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.DigitalBackSpin
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.The Wargamer

The videogame industry is an interesting one. Instead of pretending like I know much about it, I decided to ask some folks who actually do - we do, however, reserve the right to continue to gripe and complain. This is the first in a series of articles we'll be having with developers and publishers who are either new, smaller outfits, or just not well-known in North America, comment on topics regarding the industry, including their ordeals and successes. Some will have a single title under their belt while others will have several, but we feel that all of the companies are worth taking note of due to the quality of their work. We thank the participants for their time, and we certainly hope you enjoy yourselves as well.
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We are now talking with Nival. Nival has recently released the award winning Silent Storm, as well as one of my, and masochists worldwide, favorite World War II strategy titles, Blitzkrieg. As one of Russia's premier developers, Nival holds a special place in gaming at the moment with a solid library of released titles that they have either developed or co-published.

Commenting on our topics below is Larisa Baklanova, PR Manager of Nival - who does a fine job, just check out the nicely inserted quotes and plugs, someone give 'em a raise. Also, many emoitcon smileys were killed in the making of this; R.I.P., little guys. Special thanks to Dmitry Kolpakov for the assistance. Round 2 ... Ready... Go!

Nival Interactive

Commenting: Larisa Baklanova (PR Manager) Country of origin: Russia Number of employees: 120+ Year of company's creation: 1996 Working on: Silent Storm: Sentinels and Blitzkrieg II Titles Developed/Published Blitzkrieg Silent Storm Also: Rage of Mages series, Etherlords I and II, Evil Islands, and co-published many more.

Comment on the current state of software (gaming) development now and its future there:

Russkies are coming! Russia holds very strong positions in the world game industry now and is steadily moving towards becoming the world's leader in game development. Russian developers are coming to the international market, and this "fresh blood" is what the industry needs now.

Besides, Russia always has had very high level in hard science, sometimes even setting world standards in it. We here at Nival have a number of employees who have worked abroad in the computer industry and returned as they realized that the industry here was quickly maturing to a level that suited their expertise. Such strong base of professionals allows Russian developers for new technological solutions. Say, in Silent Storm we introduced totally destructible environments in which almost all objects interact according to real physics, and for this Silent Storm was called "a new standard in TBS". Russian IL-2 Sturmovik was by many named "the best simulator at this date", S.T.A.L.K.E.R., soon to be issued, is already "a new classic in the FPS" material, and as more and more projects are coming up from Russian developers, we can say, that the future of Russian industry is to be inalienable from the world gaming industry.

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Mistakes made and corrections:

In a creative matter the most often mistakes may come from a wrong choice. So if you want to listen to a story… Ok, lads, let me tell you a fairy tale then! Once upon a time, several men and women were sitting around a table and brain-storming the storyline for Silent Storm. The ideas they had were brilliant, but they couldn't come to an agreement. Suddenly, one of them said: "Well, why don't we let an impartial intellect decide?" And so they decided the story clues to be randomly chosen by the AI. And Silent Storm became even more magically replayable, and this was good. And all the gamers of Silent Storm lived happily there after.

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If you are still contemplating, it's time to give it a final thought! In the industry you have to be the same like in any computer game itself - firm, unflinching, a good strategist and of course, creative, constructive and original. Contemplating is not in the list… so maybe you'd better to either plunge in or to reject this idea!

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Well, for a game development studio Nival is rather large company - over 120 employees, so I don't know if we can comment this issue for small companies. Of course, we could turn to our previous experience, but it was time ago and things have certainly changed since then.

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Well, we do not compete with larger companies, we just make our games as good as we can. And we do not fight for the shelf space at all. In Russia we have won this battle already, but actually we didn't really fight, we just made good games. Gamers always decide for themselves who's the winner. As for the foreign market we are too far here in Moscow to fight for the shelf space there, so we let our publishers to handle the issue. Everybody must be doing what he is best in - we make games, publishers sell games.

As for the niche market - it what the gaming market is, a row of many niches, one for each genre. Each game of Nival holds top positions in its niche. And sometimes it even opens its own niche - like Blitzkrieg which started the tendency of historical WWII games, or Silent Storm, that has raised TBS genre from the dead.

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Since our first project (original Rage of Mages) Nival was issuing its games to the foreign market as well. The secret is simple - to crack a foreign market you need a high-quality product, plus a good publisher. But that's what makes up a good publisher - they see the difference and are ready to cooperate if the product is really world-class.

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I'd like to point out that all comments are based on the Nival's experience. Certainly, that some issues are rather different for each country and even for each team. Other than that I think that this interview is rather detailed and covers the majority of the issues that might be of interest. Thank you for your interest and questions.

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