The Russian gaming industry is having a hard time right now, for fairly obvious reasons. Therefore, the government has started planning for something they call “the gaming industry of the future”. Which ones have they looked a little extra at? According to PC Gamer the Ministry of Digital Development wants to “create a Russian Electronic Arts to help streamline the launches of high-quality Russian games”.
Among other things, they want to start something called “Rosgame”. It would be the center for “strategic development” of the Russian gaming industry and would focus on “rebirth and development of the industry” as well as “development and publishing of games”. They have three different scenarios for Rosgame. The first sees an investment of the equivalent of SEK 73.5 billion in a so-called “stabilization scenario” that allows the gaming industry to recover and that Russia enters the top 20 game developing countries by the year 2030. The second is an “ambitious scenario” with an injection of the equivalent of SEK 210 billion. It would lead to an “industry breakthrough”. The Russian site Kommersantwho has seen these documents, writes that the size of the breakthrough was not mentioned.
The really big scenario, however, is an investment of a brutal SEK 525 billion. This should apparently lead to the Russian gaming market being able to compete with the biggest gaming companies in the world by 2030. But where are they going to get all these rubles from? Dmitry Chernyshenko, the boss of tourism, sports, culture and communications, says that the authorities do not yet know how to pay for this and that “extra-budgetary mechanisms” will be required.
As if this was not enough reading for today, the non-profit company Agency for the Development of Computer Sports and Other Types of Sport (ARKIVS), which was present at the meeting in December when this was discussed, has also come out with concrete goals for this project. Are you ready? Now hold on to your hat! According to ARKIVS, in addition to starting a Russian EA, it should also attract a billion foreign players by the year 2030, create four Russian game engines AND produce two game consoles.
Do you think Russia will be the world leader in game development in seven years?
