Studio kefir. Studio kefir

Company valuation: Detailed estimates

• Team and corporate culture:
• Management and their respect for employees:
• Workplace and working conditions:
• Social package and benefits:
• Prospects for working in the company:

27.07.2018, 13:59

Positive sides

I worked for a little over a year, great experience, happy with everything. I caught the moment of the launch of a top project and took part in it. Lots of cool features and entertainment. The team is quite friendly and friendly, there are no conflicts, and quarreling with someone is a sure way to instantly lose your job. There is turnover, but only for some positions. But there, I apologize, some brainless cretins came who unreasonably showed off both in front of their bosses and in front of their colleagues. Free lunches and drinks, lectures... More rooted specialists, loyalty regarding sick leave and vacations and tardiness. And yes, work chairs are not cheap, but they are very comfortable. True, I still don’t understand on what basis they are distributed among employees. I’m generally silent about foreign corporate events, Valve for some reason. Well, in short, a very generous company that values ​​valuable people very much. But in order to achieve something and show yourself, you have to turn inside out twice.
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Negative sides

You can get fat from the number of tasty treats. No kidding.
-Everything is a little unorganized, but people are able to meet the deadline solely due to the combination of skill and dogged perseverance. I don’t know how long they will last under this regime.
-No coffee machine. With such a level of development of organizational culture, there should be a coffee machine, but alas.
-Work in Volgograd.
-Sometimes you have to be very late and you have no choice.
-Employees are obsessed with their work. Maybe this is not bad, but sometimes it seems like it will... More then they are paid extra for praising the company.
- Non-conflict does not mean that you will not be teased sensitively.
-Some are terrible snobs about how to dress properly for work, and will not hesitate to tell you their opinion.
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“If we’re not number one, it doesn’t count for us!” - this is how the founder of the Kefir studio Andrey Pryakhin formulated the main slogan of the company. He is serious: in 2017, Kefir’s revenue amounted to $100 million

Art director and producer Petr Kostylev and

“Whatever rumors there are about us, soon they will say that we bought the whole city,” laughs Kefir employee Yana, who meets a correspondent and photographer for RBC magazine in a company Maybach. The magazine’s employees travel on it for interviews and filming for two days. “A couple of years ago there was only one Maybach in the city, today there are already several,” says driver Alexander.

Pryakhin, 34, founded Kefir with several friends in 2009. Currently, the company’s Volgograd office employs 145 people, and about 25 more in St. Petersburg, mostly developers. The studio's first big hit, the social game Tyuryaga, was released in 2010 and is still in the top 25 popular games on VKontakte. But the majority of the money—60-65% of Kefir’s total revenue—comes from the online strategy released in 2017 Last Day on Earth: Survival.

Pryakhin did not want to meet at the Kefir office in the center of Volgograd: “Scary... it’s a shame to show it.” The company recently bought for 260 million rubles. new building with an area of ​​4.2 thousand square meters. m, also in the center, and is about to move. The interview takes place in a loft on the 22nd floor in one of the new buildings. “We bought this place just for the veranda,” says Pryakhin. On it, Kefir employees gather in the summer to work with a view of the city or have a party. In the open area there are several tables and chairs, next to a jacuzzi. Sometimes company guests stay in a loft instead of a hotel: the room has a bed, a small kitchen, and a fireplace.

Before Kefir

Pryakhin's father served in the FSB, retired as a lieutenant colonel, his mother worked as a fashion designer, then became a housewife. After his service, Pryakhin Sr. went into business and realized that the future was in technology, says Andrey: “Probably thanks to him, everything turned out this way.” The parents did not try to fight their son's love for computer games, although his friends used to hide the cords from their computers so that they wouldn’t spend all their time on them. “Mine, on the contrary, always supported me: my father took me to computer conferences,” recalls Pryakhin.

The most prestigious educational institution in Volgograd was the Academy of Civil Service, so Pryakhin entered the law faculty there: “I still don’t like construction and lawyers - these are dull classes for me.” The young man did not even intend to work in his profession. Even during his school years, in the late 1990s, Andrei began to be interested in business: his father taught him to write business plans and build relationships with people - “the foundation of every businessman.”

Pryakhin's first business was specific. “I don’t even know if it’s possible to talk about this. They sold liquid for lighting fireplaces, but drunks took it and drank it,” he recalls. In the early 2000s, Andrey started making ringtones and music for mobile phones, then sold the first versions of the iPhone, produced and installed street payment terminals. “Unlike today’s business, when you can’t touch the product, there was a real thrill in that business: you have a lot of KamAZ trucks loaded with these terminals, and they leave the factory,” he recalls. But all this was just for the sake of money and did not bring any pleasure, Pryakhin admits.

Founder of the Kefir studio Andrey Pryakhin (Photo: Vladislav Shatilo for RBC)

One of his father’s businesses was internet cafes, which were popular at that time, where as a teenager Pryakhin met many friends who were also passionate about computer games. Pryakhin came up with the first game, called “Mission of Saakashvili” in 2009, made it with the help of outsourced programmers, and then launched it with a friend on VKontakte. Soon after this, the Kefir studio was created.

Among those who started making Kefir with him are programmer Mikhail Talalaev and the author of the studio logo, designer Ilya Elgin. The fourth employee of Kefir, who stood at the origins, is Viktor Kirillov: he was an architect and later left the team. When the game became popular (about 1.5 million people downloaded it), the friends decided to add monetization: it turned out that the players were willing to pay.

The young people rented an apartment and turned it into an office: they made tables with their own hands from doors that they bought at OBI, which had just opened in Volgograd. It was in this premises that the company created “Tyuryaga”.

"Prison"

“Back then you could turn on the TV and see what the Russian audience preferred,” recalls Pryakhin in 2010. On TV there were mainly crime series: “Streets of Broken Lanterns”, “Capercaillie”, “Secrets of the Investigation”. Created in less than six months, “Tyuryaga” fit organically into the picture. “We saw that the niche was open, and decided to make people a game about what they watch, read and hear on the street,” recalls Pryakhin.

The action of "Prison" takes place in prison: the player must break out from an ordinary prisoner into an authority figure by completing tasks: getting tattoos, swinging, organizing showdowns, earning in-game currency - cigarettes. “There have been many complaints that we are promoting the life of thieves in the game. But the most you can hear there is street slang, no worries or anything like that,” Pryakhin throws up his hands.

For about two years, “Tyuryaga” remained in the top games on VKontakte and brought its creators more than $1 million a month. “When the first million dollars arrived in our accounts, we bought a small office building in Volgograd and began actively recruiting people,” recalls Pryakhin. He compares game development to sports competitions, where there can only be one goal - first place. “The second and third are already for weaklings. Then the most popular game was “Happy Farmer”, and we set ourselves the task of creating a game that would destroy it,” recalls Andrey.

The audience of “Farmer” in June 2010 exceeded 8 million people, but the very next year “Kefir” took the lead: in 2011, 13 million people played “Tyuryaga”. But back in 2010, when the Kefir team moved to a new building, Pryakhin set himself the task of making a game that would surpass Tyuryaga.

Pryakhin wrote the script and plan for the military simulator “In the Trench,” which was released in 2013, but was dissatisfied with it. “However, the guys turned it up so much that at some point the game overtook Tyuryaga.” Although this was not exactly what we expected: by that time, Tyuryaga had already begun to deflate a little,” recalls the founder of Kefir. As a VKontakte representative told RBC magazine, from 2013 to the present, Tyuryaga has been among the top 25 most popular games on the social network. But Pryakhin doesn’t want to say how much the game earns now: “I don’t watch anymore, I’m not interested. Social networks are already a past stage.”

The peak of popularity of social games occurred in 2012-2014, then the number of their fans began to decline, Vasily Maguryan, head of the gaming department of Mail.Ru Group, told RBC magazine. If in 2014 the market volume was 14 billion rubles, then in 2017 it was already 9.8 billion rubles. Users began to give preference to mobile platforms, which, compared to PCs, turned out to be more accessible in every sense. Social games themselves adapted rather poorly to the mobile platform and were unable to fully transfer their functionality there, the expert notes.

Since Kefir was doing well on social networks, the studio was “the most backward in terms of transition to the mobile market,” admits Pryakhin. In 2015-2016, the company made several prototypes of games and moved towards the mobile market.

"Horse Money"

Kefir’s debut in mobile games was the fantasy action RPG Forge of Glory. It was developed for a year and a half, launched in the spring of 2016 in Australia and Canada, and a year later in the rest of the world.

But great success came only with the second mobile game - Last Day on Earth, which was released in May 2017; in a year and a half it brought Kefir more than $150 million, including advertising revenue. In June 2018, the company released another game in the same genre - Grim Soul: Survival, but it failed to beat the performance of Last Day (see infographic).

“A game that makes a lot of money thanks to Peter and his team,” is how Pryakhin describes Last Day on Earth. Peter is the producer of Last Day on Earth, Peter Kostylev, who came to Kefir in 2012. He and 17 other people completed the project in three months—a record for the company. According to the plot, the player finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world, where he needs to fight for resources, food and weapons, fighting zombies and other players.

With control over the quality and direction of development of the game, Kostylev combines the position of art director and is responsible for the visual part of the product. While the development team was small, he had to do animation and modeling of assets (resources) in the game. “I probably spent two weeks just on animating the blood and flying limbs,” Peter smiles.

In the Russian gaming market, the highest revenues have always been from the sale of games for personal computers, but in 2018 the mobile games market in Russia will reach $635 million, which is almost equal to revenues from PC games, Cleo Sardelis, a representative of the research company Newzoo, told RBC magazine. Until 2021, mobile gaming revenue will grow by 7.5% annually, which will allow this segment to become the largest, she noted.

The popularity of the mobile platform is growing from year to year, confirms Maguryan from Mail.Ru Group. In 2017, the volume of the mobile games market in Russia grew by 24%, to 20.3 billion rubles. Unlike a computer, a mobile phone is always at hand, so users who had never been interested in them before came to games. Those who play mobile phone, less demanding on project graphics, prefer simpler game mechanics, make game purchasing decisions easier, says Maguryan.

IN Lately Last Day on Earth brings the company $4-5 million a month, and its audience is 83 million people, says Pryakhin. However, he is again not completely satisfied with what has been achieved: “Last Day does not satisfy our ambitions. It's simple good project. We will consider a hit to be the game that will be top 1 at the box office in the USA throughout the year, but for now we are taking aim,” says Andrey.

Today, Kefir employees work mainly on updates to Last Day on Earth, but some of them are focused on new projects. “Now we will actually have a bomb,” Pryakhin declares, refusing to give details. After conquering the mobile market, he dreams of making a game for PC. Andrey has no intention of selling his company in the foreseeable future: “It’s like building a city with love and then burning it down.”

"Director"

Pryakhin is a patriot of Volgograd, but his attitude towards his hometown is complex: Andrei himself says that it’s like “an attitude towards a mother who drinks.” “We love it, but there are some difficulties,” he explains, “the infrastructure is not so developed, plus the weather is not an acquired taste. But if we leave, we will deprive the city of taxes.” However, Pryakhin is, first of all, a rational businessman and says frankly: “If it becomes necessary to leave to save the business, we will do it.”

Andrey evaluates the success of the gaming business primarily by the volume of income. When a user likes or writes a kind comment, it doesn’t mean anything, he says, but when he gives his money, it’s a true recognition of the work.

Kefir has a fairly strict linear management style. “If you ever talk to director Andrei Pryakhin, you will understand that there is no point in arguing with him,” says one of the former studio employees. “He is a talented person, but you need to adapt to his character.” Behind his back, Pryakhin is often called in the company not by name, but simply “director.”

Pryakhin says that he delegates absolutely all tasks and gives preference to independent managers. But he takes on the most unpleasant responsibilities, such as firing employees, “so as not to injure managers”: “We are like a balloon - we inflate, hire a lot of people, and then see which of them is not good enough for the profession, and we narrow it down, firing these people.”

Salaries at Kefir reach Moscow levels, says the company’s director. One former employee disagrees with him: “If you compare work at Kefir and remote work at [Vologda-based mobile game developer studio] Playrix, then they pay less at Kefir,” he says. — The very top earn high salaries there, but ordinary employees do not. But they are higher than in Volgograd: the average salary in the city is 20 thousand rubles, and in Kefir it will be one and a half to two times higher.”

The company does not experience a shortage of personnel: candidates for various vacancies move to Volgograd from different cities, including St. Petersburg and Moscow. At the same time, Kefir cooperates with studios in Russia and abroad in the process of developing games. “I can write on Facebook: guys, we need a studio that can make projects using Unity. Then we build partnerships with some of them,” says Pryakhin.

“Kefir” brings Pryakhin the highest income, but games are not his only business. By his own admission, the entrepreneur leases commercial and residential real estate in Europe and Russia (247 thousand sq. m. in total) and buys securities, including government bonds of Russia and six other countries.

These businesses are not structured and are not related to gaming, says Pryakhin. He admits that he invests some of his gaming revenues in real estate, “but overall these are parallel businesses.” Bonds and real estate are passive businesses that allow you to create a safety net. “We are still creating it to this day, and it is already significant enough to make bold products in case there is a series of failures, as can be the case in any business, especially when you make bold games,” says the entrepreneur. According to him, real estate brings in less money than the gaming business: “In Russia it’s even more or less, and in Europe it’s generally 3-3.5% in terms of profit.”

But Pryakhin also has hobbies that require money. For example, a collection of expensive cars - 17 cars, including Lamborgini, Aston Martin and others. Andrey doesn’t want to buy a Tesla: he says that from a distance it looks like a Mazda. And recently he developed another hobby of the kind that wealthy people have - he decided to start organizing tourist flights into the stratosphere.

Tourist to the stratosphere

On October 14, 2012, people around the world tuned into YouTube to watch Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jump from the stratosphere from a height of 39 km. The live broadcast of this jump became the most popular in the history of YouTube: it was watched by 8 million people. Two years later, Baumgartner's record was broken by Google executive Alan Eustace, who jumped from a height of 41 km.

Stratonavtika LLC, which Pryakhin creates together with the founder of the Near Space laboratory Denis Efremov, wants to launch people to an altitude of up to 25 km. “We will do this on the territory of Volgograd, because we have nature here... Let’s just say, on the one hand, it’s sad that there are a lot of fields and wind, but on the other hand, in terms of launch it’s very cool,” he explains.

Efremov first came to Volgograd about two years ago. The guys from Kefir came up with an unusual corporate event: “We will develop and launch several stratospheric balloons ourselves.” All queries on the Internet led to Efremov’s company. Near Space has already carried out about 100 launches various items. Its services are also used by private companies that want to organize such a flight for advertising purposes.

“Whatever we had that flew was a nasal spray and a barrel for Gazprom, a flight was organized for Yandex,” Efremov lists. The company's services are used by schoolchildren and students, as well as scientists who need to test their inventions in conditions close to outer space. One launch costs approximately 200-300 thousand rubles.

Two years ago, Pryakhin and his collaborators launched five probes weighing 2 kg each. A year later, Efremov invited them to launch a spacesuit into the stratosphere “as the first stage of testing a manned flight.” Before this, Peter had never launched such heavy objects: the weight of the spacesuit with all the equipment reached 30 kg. A camera with a 360-degree view was installed inside the suit, the broadcast from which could be viewed on Earth in a virtual reality helmet. “You turn your head, and at the same time the camera rotates above, you feel almost inside a spacesuit,” recalls Efremov.

We prepared for six months, carried out tests, the flight was successful, its cost was several million rubles, recalls Efremov: “Both I and the guys from Kefir expected the worst. But no more than 10% of what we planned went wrong.”

Pryakhin and Efremov do not disclose the cost of the project to launch tourists into the stratosphere. “We have brought in more equipment: we recently received a quadcopter, which costs about 4 million rubles with cameras,” says Andrey. For those who want to see the Earth from a height of 25 km, it will cost several million rubles. The first manned flight will take place in one and a half to two years, Efremov hopes. He does not rule out the possibility of flying first.

Founder of the Kefir studio Andrey Pryakhin (Photo: Vladislav Shatilo for RBC)

The launch design is a huge ball or several balls. Underneath them is a parachute with a chair equipped with sensors, a radio communication and telemetry system, life support, ventilation, soft landing, oxygen supply, etc. “A man in a spacesuit sits in a chair and admires the Earth and space,” describes Efremov.

The founders of Stratonavtika will have to create a system for providing air and heat during flight, which will need to be placed in a spacesuit. The entire structure will weigh about 200 kg. “For the ticket price, we hope to meet $80 thousand, but the flights of Baumgartner and Eustace cost several million dollars each,” says Efremov.

"We perfect company»

Pryakhin does not strive to see the Earth from the stratosphere. “I’m afraid to fly even on regular planes,” he admits. The day after the interview, Kefir employees left on “their” train of six sleeping cars to Sochi to celebrate the company’s ninth anniversary. “There are three very important people in the company who don’t like to fly at all. Tomorrow, because of us, the whole company is going by train,” says Andrey. The train will travel along the Volgograd-Adler route; its preparation cost the company 6 million rubles, says Kefir employee Maria Pestrikova.

A year ago, the employees - all except Pryakhin and Kostylev - flew on a rented plane to a corporate event in the Maldives. Everyone could take one more person with them. “Renting an airplane was a little more expensive than renting a train. The plane could have been branded, but we didn’t, since we were flying to a place where Muslims mostly live,” says Pestrikova.

Photo: Vladislav Shatilo for RBC

“Kafir means “infidel” in Arabic, and players from Arab countries have long been writing angry comments in the app store and messages to technical support. “We explained to them that there is such a drink - kefir,” says Pryakhin. When asked why, in fact, “Kefir,” he gives an unexpected answer: “We were and remain fans of the Kino group.” Tsoi said in one of his interviews that he named the group that way because the name is not related to music. We decided that we would be called “Kefir”. The name, which is not related to the company’s activities, is a desire to stand out among others,” explains Andrey.

According to the studio, only 5% of Kefir game users live in Russia, and the majority of players live in the USA, Asia and Europe. “We are generally an ideal company in this regard. We are here, we earn in the USA and we spend here. Amazing,” says Pryakhin. Not everyone is now ready to become partners of a Russian company, but he does not want to open a legal entity abroad, and he does not regret the lost partners: “Well, screw them...”

“We are ready to fight everything and treat our city and Russia as a whole with great respect and awe. Now there should be an anthem here,” Pryakhin laughs.

Many move to the capital to work in a large studio, but there are also those who leave Moscow for the same reason. Alexander, an employee of the Kefir studio, who moved from Moscow to Volgograd two years ago, will tell you how this happens, where they are going and whether there is development beyond the Moscow Ring Road.

Kefir is a Russian game development studio, which you may know from “Last Day on Earth”, “Grim Soul”, “Tyuryaga”, “Metro 2033”, “In the Trench” and other popular projects. The total audience reach is approximately 170 million users.

Was it difficult to decide to move?

It's not easy, of course. It’s not even that I’m leaving the capital, it’s just that it’s always difficult to move from a familiar place. But my wife supported me, in addition, the studio pays for the apartment constantly, and not for the first couple of months - this is a serious plus.

Please tell us how the relocation took place?

A few days after the interview, we called HR. I accepted the invitation to the studio, we chose plane tickets, and I began to pack my things. At the airport I was met with a sign saying “Kefir” and taken to my new home.

I visited many guys who also moved here, so I can say that a good apartment is not luck, but the norm. It's nice.

And how were you received?

I was a little worried that they would bring me into the office as if it were a viewing party and that everyone would pay too much attention to me. Fortunately, this was not the case. I was simply personally introduced to the neighbors and the curator, and then during the day I got to know the others myself.

There is a probationary period, but there is no psychological barrier in the new team - they treat you as if you have been working for a long time, but have been away for a long time. They quickly bring you up to date, and you are immersed in full-time work. It’s just very important at this moment to understand the pace and mood of the team - you need to join in instantly, otherwise you’ll miss a lot.

How do you like Volgograd after Moscow?

Well, now you have to fly back to big concerts and festivals, but otherwise nothing has changed. Many people are afraid that after Moscow there will be nothing to do, but I have traveled half of Russia, including all 15 million-plus cities, and I say with all responsibility: each city is cool in its own way and you can find something to do everywhere.

At the same time, any city becomes boring if you live in it all your life. It immediately becomes good wherever we are not. Travel solves this problem for me personally. When you have a decent salary, you can easily afford to see the whole world. And since we're talking about money, Volgograd is much more financially livable.

What to do in the city, do you have any favorite activities?

Apart from work, my friends and I gather in cafes and bars - I can’t boast of event talent, but the studio regularly gives us some kind of cultural and entertainment shake-up. They organize exhibitions, bring speakers from Russia and Europe, and sometimes we all go somewhere together. So we don’t really worry about organizing leisure time ourselves; in the company, the party plan is scheduled for six months in advance.

Let's get back to workflows. Why Kefir?

In general, I came here out of curiosity - I watched enough videos, heard a lot of reviews from friends and decided to try it. The spirit of midcore and hardcore projects is close to me, but I’m completely indifferent to casual games, for example. A good approach is not to chase the trend, but to create something that, firstly, is not on the market, and secondly, something you want to play yourself. The guys who work here have a great sense of humor and a great love for cheerful toys. Last Day, for example, came about through a lot of in-studio Rust tournaments.

It went something like this:

Is there such a thing on mobile?

Many people think that working in your industry means constantly playing games, even during working hours, or even doing nothing else. What percentage of time is actually devoted to gaming?

You can even do nothing, yeah. I don't know who still thinks this way. Grandmothers at the entrance?

I don't understand why people are surprised to learn that playing a lot of games is part of our profession. We make games. We must know everything about them. Just like directors should watch movies, and musicians should listen to music. However, in any game studio, a person who plays from morning to evening and does nothing else will crash out instantly. It's obvious, I think.

Another thing is that many of our games are implemented in real life. Well, or games just became part of it. We regularly hold in-studio tournaments, go on raids together and create Kefir guilds. We are obliged to do this in order to see through and understand all projects and analyze them weak spots and take note of the strong ones. A normal excuse, by the way, for a wife at 4 am while playing a game: “Honey, I’m working.” And you won’t lie.

The internal reward system, dkp - “dragon kill points”, which we took from Warcraft, is funny. You kill dragons - that is, you are not late, you do not mess up, you work hard - you get points for it. And then at the auction you take away a gaming computer, an iPhone, a trip - whatever you want. This year I'm aiming for a MacBook Pro.

The main goal of dkp is not to train punctuality, of course. The biggest points are awarded for learning the games. This year we spent several months playing EVE: Online, PUBG, RUST, Warcraft and a dozen other lesser-known, recently released games. Masterpieces need to be known by sight.

Once every two weeks, Internet entrepreneurs and heads of Internet companies come to visit Maxim Spiridonov, co-founder and CEO of the educational company Netology Group, for an hour-long conversation. This is how the Runetology podcast is created. The Secret publishes the most interesting excerpts from these interviews.

31-year-old Andrey Pryakhin was born in Volgograd. In 2005 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Volgograd Academy of Public Administration. From 2005 to 2008 he was engaged in various types of business. In 2009 he founded the game development studio “Kefir!”

A recording of an interview with Andrei Pryakhin and other guests of Spiridonov can be found on the Runetology website.

You and “Kefir!” They are known primarily for the game “Tyuryaga” with its 13 million players, which exploits the craving of our fellow citizens for thieves’ romance. Is it right, from your point of view, to stir up interest in such an odious topic?

For a Russian person, it seems to me, the prison theme, like the Second World War, is part of the culture. We were rather surprised why no one had made such a game before us: the niche was free. We did only what our user wanted. “Tyuryaga” is already six years old, but it is still at the top and brings in good money.

I will say more, this is not a story about prison. Man from underworld I would laugh if someone said the opposite: I don’t even give a damn about the game. Slang is street, but reality is street.

After all, why not ask the creators Grand Theft Auto, is it right to teach people to hit a woman of easy virtue on the head. Besides, I have more questions about GTA than about Prison.

- What prompted you to start playing games on social networks?

We, as players, had a long-standing dream - to make games. We were looking for such an opportunity. We wrote concept documents even before going on social networks. We thought about browser games and other segments. But their budgets were quite high. We started with comic crafts, but when we added monetization to them, we saw that you can make money on social networks. We sat in the apartment for a year and a half - there were seven of us - and created a game for an audience of girls. Never again in my life will I do anything for girls or children in general: this is sheer torture. But the project paid off with interest. After another year and a half, we released “Tyuryagu”, and things went uphill.

Yes. For some time, city builders were also in fashion, but their popularity later waned. But the most significant thing for the industry was probably the appearance of “travians”, which have gained a strong foothold in it. The genre is named after the first game in it - Travian: you send an army, it goes, kills, and carries loot. They are now at the top mobile devices. On social networks too.

- Why, besides the theme, did “Tyuryaga” succeed?

It involved successful mechanics that we had tested previously. We also included in “Prison” schemes from a large game development (from the English game development - “game development industry.” - Note from “Secret”). We were the first to bring raid mechanics to social networks, when a group of players goes to kill the boss. It cannot be said that what “Tyuryaga” has achieved is due only to its setting. Later we did similar game in the context of the Second World War - “In the Trenches”. She became no less popular.

- Are all your successful projects based on VKontakte?

Not only. Of course, in terms of income at its peak, VKontakte brought more to Tyuryaga than Odnoklassniki, although in general they are comparable.

- How are you doing on Facebook?

From a business point of view, everything is great. But from the point of view of our ambitions, everything is sad. So far we are making decent money there, paying off the work of the team and making some profit. But we are not satisfied with the state of affairs. We want to be at the top. The point, I think, is in the specifics of the products. Still, the prison theme is closer to the residents of Russia. And the Second World War, especially looking at it from the outside Soviet Union, is not what occupies a Western player.

- On Facebook, do you make money on the Russian market or on foreign ones?

On foreign ones. In the general catalog, our games are still the same - available in three or four languages.

- How is the work of the studio organized?

From the very beginning, we tried to create teams that were independent from each other. So, I haven’t touched “Tyuryaga” for two years. The guys independently update and support it. The composition is the same as everywhere else: programmers, game designers, artists. In total, the company has more than 150 people. The main part is in Volgograd. And incredibly talented guys in St. Petersburg, with whom we have been for about a year.

- How are game teams managed?

At the discretion of the person who is at the helm. Some teams have very strict discipline and use management techniques closer to classical ones, while others use more flexible ones. We set standards for managers, and if the guys achieve results, then we absolutely don’t care how they conduct business.

- How many people make one game?

Depending on the project. Usually from 20 to 30.

Office of the company "Kefir!"

- Along with social games you had an experiment with the desktop - One Life. Did he fail?

No. The point is in the principle of our work, which, as time has shown, justifies itself: we develop several products, look at their performance based on the results of a soft launch (“soft launch” - testing a product on a limited audience. - Note from “Secret”) and, most importantly , on user reaction. And we pay maximum attention to what shows the highest performance. Previously, we tried to create several new projects in parallel, but without proper concentration we are unable to do this.

A year and a half ago we had three products: One Life, Forge of Glory and Totem Rush. We chose Forge of Glory out of the three because its performance is head and shoulders above the other two. Now we are working on it closely, concentrating on it. This does not mean that we are closing other projects or freezing them for a long time. The same thing happened with “Tyuryaga”. At that time, we were simultaneously making something like a Tamagotchi, something else. We saw the indicators of “Tyuryaga” - and that’s it: we concentrated on it.

- What are the main forces focused on now?

On Forge of Glory - mobile game. At this stage, 50–70 people are engaged in it. During the soft launch it showed good numbers. And our task is to make them even higher.

- Over the past year or two, interest in games on social networks has been gradually fading. How does this affect you?

It's fading, no doubt. But we don’t see this in our business. In the worst case, we have to talk about a decline of 5–7%. This is because we have an audience and we work with them. But we don’t want to make new games just for social networks. Firstly, there is nothing to do. No development platform. Unity is not suitable for social networks now, we tried it - and not only us. Flash will be disabled by default by Google at the end of 2016. No, a person from our established audience will go to the browser settings, click the checkboxes and play. But new users, of course, for the most part will not go anywhere. Secondly, social networks remain, but their use goes beyond the computer, and mobile games, not social ones, rule there. I add a lot of players as friends and when I open my friend list, I see that 80–90 percent of them are on mobile devices.

Is it possible that in a year, or at most in two or three, there will be almost no games left either on VKontakte or Odnoklassniki?

Even in two or three, they will. There is an audience. They will exist for a long time, especially the current hits. But in five years, if nothing happens and the market moves where it is moving, everything will most likely be very sad.

Essentially the same as before. Absolutely diverse audience. It depends on the product. If match3 (a mechanic in which the player must match three or more items in a row to make them disappear with playing field and brought him glasses. - Approx. “Secret”), then the vast majority are women. Our topics cover both teenagers and adults.

Has their willingness to pay changed recently?

Not in any way. The way they paid is the way they pay. The public is extremely loyal. Facebook pays very well. It is also very promising in terms of volume. It is possible to earn millions of dollars in it if the product is worthy. And the organics there are normal.

Apparently, you are in a solid advantage?

Yes, we're fine. Whenever possible, we, of course, invest in development and new teams. But, in addition, we invest in real estate. And thanks to the rental business - even if it is passive, “dumb” - we are able to do bold things like the same One Life. If suddenly we make a big mistake - Tyuryaga is closed, or something else happens - then thanks to such support we will be able to do what we love for many years without financial contributions from outside. Even with a series of failures. I planned this program several years ago, and it is practically implemented.

- In what plane do your new “bold things” lie?

Behind last year Our direction of development has changed. "Kefir!" goes completely into mobile games. The money that interests us lies there. Perhaps we will also work on client games. But mobile has priority.

- Isn’t it too late to do it?

Not at all. With “Tyuryaga” we entered the Russian market of games on social networks, when it seemed to be already crowded there.

- At what point did you decide to go mobile?

The decision was made very late, because we were making good money on social networks - and we continue to make money to this day. They finally matured when they realized that it was no longer possible to fully make games on social networks using Unity.

- With Forge of Glory you aim at international market or some local one?

To international. This is more expedient both in terms of volume and in other respects.

- Why did this game become the flagship?

We have a large number of concept documents. We choose the best from them. We create prototypes based on them. And from the prototypes we understand whether this or that project is worthy of further attention. Or we see the prospects of the game after the prototype stage. In many cases we can close the game altogether. Forge of Glory has passed all stages and is now in soft launch.

We analyze the audience’s reaction, buy a little and add traffic, and earn money. Let’s compare how much players were attracted to and how much money they received. We figure it out: push a little here, tighten it there. We study the return of users, then evaluate our colleagues in the workshop. Their retention is like this, ours is like this? It's okay, we'll live. Their life-time value is like this, and ours is like this? Great, we tweaked it some more. We bought an additional audience and ran A/B tests. You can sell some kind of “cheesecake” in the game for three rubles, or you can sell it for five. Who knows in advance what is best? Nobody. 2000 users bought it, ran a test and saw: cheesecakes are better bought for five rubles. Okay, we checked the box: now we sell for five rubles. A very tedious process. A soft launch can last a year or longer.

Yes, in Asia there are a lot of users similar to our audience. We are localizing the game, fortunately it suits the local residents perfectly in terms of mechanics. This is a light battler (a genre of games whose main content is fighting that do not require complex strategic calculations. - Approx. "The Secret") - what they love.

- Does the studio have other mobile games planned?

Yes. This, by the way, is a very big psychological problem for both me and the guys. Right now we're all focused on Forge of Glory. But there are already prototypes that people are itching to make. I have one of them on my phone now, I look at it and cry: I want to finish it and launch it. There is fire there, there will just be a breakthrough, I’m sure. We still get frustrated and distracted sometimes. But it's not right.

- Will you not look at other platforms and formats? PC, consoles, browser games?

Not currently. Along with mobile games, we are very attracted to client games, we will also try to work with them. But mobile is closer to us: development is faster, the budget is more modest, and the specifics are familiar to us.

- Are you building a studio alone?

Together with mine best friend Mikhail Talalaev.

- Are there only two shareholders?

- Have you been offered investment?

Yes, and often. But we were based in an apartment, there were five or seven of us. There were enough of our own.

- Earning from microtransactions, as far as I know, you get monthly revenue of $700,000

- What is your average payment in games?

In Russia - about 50 rubles.

- And how much does the average user spend on the game?

The order is thousands of rubles.

- And for how long? Year?

If it's a half-kit, then yes. And the “whales” - those who pay a lot - sometimes had more than a million rubles. Even, in my opinion, several million.

- Which industry trends excite you the most?

A virtual reality. It's hard to believe that it will be mastered in the near future, but I dream about it. Every day we spend three to four hours in our studio playing computer games. And we have tried all the VR gadgets that are available on the market (Oculus Rift and others). Only, being a player, I completely don’t understand how to practically use them now. For now it's an attraction. IN mall walked along the board, fell, laughed, drank beer, walked again with eyes closed- The girls clapped for you, you did well. But how to use it at home is a big question. I tried different games with short gameplay - not the same. Inconvenient. In my opinion, for a truly comfortable, addictive VR game at home, a completely different gadget should be created.

Cover photo: Kefir! Press service