Hi all! What do you think about russian games, and russian developers? As you know there are a lot of good programmers, but why they don't make good games, which can be sold all over the world? P.S. Sorry for my English.

Did you really mean to post this in the AngelCode forum?

There's definitely a lot of potential in Russia, as there is here in Brazil. I imagine the biggest problem is that there are few big publishers in these countries that really try to promote the games developer. Because of that the developers are usually quite low on funds, which makes it even more difficult for them to create competitive games, which again makes it less probable that the publishers will notice them. It's a vicious cycle that will take years to break, and probably needs a lot of incentive from the government.

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Original post by WitchLord Did you really mean to post this in the AngelCode forum?

Sorry, could you transfer this post to more actual forum, plz, because descussions about russian game industry and opinions are very important for me.



[Edited by - Maxim84 on March 3, 2009 7:09:52 AM]

btw, there are some successful russian game companies:
for example: http://www.transporter-game.ru/
http://forum.rigsofrods.com/index.php?topic=16008.0

:)

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Original post by tdev btw, there are some successful russian game companies: for example: http://www.transporter-game.ru/ :)

It's not a company, it's a game. And a saw it at first time, when you wrote the link on this game =)

I guess that is because all the russian coders are busy cracking games or hacking someone else's computer [smile]
I always had this strong notion that every russian coder is some uber hacker.I am probably wrong though.
By the way isn't Nival a Russian company they developed HoMM5

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Original post by Black Knight I guess that is because all the russian coders are busy cracking games or hacking someone else's computer [smile] I always had this strong notion that every russian coder is some uber hacker.I am probably wrong though.

I'm so sorry, but I don't know english as good as I want, and I can't explain to you, that you are wrong. I'll try:

Yes, there are some persons, who make money by hacking, but there are small part of them, others do it for fun (most of them are studens)

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By the way isn't Nival a Russian company they developed HoMM5

Yes you're right, now they are making Allods Online with budget $20 millions. But as I know, Neval is an exeption from the rules, and, for my person opinion they do not make good games, as good as foreign contries do.

And my question is still actual, why our programmers emmigrate and make good, very good games working in foreign companys?

I moved this thread to the Business of Game Development forum.

I think the reason the talent in Russia is emmigrating to other countries is mostly because of the salaries and living conditions. I don't know Russia as well as I'd like but if I'm not mistaken the salaries there are not that great compared to the USA and western Europe for example.

The wide spread piracy is probably part of the blaim as well. Investors tend to think that returns from games is low due to high piracy rates, so it becomes even more difficult to raise funds for the developers. (Whether piracy actually have an impact on the returns or not is another question that is best not asked here.)

Brazil is in a very similar situation, but I'm seeing a growing interest from the government to incentivate game development. So hopefully we'll soon have a prosperous game development industry here.

[edit]Just discovered 4A Games, as one of their developer contacted me about BMFont. I believe they are russian, and their game Metro 2033 looks amazing. Just thought I'd share this here. :)[/edit]

[Edited by - WitchLord on March 3, 2009 11:47:40 AM]

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Original post by WitchLord [edit]Just discovered 4A Games, as one of their developer contacted me about BMFont. I believe they are russian, and their game Metro 2033 looks amazing. Just thought I'd share this here. :)[/edit]

No, they not russians, the ukrainian. Russia and Ukrain two different counries, like Brazil and Arentna, for ex =)

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I don't know Russia as well as I'd like but if I'm not mistaken the salaries there are not that great compared to the USA and western Europe for example.

Yes, you absolutely right, 99% of russian games sells in Russia, and in better case, in eastern Europe. So, we decided, it will be good to try sell our game in Europe, and, may be in USA.

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The wide spread piracy is probably part of the blaim as well.

I guess it's the biggest problem in game dev industry in Russia, we know about it, so we work on MMORPG area, and as you know this in many ways solve problems with pirates. We hope =)

[Edited by - Maxim84 on March 5, 2009 2:01:46 AM]

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Original post by Maxim84 No, they not russians, the ukrainian. Russia and Ukrain two different counries, like Brazil and Arentna, for ex =)

My mistake. I should have taken a closer look at the company info. :)

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Original post by Maxim84 Yes, you absolutely right, 99% of russian games sells in Russia, and in better case, in eastern Europe. So, we decided, it will be good to try sell our game in Europe, and, may be in USA.

Yes, I think this is the right way to do it. You'll have more return from the games this way, which in the end will be better for the investors, and if the investors are happy there will be more funds to make even better games in the future.

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Original post by Maxim84 I guess it's the biggest problem in game dev industry in Russia, we know about it, so we work on MMORPG area, and as you know this in many ways solve problems with pirates. We hope =)

Yes, MMORPG seems to be relatively piracy free. I don't like this trend too much though, I really prefer a good single player game over MMORPGs. But that's just a personal preference. ;)