Todays visits started with a company visit to the game developer Wargaming. Wargaming is a strategy based game developer founded in 1998 in Minsk, but later being headquartered in Nicosia. They have created the famous trio of World of Tanks, Warships, and Warplanes.
Our visit started with a tour of the companies building, starting with their spa and gym. War Gaming is very big on taking care of their employees mental health and physical health as they believe they can create a better work environment and create more productivity as well. The next stop on our tour was a stop to some of the administration offices at the top floor, which had an outdoor patio overlooking the city as well. We stopped there briefly to take some pictures, then we moved down a floor to begin some the presentations in the meeting room.
The presentations focused on the companies background, their strategy, and how they market their games. During the presentations they spoke on how they were pioneers on the free to play front and spoke on how the market has expanded with free to play today. Another topic spoken on was the release of the game on different platforms and the difficulties that were faced in that. For example, in China the developers and marketing team had to have a commission overlook their game before it could legally be sold in the country. This is important though as China is the largest market for games in the world.
After the presentations the staff fielded lots of questions as we were very curious about the company. I asked about their future with new game engines on the forth front and they fielded my question by talking about some of the games they are developing under UnReal Engine 4 and other engines similar. Some other questions that we touched on were, why they chose to create a free to play game and what challenges they faced in doing so. A challenge the company faces is that they have an aging player base and they are seeking new ways in which they can create a better experience for younger players rather than their age range of 35 year old males.
Overall, Wargaming is a really cool company that takes great care of their employees with high leniency of hours and time away from the office. They have a strong future with challenges ahead, but a great staff and plan in place to overcome these challenges.