This morning we visited Wargaming, Wargaming is a company that is focused on creation of free-to-play PvP MMO games such as their World Of franchise, consisting of World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes. The company was founded in 1998 and currently has a player base of 500 million in over 200 territories and on over 12 platforms. One thing I learned about the game development industry through our visit at Wargaming was that especially as a triple A producer of free-to-play games, partnerships are important for the expansion of customer base and retention of current customer base. Wargaming as a supplier tends to rely on not only its own platform, but also the gaming platforms of different consoles, phones, and PC based platforms in order to distribute their games to a larger market.
In the afternoon we were able to explore Kakopetria village and St. Nicholas of the Roof Church. Kakopetria Village is set on the side of and in the valley of a mountain, this gives it a unique position compared to the other towns and cities we have passed through so far in Cyprus. Many of the roads within the village had small open ditches running alongside them to allow for the easy drainage of water, this was different compared to the underground drainage system usually found in the US and it seemed to keep the roads drier. While we were heading to the inn, we ate lunch in we stopped by some locals who were selling canned fruit and rose water, it was interesting to see people selling goods they made from right off their porch, to other locals and tourist that moved through the area. This isn’t really something I see in the US, but the appeal of being able buy fresh goods directly on the road is a very attractive idea. According to stories, the reason Kakopetria is named such is because there is a rock in the village that fell on a couple that was passing underneath it, injuring them, this gave the village the name that translates to “bad stone”. When it comes to St. Nicholas of the Roof Church the thing I found the most interesting is that one of the two remaining frescoes from 11th century within the church has chunks of it removed due to the fact that in the 14th century they put another fresco overtop of the original, in which they removed parts of the original fresco for the plaster to be able to stick.