Nival, a leading Russian online games publisher, today announced its recent expansion into the North American market. Located in Los Angeles, Nival’s fourth global office will focus on bringing the company’s upcoming cross-platform, social strategy games to U.S. players. Founded by Russian gaming prodigy Sergey Orlovskiy, best known for developing numerous successful titles including Allods Online, Heroes of Might & Magic V, Silent Storm and Blitzkrieg, the company is renowned as a developer of high-quality strategy games. The company’s focus is to develop online games for an international audience.
"The United States is well known for innovation and our aspiration is to have a similar reputation for originality with gamers," said Orlovskiy, founder and president of Nival. "We anticipate continued growth in the online space and believe we can carve out our own unique position by tying social and strategy elements together in a new genre of gaming."
The new office will initially focus on managing operations for North America and contribute to growth opportunities in both Central and South America. Nival is expected to launch its first North American game in 2011 with an additional game available for beta testing later this year. The games will be free to play with revenue driven through in-game item sales via microtransactions. Nival plans to offer games across multiple platforms, including PC and Mac, as well as Android and iOS mobile operating systems with extensive social network tie-ins.
Nival will support its North American game services with customer service, marketing, communications, production and quality assurance teams. Industry veteran David D. Christensen, who has extensive global gaming background with prior roles at Sony Online Entertainment, Vivendi Universal and IGE, is the company’s North American general manager. The company’s U.S. office has expansive growth plans and is currently staffing up to create a dedicated North American team.
Additionally, Nival has joined the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and is scheduled to have a major presence at the international industry trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2011, June 7-9 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
"Nival’s games are intended for both core and casual players," Christensen said. "By combining Nival’s vast experience in developing high-end, hardcore strategy games with entertaining, social elements, we intend to deliver imaginative experiences that can be enjoyed by a massive audience. E3 is the perfect global industry event to showcase the first of our many unique social strategy games and to reveal why we are anticipating strong interest from North American gamers."
Nival is the consolidation of the well-respected Nival Interactive, developer of several popular PC strategy titles over the past two decades, and Nival Network, a leading online games publisher in Russia and its growing social network, Zzima.com, a hub for gamers to meet and play together.