Day 6 was a continuation of our professional site visits, this time at Wargaming headquarters. During our presentation, I learned that Wargaming is a company that produces and distributes games such as World of Tanks, World of Warplanes and World of Warships. Their business practices run under the philosophy of a work-life harmony, where the company essentially tries to blend their work into the lives of the employees by incorporating flexible hours as well as providing amenities such as on-site gyms, saunas, and massage rooms. Though the convenient perks are a bonus, the real appeal to Wargaming is their established reputation in the industry. A self proclaimed “pioneer of free to play on console”, Wargaming holds claim to 16 offices and 200 million players around the world, holding 2 Guinness World Records for number of players on an MMO server. When we talked about the process of supply chain for digital products, our presenter Alex told us that the benefits of digital release (easier updating ability, better control and visibility, lack of lead time and holding costs, etc.) create endless opportunities for growth and development in the gaming sector. I’m interested to see how the industry will evolve in the future if the market demand stays high and technology continues to advance at an accelerated rate. 

Once we concluded our time at Wargaming, we went back to UNIC to sit in on a few lectures as usual except this time around we were joined by actual students from the university! Ever since we got the itinerary and I saw we were going to be with the UNIC students I’ve been anticipating this opportunity and I believe that it came through on my expectations. Our first lesson was more quantitative, with a quick lecture on the environmental impact of energy demand followed by a group assignment to calculate our individual CO2 footprints based on average data we received and the collective mathematical abilities of our group members. Our calculations weren’t exactly accurate but we did manage to work together as a team to get results that we were happy with, which is what I believe the professor was trying to teach us. Our second lesson was more creative than the first; we were split into groups and told to complete a series of tasks related to collaboration and team building. While I think this experience could have been organized a bit better, I did enjoy my experience there and made friends with some of the UNIC students so for me it was worth the time.