MMOS //
WARGAMING.NET | BETA
But we’ve been inside the industry
intensively for the last five years. Before the decision not to go with the publisher, we did many round the world trips meeting each and every online publisher. Before that we had known all the big publishers from the retail space, and we realised they could not do anything. The big companies are too big to be democratic and too slow to react to the reality, and these things are moving really fast. The medium online publishers are probably not very powerful and could not provide enough marketing and PR muscle. So we said ‘we’re doing it on our own’. The good news for us is that as soon as it was launched in Russia it exploded. We started to have a very healthy revenue stream, so through the development and hiring and updates and patches, it all became possible.
What’s your secret your success given you built this operation from scratch? We went the niche way. First we hand-picked specialists in tank history, WWII historians, museum guys, authors, writers, bloggers, military history enthusiasts and plastic model collectors – you would be surprised at how many of those are in existence. We hand-picked them and created a very small, but very united and passionate community and we called it ‘the nucleus’ – the core. Around it was a little bit of advertising and traditional PR and marketing. We pulled in waves of CounterStrike players, other shooting game players, and strategy game players. So it was a very natural growth but it had this exponential component to it. Right now its also growing really fast, so that’s where the community management kicks in, because if there’s a problem or demand, our community can go to the developers and
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
demand what they want. And if that’s not possible then our community guys go back to their work stations and work with apparently millions of angry people on the forum trying to explain to them why it’s not possible, or why ‘change is good for you, stupid’. It’s like a presidential campaign going on every day for seven years. It’s political technology stuff where you have millions of angry mails trying to demand something from you collectively. It’s difficult so that’s why we have very strong guys in community management
Making an MMO is like war, life and
politics. You do it every day. It’s hard work and you combine all of your possible means.
Victor Kislyi,
Wargaming.net
At some point you’ve gone from being super niche to critical mass though. Don’t forget, we’ve put a hell of a lot of quality in. With World of Warplanes for example, I can claim, and very soon it will be true, that when it’s finished, and probably around a couple of months or half a year after launch, the amount of investment in this game will be equal to all of the flight simulators made before it combined. That’s millions and millions of dollars,
hundreds of thousands of man-hours, and richer and richer technology and testing all the time, and it will go on for five, seven or ten years.
What keeps those users playing? That’s an art. It’s personal relationships, it’s atmosphere, and of course it’s rewards. When the times are bad, you talk to people and explain it to them. It’s like war, it’s like life and it’s like politics. You do it every day. It’s hard work and you combine of all your possible means. Financially, we are much more in a position to offer top of the launch kind of guys. We have ten offices around the globe.
What’s next for you? Being an experienced businessman in the gaming industry, of course I can tell you the fairytale of how we will conquer the world, and we will. Geographically, the publishing arm is
spreading to Asia, Brazil, Turkey, the Middle East, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, so we’re going international. For the next 12 months, it’s a very clear business goal – to make the best-of-the-best warplane game so that hardcore flight simulation guys and those who are not very familiar, but would like more casual controls, will be able to enjoy the game. Also, nice graphics, nice PR, nice
packaging, virtual or physical; we’ve done the same for Battleships. That’s our goal. While conquering the world virtually, don’t forget to put your feet back on the ground and think about what your consumers want now. And, of course, we’ll be upgrading World of Tanks, so that consumes a lot of our powers and time. Here’s the thing: World of Tanks is an
obvious hit and we’re the company that made it, so our future pretty much depends on whether or not we will be able to prove we can make more successes. If we can make a conveyor belt for the
production of hits – we will be more succesful.
www.wargaming.net
AUGUST 2012 | 53
World of Tanks fulfils every arm-chair general’s dream of taking one look at the enemy and screaming: “Send in the tanks!” Far left: Victor Kislyi, CEO of
Wargaming.net
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