Andrey Gushchin, a solo developer of mobile games, was recently interviewed on a webinar hosted by Evgeny Grishakov. In this interview, Andrey spoke about:
- How he got into the game development career
- The promotion and monetization strategies of the games he created
- How he published games on Voodoo and so much more
Andrey also gave lots of tips for beginner game developers. We have gathered the most exciting parts of the developers. We have gathered the most exciting parts of the hour-long interview in this article.
Andrey’s Background
At 14, Andrey became interested in the development of mobile games with the Unity software. He started developing games at an amateur level in his free time as a teenager and continued for 8 years. During this time, Andrey worked in non-IT industries. He worked as a salesman, as a worker at a factory, and so on. His monthly income was around $250 (15 000 rubles in Russia).
One day, a vacancy for a game developer job was announced in his hometown of Kirov, which he applied to, successfully passed the interview, and landed the job. The monthly salary was $570 (35 000 rubles), which was a lot of money in Kirov.
Creating His First Game
Andrey said that working in the game development studio significantly improved his development skills. He began making his own small games, and he finally published his first game on Voodoo.
Voodoo SAS is a video game developer and publishing company based in Paris, France. The company was founded in 2013 by Alexander Yazdi and Laurent Ritter. Voodoo games are usually free, casual games. As of May 2021, the company's total game installs exceeded 5 billion. The company has been criticized for cloning other people's games.
Andrey’s first game was simply about jumping the character from board to board and overcoming obstacles, which got complicated with higher levels.
The CPA of the game was about $1.2, which was a bit high. So Voodoo refused to work with Andrey.
Andrey then decided to take the publishing rights of his game from Voodoo and place it on other sites. However, Voodoo noticed that he is a promising developer, and the company gave him a personal manager, with whom he began experimenting on the second game. The goal was to build a game with a CPM of about $0.5.
The Second Game
The principle of the second game was to collect weapons and fire them at a crowd of enemies. The characters and the playing field looked like capsule balls and the like.
The retention of the game was between 25% and 30%. On the one hand, these are pretty average numbers for the first version, and on the other hand, it makes no sense to invest in a game with such a retention rate. Nevertheless, Andrey and the Voodoo manager tried to shake it up for 4 months, and they learned that the game could not be raised to higher retention rates. Andrey decided to stop further experiments with the second game.
The Voodoo team, represented by the manager, liked Andrey’s skills and work rate, so they offered him funds for a new game project on the condition that he test it on Voodoo. And if the tests were successful, Voodoo would exclusively place the game in their publishing house.
Andrey accepted the offer from Voodoo, and in January 2022, he was given $3 300 (200 000 rubles), and he quit his game development studio job to focus entirely on developing a new game funded by Voodoo.
In the process of experimenting with game shaders, Andrey managed to make snow. This is how the idea for the game Snow Speculator was born, and Andrey went on to build the game.
Initially, the game's retention rate was relatively modest at 35%, but at the same time, the playtime was about 40 minutes. He also managed to get a pretty good CPA of 35% within the game. Therefore, Voodoo decided to release it.
Andrey says that the Snow Speculator game belongs to the idle game category and is quite extensive in content.
An incremental game, or "idle game" (from the English "lazy game"), is a computer game in which the gameplay consists of performing simple actions, such as repeatedly tapping the screen. Clicks are usually performed to earn in-game currency.
Other Voodoo developers took part in the creation of individual game elements. For example, they already had a ready-made city, which they restyled with the Snow Speculator theme. There were also many other features that Andrey tested with his partners' developers. Thanks to such teamwork, the guys managed to come up with a lot of creative ideas and try them out.
The game received over 1 million installs in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
Troubles with Payments
The Voodoo paid Andrey a fee for Snow Speculator after it was released. According to him, the process of obtaining money took several months. This was due, firstly, to the fact that, by the time the transfer was made, sanctions had come into effect against residents of the Russian Federation.
Andrey received the first installment payment from Voodoo in his Russian bank, but the following installments could not be made. So Andrey opened a sole proprietorship in Georgia remotely to receive the rest of the payment from Voodoo.
Andrey did not say the exact amount he was given for the game, but he hinted that it was a bit lower than $50 000.
Andrey's Fourth Game
For several months, Andrey thought about the concept of his next game after receiving a bankroll from the previous one. He finally got an idea, drew the prototype, and began to develop it. The game was called The Bucket Crusher.
Andrey says that the game turned out exactly the way he imagined it. He later added new levels, some progression mechanics, and other cosmetic changes, but in general, the game's mechanics have remained unchanged since the creation of the prototype.
Andrey said it took him 24 hours to create the prototype and the video.
The gameplay of the game involves an excavator with a long arm instead of a bucket, at the end of which a rotating wheel with teeth is installed. The game's goal is to destroy brick buildings, which must be completed while the excavator has fuel.
The more bricks destroyed and collected by the "vacuum cleaner," the more coins the player will collect and use to upgrade his skills and move to the next level.
In the game, as you upgrade your skills and collect coins, it is possible to increase your excavator’s length, top up your fuel, and so on.
The game went on to become a success, and Voodoo even held a webinar for developers where they presented the Bucket Crusher as a successful case.
Andrey claims that the payment he received from Voodoo for the Bucket Crusher game was ten times that of Snow Speculator. The Bucket Crusher game is still at the top of its niche and generates income.
Andrey also says that Voodoo has a scale that determines the payment to developers for every 1 000 downloads of a mobile game.
Plans for the Future
Voodoo not only publishes mobile games from contracted developers but also actively develops its own games. At this stage, Andrey is still highly reliant on this studio for both creating and monetizing his games.
In the future, he plans to create his own studio to complete the entire game development process. He believes that making such a move will enable him to negotiate partnerships with bigger publishers on more favorable terms.
Tips for Developers
Andrey could not withhold giving tips to new developers who are getting into the game development space, and they go as follows:
- Before you sit down and write the first line of code, you must think about the game's visual component. Also, how will you monetize it?
- Hyper-casual games are a specific niche in which you must first create a purchasable version. So you won't be able to get users through organic traffic alone but rather through paid traffic.
- Do not hunt for other people's ideas; nothing good will come of them. The game can go to the audience only if you make something unique.
- Don't be afraid to try. Games often take off from the fourth or fifth version. The first three versions usually fail.
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