Sergey Orlovskiy

Sergey Orlovskiy in 2012 wearing a prototype Oculus Rift

Sergey Orlovskiy (Russian: Сергей Орловский) is the founder and CEO of Nival, one of the oldest game development companies in Eastern Europe. He is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of the Russian game industry.^[1] In addition to heading Nival, Orlovskiy is a member of the board of directors of Alawar Entertainment.^[2]

Sergey Orlovskiy with Feargus Urquhart at E3 2013

Nival history

Nival was founded in 1996 as a PC game developer of stand-alone games. It started to self-publish games in 2005.

In 2006, Orlovskiy created the Nival spin-off named Nival Online and raised US $20 million from Digital Sky Technologies (DST) to focus on online game development and publishing.^[3] In 2008, Nival Online was merged with Astrum and in 2009 sold to Mail.ru under the Astrum Nival name, to be integrated into the Mail.ru games division. This game development group inside Mail.ru is still referred to as the Allods Team after Allods Online.^[4]

In 2010, Digital Sky Technologies and 1C invested US$5 million to acquire a minority stake in Nival.^[5]

In 2013, Nival raised US$6 million in its Series A funding round led by Almaz Capital. The funds will be used for global expansion.^[6]

Recognition

Orlovskiy typically gives a keynote at the Russian Games Developers Conference KRI,.^[7] In his speech "Playing with God" in 2009,^[8] he predicted the start of cross-platform gaming as a frontier and a challenge for the game industry.

In 2009, Orlovskiy was included in Top 20 influential people in MMO of 2009 by MOG.^[9]

In 2012, Orlovskiy was appointed by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media to an Expert Council on the development of the IT industry in the Russian Federation.^[10]

In 2015, Orlovskiy was called the most famous person in the Russian/CIS gaming industry.^[11]

Game credits

Sergey Orlovskiy is credited on the following games:^[12]

• Sea Legends (1996) - Programmer
• Rage of Mages (1998) - Executive Producer and Design
• Rage of Mages II: Necromancer (1999) - Executive Producer and Game Design
• Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul (2000) - Executive Producer and Game Design
• Etherlords (2001) - Executive Producer, Conception and Game Design
• Blitzkrieg (2003) - Executive Producer and Game Design
• Silent Storm (2003) - Executive Producer
• Silent Storm: Sentinels (2004) - Executive Producer
• Blitzkrieg: Rolling Thunder (2004) - Executive Producer and Game Design
• Blitzkrieg: Burning Horizon (2004) - Executive Producer and Game Design
• Blitzkrieg 2 (2005) - Executive Producer
• Hammer & Sickle (2005) - Producer
• Night Watch (2005) - Producer
• Heroes of Might and Magic V (2006) - Executive Producer
• Heroes of Might and Magic V: Hammers of Fate (2006) - Executive Producer
• Blitzkrieg 2: Fall of the Reich (2006) - Executive Producer
• Blitzkrieg 2: Liberation (2007) - Executive Producer
• Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East (2007) - Executive Producer
• Entis Fantasy (2007) - Executive Producer
• Allods Online (2009) - General Producer
• King's Bounty: Legions (2011) - Executive Producer
• Prime World (2012) - Executive Producer
• Prime World: Emaki (2012) - Executive Producer
• Prime World: Alchemy (2012) - Executive Producer
• Prime World: Defenders (2013) - Executive Producer
• Etherlords (2014) - Executive Producer
• InMind (2015) - Executive Producer
• Defenders 2 (in development) - Executive Producer
• Blitzkrieg 3 (in development) - Executive Producer

References

1. "ACGI Advisory board of All-Russian Conference on Game Industry 2010; bio of Sergey Orlovskiy (page cached by Zoom Information on June 19, 2013)".
2. "Sergey Orlovskiy joins board of director at Alawar".
3. "Russian Roulette (Русская рулетка)". Vedmosti. 2006-10-27. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
4. Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 (2009-12-01). "Facebook Investor DST Expands Mail.ru With Astrum Online Merger". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-10-01.
5. "DST and 1C Invest $5 Million In Nival Network". Private Equity Russia. Retrieved 2012-10-01.
6. "Prime World strategy-game developer Nival raises $6M in latest funding round". VBGamesBeat. December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 3, 2014.
7. "KRI".
8. "KRI 2009" (PDF).
9. "The Top 20 Most Influential People In MMOs in 2009". Massiveonlinegamer.com. 2010-07-20. Retrieved 2012-10-01.
10. "Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation - Order No. 233 Creating an Expert Council for the Development of Information Technology industry". September 27, 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
11. "The most famous people in the Russian/CIS gaming industry". vc.ru. 2015. Retrieved 2015-03-29.
12. "Moby Games Credits for Sergey Orlovskiy aka Serge Orlovsky and aka Sergey Orlovsky". Moby Games Database. Retrieved April 1, 2014.