Wargaming.Net Success Story at GDC – Video Games Update
Speaking at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe, Wargaming.Net boss Victor Kislyi revealed how western developers had shunned World of Tanks before the game came out.
Kislyi reveals that before the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game with tanks was launched, the developers were looking towards western publishers for assistance only to be turned away. Apparently Western publishers were against the idea of Free to Play
and didn’t think the model was going to work.
“They were very arrogant. There were a number of things it was called. It was described as cheap, Asian stuff, and things worse than that. When this boxed business dies off, you know who's going to pay for your advertising? Us," stated Kislyi in an interview
with Eurogamer explaining how his company persevered and prevailed in the end.
World of Tanks is currently free to play with an online store with micro-transaction for gamers who are willing to pay more for additional items. The MMO has managed to amass over 35 million subscriptions and has been a huge success for the publisher. Wargaming.Net
has revealed that there are almost over 800,000 players online from around the world in World of Tanks at any given time.
The overwhelming success from the MMO has enabled the 120 man developer to expand rapidly as now there are over a thousand employees at Wargaming.Net with offices in eleven different countries. Kislyi believes that the developer is still understaffed as
he stated, “It's totally not enough people. We are stretched and hiring like crazy."
Kislyi credits the success of the MMO to the teams’ hard work and the perfect balance that they have found for the micro-transactions and the content available for free. The approach is that gamers should not feel that they are being hindered by meaningless
payments but they should also not feel that everything they want is available for free as that will cause them to lose interest in the game as there is nothing to look forward to in the MMO.
Things look bright for the Russian developer as they are one of the few who currently have a stable subscription based MMO in the market and it seems that there is only growth on the horizon from here on.
Tags: