By Jim Rossignol on January 5th, 2009 at 11:24 am.
This is a piece about Russia, Ukraine, and the future of PC gaming. It is about creativity, piracy, and thirteen tonnes of software every day.
A version of this article, which is based on my trip to Moscow and KRI last April, appeared in the May edition of PC Gamer UK. I’ve updated and expanded it for RPS, and broken it into two parts for ease of reading. Here’s part two.
Moscow’s Cosmos Hotel is a formidable structure and a startling venue. The huge, curving hi-rise is a classic of 1970s Soviet architecture and would not look out of place on the set of a Bond movie – all concrete, metal and polished wood, surrounded by trodden snow and patrolled by men in long coats. Inside the curves continue with long wood-panelled corridors, which are inhabited exclusively by grim-faced maids. The open foyer and gift shop are all faux-space race credentials (Neon sign reading: “Welcome, Yuri Gagarin Bar!”) and Vegas-like slot machines. There is a sizeable gold-plated mace with matching dagger in the gift-shop.
Stepping out of the Cosmos’ heavy glass doors you’re greeted with the domed rooftops of the national exhibition centre, and a giant constructivist sculpture of a rocket heading for the skies. Miles beyond that, there’s a vast, brutalist television tower, which would not look out of place in City 17. Suddenly Half-Life 2′s Citadel has a real-world cousin, and Russia seems to live up to its legends. This evocative locale is the location for KRI, Russia’s own game developer conference. Most of the games being developed in the former USSR, and the surrounding countries, are being shown here. There could be no better venue.
Into The Cosmos
In many ways it’s a typical games show, with peculiarly-clad ladies (some dressed in silken air-hostess uniforms, others draped in little more than paint) dispensing fliers and mild embarrassment on the show floor. The show is, I suppose, a kind of validation of the size and scale of the Russian games industry as it exists today. There are technology stands, and some game stands, but overall a wealth of companies of all sizes, both global and local. While there are dozens of smaller companies now operating in Russia is is 1c that dominates completely in the publishing arena. Many companies want to have their say on the future direction of the Russian games industry, but the towering yellow wealth of the 1c stand suggests who might really be holding most of the cards.
I wandered around and got to play a few games. Death Track was ludicrous: a kind of brutal rally version of Wipeout, with post-apocalyptic European capital cities and battle-cars decked out with fiery lasers. I sat down to play for several laps, and get flashbacks to the end of the Nineties, when futuristic racers turned up on the shelves every few weeks. I watched the EU exploding in some kind of hybridised version of World Rally Car and Gears Of War. The producer, an elegant young woman from Voronezh, explained to me that gamers like to get feedback from their acts of digital violence. I nodded.
Later, in one of the Cosmos’ darkly panelled hotel rooms, I was to be demoed the ultra-realistic Men Of War, by the ruin-faced lead producer. An intense forty-something man, he explained to me in excruciating detail just how detailed the damage model for the game is, forcing my translator to work double time to articulate his explanation of how armour-piercing rounds travel through buildings and into armoured vehicles. The game blew me away as I blasted buildings, Tiger tanks, and Nazis.
Then there was Captain Blood: a game that lived up to its name with surges of God Of War-alike violence and caricatured ship-to-ship combat. It’s remarkably polished, and ready for the consoles. But I’m unsure if that game will ever hit PC, given its hack ‘n’ slash sensibilities. 1c talked up its Xbox pedigree.
There was also a surprise in the form of hybrid-RPG King’s Bounty. It’s a game comparable to the most recent Heroes Of Might & Magic title, and yet surpassing it on all fronts. The turn-based battles are dominated by vast monsters, while the world-wandering is so vast and intricate that you can even add a wife and child to your inventory. Be careful she doesn’t divorce you – she’ll take half your gold! I marvelled at it, and wondered why we see so few of these kinds of games today: surely they’re our answer to the ultra-stylised Japanese RPGs? Quietly, I noted the game down. I suspected someone back home would probably like this game when it gets an English translation…
The star of this particular show, however, seems to be Cryostasis. It is dark, and weird, and technically proficient. The opening minutes of the game see you stumbling through a raging blizzard to get to the frozen ship inside which most of the game will be played out. The showpiece, however, are the flashbacks into which your character stumbles, deliriously, as you struggle through the game: touch a corpse and you get to relive their final minutes, and play through sections of the game on the ship as it was before it became marooned and haunted in its Arctic grave. A game that plays with memory, distorts time and reality, and makes you care about staying warm. It’s fascinating, and exhilaratingly violent. Cryostasis shows just how aggressive the Russians are being in their reinvention of classic game designs. I can’t wait to see whether the final game actually pulls it off (we hear it doesn’t – RPS RumourBot), perhaps that doesn’t even matter.
Finally leaving the big names behind, I wander into the show floor. There’s the stand with a couple of developers who can’t speak English. Their work is all in Cyrillic Russian, and I have no idea what the name of the game is. They’re demoing something where six-armed mutants are exploding each other with energy pulses. I watch it for a few minutes, and see the various developers unload their enthusiasm onto people who actually share their language. It leaves me intrigued, wondering just what else was awaiting us in Russian studios – the games yet unshared and unannounced by their creators. I had left GDC in San Francisco, earlier in the year, with a similar feeling.
I later learn that these guys are students, desperately trying to sell their first game, which doesn’t even have a name – it’s called something like “our game project 2008”. I wonder if the world will ever see that bizarre little experiment brought to the market. In contemporary Russia, you might expect that it we will.
Thirteen Tonnes
Of course the ex-Soviet countries are as much consumers of these games as they are producers, and their market is still very much based on retail product. This means that the Russian frontier of the games industry isn’t simply faced with problems of development experience, creativity and design, it’s a logistical problem. It is the biggest country in the world, and the distances alone mean that people want to buy software from the shops, because they don’t have, and can’t have, broadband.
Just 142 million people have 17 million square kilometres to live in. (Compare that to 60 million of us in the UK sharing just 245,000 square kilometres). It’s an eight-day train journey from Moscow to Vladivostok, where the the King’s Bounty team reside. They couldn’t make it to KRI for that very reason. What’s more it’s a place where publishers need to battle with the problems of distribution and rampant retail piracy. We might get upset about torrent sites and online theft, but up until a few years ago most games sold in Russia were pirate copies sold as packaged products on the street. The cost of broadband meant, for the larger part, it was cheaper to buy pirate product from a vendor. The problem was so bad that pirate companies were reportedly approaching publishers to offer to distribute their games. This has been quite fiercely stamped out by the Russian authorities.
The main company engaged in tackling all this is 1c, which we know for games, but in Russia it sells all kinds of more practical software – Cyrillic-language accounting programs and so forth. 1c ships a staggering thirteen tonnes of software every day, of which 98% is games. In the games arena, 1c are peerless, and republish Miscrosoft and Electronic Arts products, as well as promoting their own homegrown materials. Unlike Western publishers they even run their own software stores, which are a scattered across Moscow and the other large cities of Russia. There are now 280 1c-owned stores, and another 4000 franchises operating with the 1c licence in 600 locations across the former Soviet bloc. It’s a gigantic operation, and one that is making its owners rather wealthy.
These street-level stores, it turns out, are one of the most important ways in which the company are taking on Russia’s key problem: piracy. Gaming in Russia is around 70% PC-based, and so it was relatively easy for pirates to gain the upperhand, selling games for a few roubles in the same subway stalls that people use to buy cigarettes, cans of coke, and pocket-sized bottles of Vodka. 1c knew they had to combat this and their approach was quite brutal. Firstly they launched retail products that were super cheap, to compete with the pirates, and bear them on support and service. And then they lobbied for legislation to help them out.
This side of the coin is a little darker. The pirates were making a lot of money and weren’t likely to be stopped easily. They were mass-producing packaged copies that looked like real games, and were competing directly with the actual, licensed publishers for commercial product. 1C went as high as they could: to President Vladimir Putin himself. The man from the KGB soon realised just what value this burgeoning industry would be to his vast, developing country. The punishment for commercial piracy is now up to seven years in prison. A Russian prison. As disincentives go, it’s a good one.
With 300 people a year now jailed for software theft, piracy is rapidly disappearing quickly in the major cities of Russia. The Russian government have even managed to close some of the major torrent sites, and have published an anti-piracy guide to help retailers avoid getting burned by illegal distributors. It is a tough regime, but the Russian government know that they can’t allow crime to dominate their development: in gaming as much as anywhere else.
As more and more people shopped in the 1c stores, so the Russian publishers have been able to raise their prices back towards what it is in the West. All this has allowed the cost of games to rise, and therefore making gaming in Russia a profitable business at last, as well as a rather more expensive one for consumers. While a pirated game costing £2 might have been your only option in 2000, today games are about £12, and you’ll probably have to get them from a 1c shop.
The Muscovites might only have been revelling in capitalism for twenty years now, but Russia isn’t far behind the rest of us. Much of this, of course, is making the 1c bosses rather wealthy, but it’s also finding the vibrant creative industry that we saw on show at the Cosmos Hotel. KRI was a sign of a staggeringly healthy industry – Russia might be far from taking the US crown as PC game development kings, but the rate at which their sophistication and ambition is increasing blows everyone else out of the DX10 water.
Watch out, world: the Russians are coming for your games industry.
Next time: culture, apocalypse, and the Endless Red Bear.
(Photos by Dan Griliopolous)
05/01/2009 at 11:38 Feet says:
13 tonnes a day? Man! That’s alotta tonnes!
I believe that if Russians devs can spend abit of dev money on translating games to English and making them available for digital download worldwide that they’d quickly become real competitors to the US\EK game dev industry. Hopefully games like Stalker, Crysis and Kings Bounty are the first of many hunderds of games accessable to us Anglos.
05/01/2009 at 11:45 pepper says:
Shame we dont see many of those games appear here in the west.
05/01/2009 at 12:01 phil says:
Seven years in a 21st century gulag seems an appropriate punishment for piracy – discuss.
05/01/2009 at 12:02 Jim Rossignol says:
@Pepper
On the contrary I think the majority of the good Russian and Eastern European games are now finding deals in the West. We’re very much reaping the benefits of this boom.
05/01/2009 at 12:10 Flappybat says:
I’ll never understand how Russia only seems to make really good or really bad games, they don’t seem to believe in mediocre.
Shame they aren’t better at embracing Western digital distribution.
05/01/2009 at 12:17 Tei says:
Piracy can be totally anhililated going online. Having a online part that request a valid user, and only allowed this user to be logued (no multiboxing). That, plus distributing the offline part for free.
05/01/2009 at 12:28 The Apologist says:
For King’s Bounty alone I am truly thankful.
My wife turned back into a frog last night.
05/01/2009 at 12:30 Ginger Yellow says:
Any update on how Men of War is coming along? It’s out soon and I need an RTS fix until Empire: Total War and Dawn of War 2 come out.
05/01/2009 at 12:31 GriddleOctopus says:
Thanks for the photo credit, Jim! There are loads more photos of the trip here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grill/sets/72157606089141975/
05/01/2009 at 12:36 Ketch says:
@Tei
Steam?
05/01/2009 at 12:37 Cooper42 says:
Please, please let this not descend into a piracy comments thread?
I remember this article from earlier in the year. I have high hopes fro games coming out of the former USSR – if only because they won’t be as enamoured with consoles.
Death track looks like it could be immense fun. And it’ll be interesting to see how Cryostasis comes out. Deadisland, albeit from a Polish developer, was looking really good. Site now down. Here’s hoping it wasn’t vapourware…
05/01/2009 at 12:41 Ziv says:
@pepper: so right.
@jim: can you list at the second half of the article the names of the games that you wrote about and got impressed of them and whether they were released?
05/01/2009 at 12:42 UncleLou says:
“Shame they aren’t better at embracing Western digital distribution”
Hm, they seem to be almost on the forefront of digital distribution to me. I bought King’s Bounty online weeks before it hits the shops, Stalker and Clear Sky can be found on a variety of DD sites, as can Space Rangers 2 and whatnot.
05/01/2009 at 13:02 c-Row says:
Death Track, please!
05/01/2009 at 13:05 Him says:
I wouldn’t mind taking a lot more chances on games if they were £12 a pop.
That’s right. I’m on about actual physical media. Not an ephemeral online-account where I pay for access, rather than product.
05/01/2009 at 13:10 phil says:
From the few Russian games I’ve played (Stalker and Pathologic spring to mind) there seems to be a refreshing and uncompromising bleakness about them. Fallout 3, for example, seems cartoonish by comparison – maybe we should be looking at Russia to push the medium forward.
05/01/2009 at 13:22 mikks says:
Hmm, didnt the makers of King’s Bounty move from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad?
05/01/2009 at 13:31 AndrewC says:
The bleakness seems refreshing only because we are currently flooded with Hollywood darkness, which is very bright. If Russian bleakness became the norm we would be screaming out for a comedy gay robot.
Plus Stalker is full of terrible, atmosphere breaking jokes, it’s just we assume, because it’s in Russian, that they are talking about burying their mothers.
05/01/2009 at 13:32 Ergates says:
Captain Blood? As in Captain Blood?
I do hope so – a French game being remade by Russians. That’d be batshit crazy squared!. A continent sized lump of bat guano.
05/01/2009 at 13:41 Levictus says:
@phil, @Andrew C
Stalker was not developed by Russians. It was developed by a Ukrainian company. There is a big difference (contrary to what most Russians might tell you). I am sure you wouldn’t be too happy to be called Mexican!
05/01/2009 at 13:50 phil says:
I’d personally love to be a Mexican – though not a Mexican’t.
Though the game was made by Ukrainians (and I admit my mistake) the source material which the game stays admirable close to in terms of atmosphere, Roadside Picnic and Stalker, is about as Russian as Russian can be.
05/01/2009 at 13:54 Kalle says:
“the Russian government know that they can’t allow crime to dominate their development…”
Uh, no. But they’re opposed to petty crime that doesn’t kick back money to the Kreml.
05/01/2009 at 14:02 phil says:
Interestingly there seems to be a glut of Strugatsky inspired games centred on their Noon universe book Prisoners of Power – Has the RPS Hive Mind heard anything about this?
05/01/2009 at 14:19 AndrewC says:
If I changed references to ‘Russian’ to ‘former Soviet’, would I look less staggeringly ignorant?
05/01/2009 at 14:22 Jim Rossignol says:
I believe the collective denomination is “CIS Countries”. Obviously it’s something I’ve struggled with in this article too.
05/01/2009 at 14:40 Dan Harris says:
Why haven’t I bought King’s Bounty yet? Dammit.
05/01/2009 at 14:42 Larington says:
Heres hoping piracy doesn’t dominate the discussion. Anyways, I definately look forward to seeing more games from former soviet bloc, for too long has gaming been dominated by the cultural stereotypes of US, UK and Far East games.
Its a pity that the guys sitting around camp fires in Shadow of Chernobyl are telling jokes really, as an English speaker only I’d always assumed they were telling stories about stupid situations other stalkers had gotten themselves into over the years. Entertaining cautionary tales like don’t eat yellow water.
05/01/2009 at 14:50 Alaric says:
I am rapidly disappearing quickly. =]
05/01/2009 at 14:51 RichP says:
Gaming in Russia is around 70% PC-based
Why is PC gaming so strong in Russia? Not that I’m complaining, but you probably don’t have nitwits over there saying OMG PC IS TEH DEAD (probably because 1c would send a terrifying ex-KGB fellow after them)
05/01/2009 at 14:55 RichP says:
Also: It’s nice that we can actually play some of the better Russian PC games. Back when I actively played JRPGs and what-not, it seemed like some of the coolest ones would never be released outside of Japan. (*cough* Mother 3 *cough*)
05/01/2009 at 14:59 Tei says:
So.. what are the countrys that are more pro-PC?
We know Korea. But Korea is deep into mmorpg’s.
So seems Russia is another.
Brazil? Australia?
05/01/2009 at 15:13 Ginger Yellow says:
“Why is PC gaming so strong in Russia? ”
As I understand it, pretty much every gaming market which isn’t North America, the UK, Australia or Japan is dominated by the PC. The console manufacturers and publishers have been very slow to officially launch consoles outside those markets and they are often exorbitantly expensive.
05/01/2009 at 15:20 Alexandros says:
Well, actually most of Europe is pro-PC. In fact it seems that only the UK is following at the footsteps of the US console hysteria. Every other country seems to prefer PC gaming.
05/01/2009 at 15:23 Calabi says:
Its probably because of all the piracy in it, which is probably because of the less disposable income with the expectation of consuming as much as the richer nations.
05/01/2009 at 15:24 Dominic White says:
Ginger: Might as well count europe in general as a second-tier market for consoles as well. In France, your average PS3/360 game costs 70 euros, and a lot of publishers don’t give europe the time of day in general.
Fun fact: Chrono Trigger – yes, the SNES original – is due for its first ever debut appearance in Europe later *this year*. 14 years late.
14 fucking years.
05/01/2009 at 15:30 Larington says:
“Well, actually most of Europe is pro-PC. In fact it seems that only the UK is following at the footsteps of the US console hysteria. Every other country seems to prefer PC gaming.”
I do find myself wondering if this can be attributed, at least in part, to the idea that non-english speakers aren’t able to read (Excepting translation websites) all the doom sayer bullhonkey that console manufacturers spout day-in-day-out. Word of mouth (Propaganda) is a dangerous weapon indeed.
05/01/2009 at 15:33 El_MUERkO says:
If you’re a military sims fan you’ve gotta love the old USSR! Black Shark is worth a try by anyone who ever read a phonebook sized manual or used a key overlay in their youth! http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/
05/01/2009 at 15:41 pepper says:
@El : yeah BS is a great simulation from what ive seen from it so far, havent been able to give it a go but its predecessor never let me down.
@Jim, next to the LOMAC/IL2, and stalker series, what more comes from russia what i should know about? I remember this rally game a few years ago, but i havent really kept up….
05/01/2009 at 15:43 RichP says:
China, too. I’m actually really intrigued by its PC gaming market, which probably makes more money than the Xbox 360 and PS3 combined, but you don’t read much about it.
Back when I played PlanetSide, someone on the forums got access to the Chinese beta and provided some entertaining reports. The biggest difference: Chinese players always worked as a team, even in pick-up squads and platoons.
The PC is still the world’s the dominant gaming platform, followed by the Wii and PS2. Interestingly, Nintendo is the only current-gen console manufacturer that’s self-sustaining; Microsoft and Sony can only subsidize the billion-dollar losses of their consoles through the profitable arms of their respective conglomerates.
05/01/2009 at 15:46 Pags says:
Jim: What is 13 tonnes in Peggles?
05/01/2009 at 15:55 Ginger Yellow says:
“Might as well count europe in general as a second-tier market for consoles as well. In France, your average PS3/360 game costs 70 euros, and a lot of publishers don’t give europe the time of day in general.”
True, but they do formally sell machines and games there, which is more than you can say for most of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And even the UK is much less console focused than the US and Japan. It’s only since the Playstation that consoles became really big here.
05/01/2009 at 15:59 hydra9 says:
@Ergates:
Sadly, this Captain Blood is a swashbuckling pirate adventure and not a remake of that Captain Blood which I loved so dearly in days of yore.
@phil:
I’ve played the FPS based on the Strugatskys’ ‘Prisoners Of Power’ and it’s really terrible. Made by Orion, who have produced some dodgy stuff. The RTS is meant to be decent, though, and the adventure game… Well, that just looks like Myst.
05/01/2009 at 16:11 Nahual says:
After the STALKER games, which I loved, the game FPS i’m waiting for the most in 2009 is Cryostasis (Of which we’ve sadly heard so little lately). Go Eastern Bloc!
05/01/2009 at 16:11 Levictus says:
@phil
I am not implying that it sucks to be Mexican. I personally think most Mexicans are a lot more down to earth and less stuck up than most Americans. It’s just matter of getting things right. Ukraine is not the same thing as Russia.
I would be a bit more careful with dumping everything to do with the USSR as being Russian. Even within Russia itself, the Russian identity is a very complex issue. There are actually two terms for the word Russian ‘Ruskiy’ and ‘Rossiyanin’. The first is more of a reference to ethnicity while the second one is more to do with the national identity. So which one are you referring to? I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but seriously you sound like you don’t know what you are talking about. Let’s just stick to facts. Stalker was developed by a Ukrainian company that used common Soviet cultural legacy as inspiration for its game. Does that sound good? Again sorry for being pedantic, but I am sure you would find it weird if I referred to Id’s games a product of Mexican cultural legacy (bad analogy, I know, I am just trying to show you my reasoning).
@AndrewC
Lol, yeah, that works.
05/01/2009 at 16:16 hydra9 says:
Aye, eagerly awaiting Cryostasis, which I hope will make its Feb 13th UK release date. The Russian version is out, and has been getting some very positive reviews.
05/01/2009 at 16:22 Ruke says:
Peggle = 4.2 ounces (amazon.com)
13 tonnes = 416,000 ounces
99047.6 Peggles
05/01/2009 at 16:22 Nuyan says:
RichP: “Back when I played PlanetSide, someone on the forums got access to the Chinese beta and provided some entertaining reports. The biggest difference: Chinese players always worked as a team, even in pick-up squads and platoons.”
So Chinese culture affects the way people play those games and make them play in a more collective manner than us westerns with our individual freedom ideas. That’s rather fascinating. Would like to read more into similar examples.
05/01/2009 at 16:25 Pags says:
I knew there was a reason I got up today. Thank you sir.
05/01/2009 at 16:30 Uraelski says:
I’ve been looking forward to The Tomorrow War, an epic, story-driven, space-to-planet-combat-sim thingy 1C seem to be publishing. Amazon had the wrong date on it for ages, then sent everyone who pre-ordered it an embarassed email saying the had no idea when it was coming. Play.com say Feb ’09, but I don’t know if I can trust them….
Stalker was brilliant, really benfitting from a non-western approach. More of this East-European yumminess, please!
05/01/2009 at 16:34 Tei says:
It will be dificult for russian dudes to get the throne of PC kings.
USA/UK can make games in english, that is a giganteous market. And later, localize these games to other *latin* langs, like italian, spanish, french and maybe to german.
While creating a game in russian mean you have to translating it to english. So here is a cost, you don’t have in USA.
Also, translating from english to spanish is easy, but from russian to any latin lang is way hard. ( I suppose) (read: $$$).
On the other part, USA has a horrible internet system, with ISP that limit the downloads with a cap. And this is bad for digital downloads, that is a cheap (I suppose, I don’t know) method so… maybe this will push gaming to other countrys with cheaper internet. ( I bet the current internet in russia has to be anwfull, but theres less distance from awfull to amazing, than from mediocre to good)
05/01/2009 at 16:37 Megazver says:
Actually, Cryostasis is pretty good. It’s rated 80 on the Russian version of Metacritic*, which is pretty decent. Haven’t played it personally, but from what I’ve heard it’s a good game somewhat marred by some bugs and really high system requirements. The devs seem to be working hard on both for the international release, so it’s probably going to be smoother.
*http://www.gamecritic.ru/games/view.php?id=760
05/01/2009 at 16:37 supersize hungover kobzon says:
PC gamink is popular ’cause console gamink never had a chance to shine. ’98 crisis wiped it out and PC’s were always there for us. The fact that consoles in Russia are promoted by people with peanut shaped heads and peanut sized brains doesn’t help either. If it’s not prising, then it’s availability and vice versa. Also it should be noted that no one in Russia wants to make money.
Levictus is right BTW, some people out there would bite your throat out if you call them russians. It’s actually interesting to look at the industry that way: ukrainians make decent FPS’s, russians make ok RTS’s and sims, poles make good pickled vegetables and so on.
05/01/2009 at 16:39 JonFitt says:
I find the idea of the former CIS countries possibly being the saviour of PC-only games development somewhat delicious.
They’re not afraid to produce something completely hardcore:
http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/
and they’re bleak outlook does post-apocalyptic so much better than the Hollywood Gears-of-War could ever manage.
Their humour may need big gobs of regional adaptation though, it’s pretty wonky by UK/US standards.
05/01/2009 at 17:02 Megazver says:
Tei: Translating from Russian to European languages costs peanuts. Seriously, that’s the most stupid line of reasoning I’ve read in weeks.
05/01/2009 at 17:03 Dominic White says:
You pay peanuts, you get translations done by monkeys. See Pathologic, which got so butchered by the publishers pseudo-babelfish attempts that the developers have decided to translate their next game (The Void, due out in english soon) themselves.
05/01/2009 at 17:13 phil says:
@hydra9 – Cheers for the info, sounds like I shouldn’t get my hopes up.
@Levictus,
Sorry but your arguement doesn’t stand up. Stalker was directly inspired (as the developers have discussed at great and illuminating length) by the movie Stalker, the novel Roadside Picnic and the devastation of Chernobyl, not some ill defined “shared common Soviet cultural legacy.”
To borrow your terms, is about as rooted in Rossiyanin as it is possible to get without growing out of Dostoevsky’s head. Just as Ang Lee can create a recognisably British Sense and Sensibility or Damon Albarn can compose a recognisably Chinese opera (with funky Japanese inspired visuals and narrative), so a Ukrainian company, inspired by Russian sources, can create a game rooted in Russia’s cultural legacy.
05/01/2009 at 17:23 Pags says:
Phil: Chernobyl is in Ukraine…
05/01/2009 at 17:31 Azhrarn says:
Who remembers the RTS Perimeter, also developed in one of the former USSR countries I believe, and quite a nice and different take on the genre. The Shielding mechanic made balancing resources quite a challenge sometimes, especially when attacked on multiple fronts. (something the rather smart AI of the game was prone to doing at times)
05/01/2009 at 17:33 malkav11 says:
Galactic Assault: Prisoners of Power is a pretty decent, badly translated turn-based strategy game. Not an RTS, thank goodness.
That’s really my biggest complaint with these games from the former Soviet bloc – aside from King’s Bounty, I think nearly every one I’ve played has had a translation ranging from epically awful (Pathologic) to merely bad. If they could invest a little more time and money into the translation, I’d cheerfully welcome a veritable onslaught of games from the region.
05/01/2009 at 17:44 phil says:
Not to quibble, but notice I said the devastation of Chernobyl, as far as I’m aware the the worst irradiated zones were in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, with Belarus recieving the largest amount of contamination overall. ‘Zones’ existed in all three countries.
05/01/2009 at 18:01 Pags says:
Well then surely that means it fits in with the argument for defining it as something which is shared under a common Soviet legacy rather than being a completely ‘Russian’ thing? Unless I completely misunderstood your original point (it happens a lot).
05/01/2009 at 18:22 Ergates says:
@hydra9. I am now, officially, unhappy.
05/01/2009 at 18:27 MarkTM says:
Here’s an English review of Cryostasis: link.
05/01/2009 at 18:28 blacktick says:
I have put my “faith” in the eastern european devs for quite some time now and I’m happy to say that only few times I have been disappointed.
Games I’m waiting are mainly from eastern europe:
The Void(aka Tension,my most awaited one),The tomorrow war,Streets of moscow,not the time for dragons,age of pirates 2,kings bounty expansion, chrome 2,metro 2033,cryostasis,precursors,collapse,death track…etc.
Don’t wanna list em all. :)
My only concern is the corruptness of the industry. How long will it take for the eastern european devs to shift from pro pc to pro consoles when the money starts to pour in. remains to be seen I guess,but I won’t be very optimistic.
05/01/2009 at 18:37 phil says:
I included a reference to it in my initial list because it’s impossible to discuss to the game without it, despite the fact it did muddy the water the slightly. In my defense, it was and is a physical reality, rather than a cultural product.
In terms of cultural influences its Russia all the way – and America, but then everything in video games is American to a greater or lesser extent.
05/01/2009 at 18:39 hydra9 says:
@Ergates:
Me too, me too. I mean, I only named myself after the galaxy CB was set in.
More Russian games I want in English: Sledgehammer and (from the same devs) The Swarm (similar to Collapse, and lots of fun).
05/01/2009 at 18:50 sfury says:
you should have put it al on one page, I read the Korea article just 2 days ago… ;)
seriously though, the Korea one was awesome and that seems so short compared to it :}
05/01/2009 at 18:54 Levictus says:
@phil
[I am angry]. What Russian zone? [I am angry]. You do know that most of the important stuff in Chernobyl (the reactor itself, the other reactors, Prypiat) are in Ukraine. The firefighters who arrived at the reactor a few minutes after it blew where all Ukrainian. If you knew anything about Ukraine, you would know that much of the landscape in stalker is actually inspired by the steppe landscape of Ukraine. With the exception of some parts of south-western Russia, you cannot find this kind of landscape in Russia. Of course they used Stalker/Road-side Picnic as inspiration, so what? How does this make the whole thing distinctly Russian? Since you know so much about this stuff, why don’t you give me a quick overview of how Stalker/Roadside represents the Russian identity as much as Dostoevsky does? Because I am definitely not going to take your word for it. By your logic, something like Solaris is all about being Polish, just because Lem was Polish.
While many Russians and [other] people like you like to think that Russia = USSR, this is not the case. Just ask any of the veteran of WW2 from central Asia. What did they have to care about Stalin and his stupid decision to invade Poland? Yet they still joined the battle against the Germans. The legacies of the Soviet Union (from the victory in WW2 to Stalin’s hell on earth) are shared by all nations of the USSR, not just Russia. Please, note that I am not implying that the whole Chernobyl saga is all about Ukraine, it’s a common legacy of the Soviet Union.
I am Ukrainian who lived in Russia for 11 years. I’ve been on a tour of Chernobyl (guess what the firefighter’s who arrived at the scene were thinking about – their children and families in Prypiat). My mom is Ukrainian and half of relatives are Ukrainian (a few are Russian). I have loads of Russian friends. Granted I’ve never actually lived in Ukraine for a lang time (well 3 years since birth, but I don’t think that counts), but I know what I am talking about. What do you know about the region, phil?
05/01/2009 at 19:15 Pags says:
Oooh who remembers that 2D steampunk zeppelins-with-hammers physicky type game, Hammerfall? Wasn’t that game Russian too? I distinctly remember there being some great examples of broken English which made the entire game seem even more peculiar than it already was.
05/01/2009 at 19:20 Dominic White says:
I’m hoping that someday the full version of Hammerfall will be released. The demo was fantastic stuff, although the english translation was clearly babelfished – the developer didn’t speak the language to any coherent degree.
After the demo came out (posted on a Russian game development forum at that), there seems to have been nothing of any sort mentioned. Sucks.
http://www.fun-motion.com/physics-games/hammerfall/ – for what little info we have.
05/01/2009 at 19:33 Eli Just says:
I love Russian gaming, thank you for keeping up posting it :)
05/01/2009 at 20:13 clive dunn says:
@phil.
Walk away man, walk away
05/01/2009 at 20:27 phil says:
@clive dunn, good advice, though I was halfway through typing this when I recieved it, so;
@Levictus
This Russian Zone; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg
- While Russia’s Zones of Alienation were no where near as large and the effects displaced less people, killed less people, they still existed, their effects are still felt.
In terms of Roadside Picnic as a classically Russian piece of literature, OK; Try placing it in Russia’s folktale archetypes – as in ‘About the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic’ – actually by Stanisław Lem, since you bring him up. Try comparing Red to Solzhenitsyn’s truculent and tough prole protagonists, the struggles and suffering in the narrative almost secondary to the struggles for a self directed life. Try looking at how they built on the genre legacy of Yefremov and others.
Also, I’m not trying to equate the experiences, glories, hardships and terrors of people who lived in St Petersburg or Volgograd with those of people living in East Berlin and Kiev, let alone the USSR as a whole – Hell, even the current Russian Federation is a radically diverse patchwork quilt of individual group identities, economic conditions, geographical conditions, cultural identities, barely holding together in places, the threat of force keeping simmering animosities in line – your misreading me if you think I’m claiming Russia = USSR.
Stalker however, no matter how many Ukraine Mountains you amble over, no matter how many Ukrainian breeds of dog attack you, fits into a Russian cultural heritage. That’s not a bad thing; it doesn’t mean it actually IS Russian, not that’s a bad thing either.
05/01/2009 at 20:58 clive dunn says:
@both of you
I don’t want either of you to stop, it’s really interesting.
05/01/2009 at 21:03 Jim Rossignol says:
@JonFitt, CIS membership is a current thing, as I understand it. It’s the loose affiliation that these nations signed up to post-Soviet state.
05/01/2009 at 21:46 hydra9 says:
Pags and Dom White:
Thanks very much for recommending Hammerfall! Just played the first couple of levels and it’s difficult, but fantastic.
05/01/2009 at 22:19 Ragnar says:
My mind tells me that there seem to be a bit of probability that anyone trying to distribute games and is not licensed by 1c will get in trouble and be called pirates. And Putin has helped 1c get a monopoly in the process.
A guess really, but I would be surprised if piracy is the _only_ reason for those laws.
05/01/2009 at 22:51 Muzman says:
A little late and tangential with this comment (love the article, looking forward to the next bit) but;
Didn’t the fact that every campfire story in Stalker ends with everyone in the vicinity breaking out in laughter give you folks some clue what they were saying? I mean really (and if you look them up they’re usually rather silly sorts of gallows humour about the zone and someone listening always says “That’s not even funny.” ie the joke is bad rather than in poor taste).
And since when was humour in that sort of situation unheard of or destructive to the overall atmosphere? Soldiering movies are filled with gags, as are things like Deadwood. Being one note only works for things like horror thriller films that play out in real time. I would expect people who live in these situations to take a break once in a while.
05/01/2009 at 22:56 Larington says:
Oh dear lord, this article has prompted adverts to appear for a frellin’ Russian dating/singles website.
05/01/2009 at 23:34 ZagZagovich says:
Great article you got there! I’m Russian myself and it’s great to see someone actually digging for information about our gaming industry. I suggest you to find more info on out shovelware. We got just crap piles of it. Also check out our lada racing club controversy. It got very ugly there.
05/01/2009 at 23:41 Flappybat says:
Hammerfall is so fantastic it’s terrifying that it might have fallen off the face of the world.
I wonder if Death Race is any good.
05/01/2009 at 23:47 Larington says:
Not having any luck finding any articles on a controversy surrounding a lada racing club game. Did find a video with a number of nasty snipey comments about graphics and stuff though – Stuff that seems all too common on the Internet.
06/01/2009 at 00:06 BlastastiC says:
Turns out that Russians are pretty damn good at Quakeworld.
06/01/2009 at 03:56 TeeJay says:
I’m wondering what the next country to ‘emerge’ in terms of PC game development will be…
…maybe China, India or Brazil?
They are all developing very fast & have massive populations (& therefore talent).
I notice that in 2008 Ubisoft opened a studio in San Paulo plus other companies have opened up operations in Chennai, Singapore, Shanghai etc.
06/01/2009 at 05:21 veerus says:
It’s *Ukraine*.. NOT “the Ukraine”.
06/01/2009 at 09:29 RaFannie says:
Do Ukaraine people and Russians speak the same language?
06/01/2009 at 10:17 Keyser Soze says:
Why doesnt anyone mention Fantasy War also from 1C Publishing?
06/01/2009 at 10:53 Kieron Gillen says:
Because we’re playing Beta Code of its sequel – Elven Legacy. :)
KG
06/01/2009 at 10:54 Paul Moloney says:
“Well, actually most of Europe is pro-PC. In fact it seems that only the UK is following at the footsteps of the US console hysteria. Every other country seems to prefer PC gaming.”
I couldn’t quite believe it when, on a trip to Paris, I found electronic stores with proper PC gaming sections – loads of hardware and software. Even on the Metro, there were large adverts for PC flight simulator yokes.
P.
06/01/2009 at 10:55 mkreku says:
I fail to find any mention of White Gold or Precursors in this article! Grr. Or is that in part two?
06/01/2009 at 15:20 Dan Harris says:
I can haz part too?
06/01/2009 at 15:55 Darryl Still says:
Just to let you all know, all the 1C titles mentioned in the article will be published in the UK and US in 2009.
Men of War & Cryostasis by the end of Q1.
06/01/2009 at 21:35 hydra9 says:
Thanks for the info, Mr. Still – It’s good to know!
06/01/2009 at 21:39 Larington says:
Don’t know when I’ll get to sit down and play it, but I’m definately looking forward to seeing whats been done with Cryostasis.
07/01/2009 at 00:59 rvm1975 says:
In february 2009 Majesty 2 demo will be released. It’s 1C / Ino-Co project as well.
07/01/2009 at 02:31 malkav11 says:
Published in PC Gamer UK in the May 08 issue, published in PC Gamer US in the February 09 issue. Timelag much? :p
07/01/2009 at 02:34 malkav11 says:
Irritatingly, they failed to note the time context of the piece, so you get a magazine in January looking forward to King’s Bounty and Stalker: Clear Sky, both of which have been out for months.
07/01/2009 at 03:55 TeeJay says:
Is this an annual show?
08/01/2009 at 10:43 hellofromrussia says:
While your article is mostly correct, parts about piracy are greatly exagarated or even completely wrong. It is as if you were talking only with 1c`s PR person :)
Yes, piracy is slowly declining, but pirated games are still more popular than legal ones. There is a rule – you generally don`t pirate games, that are published here legally, and you definitely don`t pirate Russian games. Everything else is ok – Microsofts software, EA/Ubisoft/TakeTwo`s games etc.
And 1C didn`t start lowering prices to fight piracy. It was Buka – the first publisher to accept realities of our market and try to work with it instead of using police to arrest individuals. They are also the ones that began to include English versions of the games along with Russian – accepting, that transaltion is crappy for the most part. They were also the first to strike a deal with EA – it was a boxed issue of wing commander, and they managed to persuade EA to sell it several times cheaper than it was in US.
1C is just a major software corporation, that saw the opportunities in game market, and began using proven Buka’s methods and its own huge budget to gain market share. After they became strong enough they just bought Buka.
08/01/2009 at 10:49 hellofromrussia says:
Part about torrent sites being closed is also (kinda) wrong. We have a single major torrent site – torrents.ru, that has everything from movies, comics, magazines and pr0n to games and software. However they have one single rule – when 1c releases something, it gets moved to piratebay. This site is legal, but given the 1c`s resources they can cause a lot of unneeded trouble to anyone, even legal compnies.
08/01/2009 at 11:02 hellofromrussia says:
Sorry for tripple post, but theres another thing I missed :)
1C shops don’t matter. At ALL. I didn’t even know they exist, and I am an avid PC gamer since mid-90s. Games are still sold in small privately owned shops near subway stations, markets, on popular avenues etc. and in major music shops and malls, that have nothing to do with 1c. It is possible though that 1c bought out some of them or just made some kind of distribution deal, officially claiming that now they are ‘theirs’ or whatever.
08/01/2009 at 11:45 Jim Rossignol says:
Hi Mr FromRussia, thanks for the clarifications there. I of course realise there are some torrent sites in Russia, and it’s interesting what you say about 1c’s torrents being moved to Piratebay. I’m also aware that there’s still some piracy, I saw pirate DVDs on sale in Moscow too. My intention was to suggest that piracy was not as rampant as it once was, that it continues to decline, at least at retail. I think that is true?
1c’s claim regarding shops is on a distribution basis, clearly. Most shops are privately owned, but 1c delivers their software, hence the “13 tonnes” thing.
Regarding Buka: 1c did credit them with this stuff, but since the two companies are now the same, I didn’t really see a distinction worthy of crediting a non-existent company? Perhaps I was remiss.
08/01/2009 at 13:22 hellofromrussia says:
It is not so rampant only regarding our own games and officially translated releases. So 1c releases really don’t suffer from piracy as much as they would in 90s.
In case of foreign games, it is getting better, but much much slower. A lot of shops still sell both legal and pirated copies. And this is just in Moscow, I`m sure pirates’ positions are much stronger elsewere in Russia, where average income is lower and 100-200 rur of difference really matter.
Also the decline in piracy levels in major cities is at least partly due to availabilty of cheap unlimited internet access. Not only because its free – it is also less ‘evil’ just to try a game than to sponsor some shady chain of people making money on other’s creations.
With Buka and 1c it is a bit like saying that Microsoft was always a major supporter of Linux after Microsoft buys RedHat (God forbid.. ). It is technically correct, just may tick some people off :) 1C always preferred RIAA-style methods with the arrests, scaremngering, ludicrious drm protections, publicity events like bulldozers trashing tonns of recently confiscated pirate cds. Buka was far from perfect either, but it was better, and healthy competition between the two only benefited the gamers. Now that 1c is THE main publisher and has no major opposition it can freely dictate game prices, and the only ones who win beside themselves are pirates – they hapily rise their prices to match 1c’s.
This whole situation is a bit more compilcated, than to say that they could rise their prices after their own shops became more popular than those that sold pirate games..
08/04/2010 at 09:52 Crystal Admiral says:
I agree, it is because of all the piracy in it, which is probably because of the less disposable income with the expectation of consuming as much as the richer nations. Great article