The premises of a scientific institute decrepit, full Siberian forest, Daria Pavlova, a young designer, focuses on the setting of the next online video game of Alawar Entertainment, a Russian company that now sells worldwide.
Like her, about fifty other designers, programmers, writers and animators, almost all aged twenty years, working in the development studio located in Akademgorodok, a university town founded during the Soviet era suburb of Novosibirsk , the third largest city of Russia.
Far from the flashy studios of California or Europe, Alawar Entertainment has yet managed to break into the world stage, with games like "Farm Frenzy", "The Treasures of Montezuma" or "Robber Rabbits".Although less famous names as the video game Tetris, also created in Russia by mathematician Alexey Pajitnov in the 1980, but for some that are downloaded over 50 million times on websites such as Apple Store or Android Market.
Of tsunami modeling to video gamesAlawar's success story began in the mid-1990s, when Russia was recovering with difficulty from the fall of the Soviet Union, remembers Lyskovsky Alexander, CEO of the company today released a number of annual turnover of "tens of millions of dollars"."I was a student in Novosibirsk, and with my friends, we loved playing video games," said the little brown 35 at the beard, originally specializing in tsunami modeling.Few Russians then had a personal computer.
"However, there were at university and we sat there every night to play," he says.Until one of their teachers suggest they make a study plan: their vocation was born. Then they manage to get finance their first real game for PC by businessmen from the oil industry.But in 1998, Russia was hit by a terrible economic crisis and should devalue the ruble. Lyskovsky Alexander and his friends give up their games for sale in the country, and decide to make the creation of video games on the internet, called "casual games", to sell U.S. dollars and reap, currency much safer.
Then, the company is gaining fame and launches, in addition to the creation, in publishing and distribution of games designed by other companies. A venture capital company, Almaz Capital, then decides to invest funds.Today, Alawar Entertainment has six studios located in Russia and Ukraine, and also distributes hundreds of games from other small companies, mainly in the U.S. and Europe.A cheap laborThe benefits of being in Russia? Of outstanding academic quality, and cheap labor, says Lyskovsky.
"The further away from Moscow, wages become more normal and can be created for a very reasonable amount of good quality products", which would be much more expensive if they were created in Europe, he says.With the rise of smartphones and digital tablets, the group hopes to strengthen its position in its own country and covets new markets in Asia and Latin America.
A recent study by the consulting firm J'son & Partners, the global online gaming weighed 20.2 billion in 2011 and is expected to grow to $ 26.7 billion by 2013.In Russia alone, the market is forecast in 2013 to one billion dollars against 668 million in 2011, the firm predicts.