My name is Oleg Goncharenko. I am the CEO and founder of Kevuru Games and Kevuru LLC company, a video game development and game art company with offices in the US and Europe and production offices in 3 cities of Ukraine with head office in Kyiv. I received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from one of the world's best business schools, INSEAD (France/Singapore) in 2010, and a Master in Software Engineering (Ukraine) in 1997. Currently, I'm engaged in business in the field of IT technologies. It employs over 350 developers, artists, and modelers. Kevuru Games is one of the leading video game outsourcing companies in Ukraine. Its clients include Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Bandai Namco and many other studios.

Previously, in 2010-2012, I worked in the field of strategic consulting in one of the leading international consulting companies A.T. Kearney. I was involved in numerous projects, mainly in the areas of strategy development and company restructuring. Prior to INSEAD, I worked for 10 years in the Ukrainian division of a large international company (Fortune 500), where I grew from a trainee manager to a manager, director, and later Head of Marketing. During these years, I have had 6 years in operations management and 4 years in marketing, three of which as Head of Marketing.

Long story short, after a few years in consulting, I was looking for new career opportunities to jump-start a new venture. After analyzing several possibilities, I found the idea of starting a game development company was one of the most attractive and exciting for my next career step.

I am the CEO, that is, my duties include the direct management of the company. As for the success criteria for different specialists, everything is simple: they must know and love their job, and when choosing a place of work, start from the compatibility of their principles and values with the principles and values of the chosen company.

Kevuru Games is a leading European game art and development studio that helps game publishers create entertainment projects. We offer a full range of services for the creation of games, provided both separately and together. The company is constantly expanding its expertise with an eye to modern trends and technological innovations, and the current line of services includes:

2D/AAA 3D art

2D/3D animation

UI/UX design

Full-cycle PC/Console/mobile game development

Gamification

Game porting

Game testing

Our dedication to the art of gaming and excellent skills have been recognized by many world-renowned game publishers who have trusted us to work on their projects. So, our artists created 3D characters for the legendary Star Wars franchise by Lucasfilm, as well as skins for the popular battle royale Fortnite by Epic Games. Our company is constantly growing, developing, and replenished with new specialists from all over the world. At this stage, our staff includes experts from more than 25 countries.

An excellent game is always a skilful combination of a fascinating story and addictive gameplay. At the same time, the player must feel empathy for the characters, become attached to them, and strive to do everything possible so that their story ends successfully. Graphics and sound, in turn, serve as the main tools of immersion, and music is responsible for the emotional response of the player.

Our studio works with all known game genres. This list includes but is not limited to action-adventure, role-playing, sandbox, shooters, real-time strategy, multiplayer online battle arena, simulation and sports, puzzlers and party games, survival and horror, platformer, and so on.

Everything depends on the project. Usually, I use the classic ideation process methodology of three stages − generation, selection, and development. All team members related to the project take part in the process of generating ideas. This allows us to create the most diverse and interesting pool of ideas, based not only on an understanding of current trends, but also on the personal experience of each team member.

For us, first of all, this award is a recognition of the expertise and skills of our team. The artists have done a great job of researching videos and photographs of real insects, plants, and birds in order to display them as realistically as possible. The animators have made great efforts to make the movements of the models smooth and natural. Therefore, this award is very valuable to us. It is another confirmation of our professionalism and dedication to work.

Receiving an international award certainly brought even more attention to the Birdly Insects VR simulation and to our company.

The main challenge was to achieve maximum realism of the models, since the visitors of the exhibition, wearing a VR helmet, had to feel like they were in a real meadow among real insects and birds. We already had experience with AAA-class highly realistic graphics, so this task was quite within our power.

Of course, this work had its own nuances, mainly related to displaying the most natural and smooth movements of models. Animators, for example, noted that it was very difficult to cope with poses of inaction. The model cannot remain completely still, it is necessary to capture and display micro-movements, maintaining a balance between sharpness and smoothness.

Also, an interesting detail of the work was that it was realized in winter, and neither the artists nor the animators had the opportunity to go outside and watch birds and insects. Therefore, they had to be content with video references. At the same time, for example, insects move in a completely different way than animals familiar to us. The animators note that even the same indoor hamster is much closer to the physics and dynamics of the movement of an elephant than to a beetle or a butterfly. Therefore, they had to research a huge number of video materials and experiment with animation in order to achieve maximum realism.

I don’t think that the country of residence was decisive for me. I guess my previous experience and the idea of starting my own company was seeded during my days at the INSEAD business school. The people, the environment, and the Doing Business in Silicon Valley course I took in San Francisco helped shape the idea in the selection process.

The gaming industry is developing very quickly. One of the important trends gaining momentum is the creation of metaverses. There are already many cases of how the world's leading companies, such as Meta, are paying attention to this trend. In turn, the Fortnite battle royale is also the foundation for the future metaverse and already has its features, said Epic Games, the American game studio and the creator of this game. We are very excited about the prospect of the development of the metaverses and are building up our expertise in this area in order to be able to offer such services.

An important trend that is already noticeable is the emphasis on an ever higher level of realism in games. It is the releases of AAA games that are the most anticipated events in the gaming community. In some modern samples, the game visual becomes difficult to distinguish from reality. Nature, forest, rocks, water surface, lighting, etc. are so perfectly displayed that it takes your breath away. Along with this, immersive technologies such as AR, VR, and XR are developing. We have worked on many AAA and VR projects and plan to continue to do so. One such VR project was Birdly Insects that became a Gold Winner at NYX Game Awards.

It's hard enough to pick just three things, but I'll try. It will probably be the following:

The game sphere is very dynamic and stable at the same time. This was confirmed during the pandemic, when most business areas were affected, with the exception of gaming. This is because games have always been, are, and will be a refuge for people to relax from everyday worries and plunge into another world for a while.

Every third person on earth is a gamer. Statistics say that the number of gamers worldwide is 2.7 billion and continues to grow. In addition to classic gaming platforms such as PCs and consoles, mobile gaming is actively developing, which has already occupied the dominant part of the global gaming market.

Games serve not only entertainment, but also education. An interesting study from the University of Iowa showed that games improve not only people's mental health, but also cognitive abilities. The mental exercises associated with video games can help people keep their minds sharp as they age, improve decision making, and even make people more social.

Recently there was a relevant post on our social networks, where our staff shared useful resources to gain deeper knowledge about the gaming field. These are mainly various YouTube channels, such as Noclip, Archipel, Destructoid, etc. A lot of high-quality information about game development can be found on the official channel of the Unity game engine, as well as on their website. The Unreal Engine website also offers excellent learning resources, materials, and tutorials.

In the next 10 years, the gaming industry will develop in the direction of ever greater realism of graphics and maximum immersiveness. VR products and metaverses will gain momentum and provide people with limitless opportunities for playing and communicating in the virtual space. Possibly, cloud gaming will also gradually come out of the shadows and show greater promise and coverage, since we already see certain problems with the creation of components for the same gaming consoles.

As for our company, over the next 10 years we plan to continue expanding the pool of game development services. In particular, we want to focus on PC and console game creation, co-development, porting as a strategic focus, consulting, QA, localization, and marketing services. To do this, we want to continue to attract talented people from all over the world to the company, as well as to ensure the long-term educational strategy of the Unreal Engine team. It is Unreal that is currently the most powerful and progressive game engine, so it is important for us to strengthen this area and deepen our expertise in it.

My parents. They were an example for me in life and a source of inspiration and support in all my endeavors.

Our key to success is our team. All that we have achieved in 10 years and all that we will achieve is only possible thanks to the people, those specialists who work at Kevuru Games. We do our best to make our employees feel as comfortable as possible in our company.

Parting words of wisdom: Take care of your employees. Work occupies a large part of the life of every person, and it is necessary to create such conditions for people to be happy in their workplace. After all, a person can be taught everything. The main thing is in what environment it will be. If this environment is supportive, then it will make it possible to educate a wonderful specialist. Then the company can expect that the employee with interest and great motivation will go to all the ambitious goals that it sets for itself.