Today, we traveled out to Nicosia to visit Wargaming, the winner of 2014’s DICE Best Online Game and four golden joysticks. Wargaming was originally founded in 1998 in Minsk then moving to Nicosia, Cyprus 2011. They are known for developing free-to-play games such as World of Tanks, World of Warships, World of Warplanes, and World of Tanks Blitz but, this doesn’t begin to explain Wargaming’s pioneering and domination of the gaming industry. Through ingenious employee benefits and distribution, Wargaming began their reign on the gaming industry.

Wargaming likes to emphasize work-life harmony rather than the original work-life balance that many are told while growing up. We found out how they make this possible when touring the basement facilities. This included a full gym along with trainers, a sauna, physical therapy, and massages- all of which are available to the employees. Along with this, Wargaming likes to emphasize relatively relaxed work hours, with hours usually based around 9-5. Yet, these hours are very malleable to your schedule, therefore if you work at least eight hours, the company will be happy. More employee benefits include group events at wineries and other social places to consistently make the employees satisfied at Wargaming.

Wargaming continues its dominance through its industrial engineers’ take on distribution as we learned through our lecture. First, to gain support for the World of Tanks in a new region of the world, engineers would attach the game with a figure familiar to the region. For example, in Italy, Gigi Buffon, a goalie for the international soccer team was on the cover of the game. As for the delivery of the game, it is mostly digital therefore there is no tangible inventory of the game. This minimizes time wasted on the product and allows for maximum profits, good control, and the ability to instant updates. This feature of instant updates is incredibly important as this continuously makes the user excited to keep playing the game. Furthermore, this was the first free-to-play game on the market when released. This was an incredible gamble, yet it paid off as it generated a plethora of support for the game and generated billions in in-game purchases.

Not only does Wargaming produce a franchisee of wargames, but they also produce a game called Bowling Alley- an extremely successful mobile app. This all leads me to my conclusion that Wargaming can do it all when it comes to video games. They reign the best in all free-to-play games through their marketing and are one of the best video game companies to work at. Hence, Wargaming is the pioneer of gaming.