairly large list of criteria. At the same time, it is necessary to look at everything through the eyes of the player, even if the audience of the players is girls, as was the case with ParaPa.
Roughly speaking, according to a list of certain criteria, we evaluate: do we like this game, and do we believe in it.
The choice is made - what next?
When the decision is made, a producer is appointed who starts all the processes necessary to start a project, including transferring the main materials to the operating team (documentation, localization tools, administration tools, shard specifications, etc.). Next, the game is given to the localization department for translators, editors and testers. Technicians purchase and configure server hardware. The art department begins to prepare the designs of the promotional site, the main site, the forum and other graphic materials. Web department makes up the site, connects various services required for the project. Community managers and support study the game in detail and compile game guides - both external, accessible to players, and internal, for use in the company. Marketing prepares activities to attract future players.
We always strive to launch the working version of the game for internal testing as quickly as possible. This allows us to quickly catch all possible errors that we immediately ask the developers to fix (for example, at this moment it may turn out that the developer did not provide support for entering the Cyrillic alphabet). Next comes the hard work with the regular release of new builds, their testing, fixing errors, making the necessary changes.
When the game is ready, we make a quiet start - “Friends and Family”: at this moment the game is available to the company's employees, their families and friends. If this test also passes the test, we run the PTA. The whole process from making a “do it!” Decision to the onset of the PTA in ideal conditions takes about six months. For large projects, the term may increase to a year. Much depends on the amount of localization. For example, in shooters there is less text, and everything goes faster, and the MMORPG requires the translation of millions of hieroglyphs.
During the startup phase, little predictable difficulties may arise. For example, there are difficulties in localization, when a game client stops working due to the loss of a tag in the text. It is also important not to make a mistake with the reserve of server capacity. You need to be able to quickly increase capacity. So it was with us, for example, with Warface: when we started, we let almost all the stocks of the company's servers on it.
At this preparatory stage can be considered complete. Then begins the life of the game with a huge audience of players, but that's another story.
In the following posts we will talk more about other areas and projects. By the way, if you have questions about the work of the game operating department, how we choose projects or about the launch process, ask them in the comments.
Evgeny Mikhno,
director of operating Mail.Ru Games
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/174579/
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