Vladimir Putin - Gamer

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Gam-developers give delay from the army, e-sports is introduced into university programs, and new patriotic shooters are created with budget money. They even want to teach drones with the help of video games. Soon all the games will become patriotic and none of the developers will be able to hide from the state? We understand the economy and ideology of the gam industry in Russia.

• Author

  

  Author

  Nikita Ryazan

• Editor

  Editor

  Kirill Shalimov

• Illustrator

  Illustrator

  Window

• Publication

  October 5, 2023

Sparta, Troubles and Folk Tales

“In the category of“ Games and in ”support will receive eight projects, including [...] Two games based on folk tales:“ Three heroes and magic city ”and“ Vasilisa and Baba Yaga ””, in June 2023, the Institute for the Development of the Internet (IRI) announced the next winners of the National Content Competition. According to the head of IRI, one of the largest propaganda organizations in the country, during the war the gam-development_tsy received 1.5 billion rubles from them, and not only for “fairy-tale” content.

For example, a tactical game won 90 million Genre combining strategy and RPG. As a rule, the game comes from a third person, the player can plan the actions of several characters and give them tasks. Sparta about PMCs - private military companies - with references to the ancient epic. The producer of the Lipsar studio (Innopolis, Tatarstan) Gleb Durnovo said about the game: “There will be no direct references or references to the actually existing Russian private military companies, including the Vagner PMC. But

Several of our scriptwriters who work on the game participated in hostilities in Syria. "

Funny fact: if you read the name of the studio from right to left, you get a “cut”.

In the competition of 2021, Iri issued 490 million studio Cyberia Nova (Novosibirsk) on RPG The genre, where the player controls a specific character or group, develops them and can identify himself with them. There are RPG elements in many genres: from a first -person shooter to step -by -step strategies. "Troubles." The plot of the game is based on the adventure novel "Yuri Miloslavsky, or Russians in 1612." Miloslavsky is a fictional hero who first adjoins the Poles and even falls in love with the Pansky daughter, but in one of the spy tasks in Nizhny Novgorod he hears the patriotic appeals of Minin. As a result, he joins the Russians and liberates Moscow.

IRI Director said that he was ready to support the creation of a whole universe in “Troubles”: for example, to develop a mobile version or a series of educational cartoons for school_z. The first steps have already been taken: bloggers Klim Zhukov and Dmitry Puchkov (Goblin), together with the creators of the game, will release a series of videos about the history of Russia 16-17 centuries with Iri money.

In August 2023, the profile center at the Ministry of Civil Academy prepared the concept of the development of the gam industry. According to Kommersant's insids, the state is ready to allocate developers to $ 50 billion. According to the plan, by 2030, 5 Gam-Gorodov should appear in Russia-centers of domestic games, and the total number of gaming companies will grow 6 times-up to 300.

Why is the gam industry so attractive to the state? What does the authorities invest: in propaganda, the illusion of peaceful life or the extension of the economy and military potential? And what changed in the industry after the start of a full -scale war?

Before the war: profit, international cooperation, e -sports

In 2021, the volume of the Russian video game market, that is, their real sales, amounted to 177.4 billion rubles. For comparison, the volume of the cinema market for the same year is about 40 billion, online cinemas -about 55 billion: less even in total. In the same 2021, Russia entered the first five countries according to the number of buyers. The video game industry was one of the most competitive sectors of the economy in the country.

At the same time, the “golden years” of the Russian Gamdev is the line of the 1990s and 2000s. Then there were games that noticed in the world market. For example, “IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle for Stalingrad” (2001) from “1C: Maddox Games” (Moscow), where players can participate in aircraft engines on the side of English, American, German, French, Soviet and Japanese aircraft, including online. In the "truckers" (1998) from SoftLab-NSK (Novosibirsk), the player participates in races by truck, transports goods and tries to earn a large amount. A little later there were victories in the mobile market. The most famous is “Cut the Rope” (2010) from Zeptolab (Moscow, now Barcelona).

Then, in the 2010s, Russian studios, as a rule, worked as contractors for large Western companies. In 2014, the ruble was sharply weakened: this increased the costs of its own developments, but the work of Russian game designer_k was reduced. Western developers saved, giving some subtasks to outsources to Russia. For example, 5518 Studios (St. Petersburg, now Los Angeles) was developed by models (figures and movement) of heroes for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Star Trek: Fleet Command, Fortnite and others.

Russia was noticeable in e -sports. In 2021, the Team Spirit team became the winner of the Dota 2 Computer Game Championship - The International 10. The winnings amounted to $ 18.2 million. Teams from Russia won international competitions in Counter Strike.

At the same time, indie games developed in Russia, as a rule, with a small budget. They found their audience thanks to international marketplaces, primarily Steam. The main tools for Gamdev were also Western. These are “engines” - programs in which games are created (Unity, Unreal Engine), and code storage sites (Github).

We summarize: the domestic gamdev was tightly connected with large foreign developers and was built into the world infrastructure of marketplaces, programs and competitions

During the war: emigration, subsidies, import substitution

Many companies left Russia. The CEO of one of the large studios spoke about the characteristic example of Sperasoft from St. Petersburg: “She was engaged in the development of large outsors. It works with franchises such as Assassin's Creed, [...], Mass Effect, League of Legends, Fifa and others. But in connection with the situation, they were forced to translate the main state, as far as I know, to Armenia and Serbia. ” The Mundfish studio (Moscow -KiPR), which in 2023 released the ATOMIC Heart game noticeable in foreign markets, stopped positioning itself as a Russian company, focusing on the Cyprus office. True, VK Play became one of the publishers of the game, and in the International Game Critics it caused large-scale disputes due to the romanticization of the Soviet past and the sexualization of female bodies.

It has become more difficult to cooperate with Western companies. Due to the strengthening of the ruble in the summer of 2022, the work of Russian developers_z became more expensive in dollar equivalent and therefore less demanded in foreign markets. In 2023, the ruble was weakened again, but the Russian studios already managed to fire thousands of cooperation.

When Russia was turned off from Swift, it became almost impossible to sell games abroad. It became more difficult for Russian gamers_kam to buy imported content. In 2022, the number of user_nits, which at least once pirated games, was 69%, and 55% began to do this more often than in 2021. The market situation can roll back 20 years ago, when the piracy level reached 95%. The question will arise whether the game studio can make money at all.

The state came to the rescue

The Russian government tried her best to overcome the crisis in the gam industry, and not only with the help of grants for games. Rostec, a state -owned company that also performs defense order, in September 2022 proposed creating its own “engine” in return for Unity and Unreal Engine. Then the initiative did not receive great support, but in 2023 VK invested a billion rubles in creating its own engine by 2025.

The authorities also forms infrastructure and markets for the gaming industry. Tinkoff, Mosbirzha, Sber and even more than 70 IT companies participate in the testing of the Russian GitHub. GitHub is a service for storing code and the history of applications and games that allows large teams to work together. The creation of the Russian analogue was discussed back in 2021, but the work was launched in 2022, and they promise to show the results by 2024. The mincifers allocated about 1.3 billion rubles for the development.

Russian companies are also developing the Steam Marketplace. In 2022, VK ​​launched the VK Play platform. It acts not only for the distributor of content, but also plans to allocate 300 million for curricula in universities and support for gam studios. In general, the authorities are actively involved in the training of game "personnel". By 2024, it is planned to include courses for "e -sports" in university programs. In some, for example, to the Higher School of Economics, this has already happened .

The state helps Russian developers and with access to international markets. Minzifra, together with VK, oversees distribution in China. “The whole program is preparing about how to stimulate and support the export of Russian games to China. We understand that this can somehow compensate for departure from those markets where we have difficulties, ” said the head of the Ministry of Cyphra Maksut Shadaev.

For what the state loves Gamdev: technology, propaganda, control over leisure

Obviously, one of the goals of the state is propaganda. Television cannot reach young people, so grants for games and brigade brigade are used. Some developers are not shy about such a task. The CEO of Cyberia Nova, a studio that creates the game “Troubles”, said in the summer: “I came up with such a maxim: we are the third militia. The second militia is Nizhny Novgorod, which drove the Poles from Moscow, and now we are standing back-k-spin, men, hold the defense [...]

We already know how to make games, now, echoing the words of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, we must make useful games filled with historical meaning

The fact that the state sees in the games the instrument of propaganda is also indicated by censorship. For example, the wording of the Law on the ban “LGBT propaganda” applies to the game, although there were no examples of its application yet. Also, domestic sellers refused to sell the new Call of Duty due to the scenes of violence against Russians.

Can games themselves convince gamer in a particular version of history - a controversial issue. But “Troubles”, “Sparta” are built into the full cycle of the production of patriotism: the state prepares developers in universities, and for gamero, prepares games that complement and illustrate “Talking about the important”. In addition, investments in Gamdev have another meaning.

Firstly, the game industry is a leisure sector that allows the authorities to maintain the illusion of peaceful life. More than 88 million Russians over 18 years old - Gamer_ki. If only uncompetitive Russian games remain in access, some of the gamer_k will have the question: what happened? Secondly, many developers are ready to cooperate with the authorities and compromise with it, whether to fulfill the order for “national content” from IRI or agree with the requirements of Russian censorship. Thirdly, the game industry is a worthy taxpayer.

Finally, in the spring of 2023, the mincifres proposed creating a support fund for companies that develop drone management simulators. According to Flydrone general director, which produces digital products for drones, “piloted aircraft simulators [...] are a huge help in practical skills.” “They have a very narrow audience. Projects will be commercially successful only if we develop e -sports discipline, for example, drone races, ”another expert commented. But the main thing is that

investing in the Game Industry and preserving the specialist in the country, the state reserves the opportunity to use them for military purposes

Games without a state

The authorities capture the sphere of leisure to close the life of citizenships. When only a video from VK and the game from the Ministry of Construction, there may be a feeling that cooperation with the state is the only possible life strategy. This is the only way to do something worthwhile, much less earn.

But besides large companies that see the means of earnings in games, and the state that is engaged in propaganda, there are developers who want to make the world better. We talked with one of them-Yan Yookond , the creator of the game " League of Enthusiasts-Loaders ." In it you can play for 30-year-old guys who need to find a treasure to pay for rent, and for this-go on a trip around Moscow.