But the overall sentiment was, OK, at least we were transparent and true to our players. Of course it didn’t go unnoticed in our numbers. We didn’t want to give them something that wasn’t good.Īnd, you know, they forgave us, kind of. We explained why it happened - we were a little bit too arrogant here, a little bit too optimistic there, and that’s why we have to cancel this. Then I went to San Francisco, and at the American office invited American players and influencers and gave them the same story.
We invited all the top European influencers to talk to not just me, but to the designers and developers. They were streaming and blogging right from my office.
Give us some time.” We immediately invited all the major Russian bloggers and media to headquarters and gave them an explanation. Instead of releasing what we had and inevitably getting a negative response, we stood up in front of the players and said, “We screwed up. We scrapped it and started again from scratch. We don’t know how much time it will take.” We decided to stop it, and we announced to the players, “Sorry, it’s not coming out. We went to the players and honestly told them - I made the video saying, “We’re sorry we promised you this.” We had this amazing trailer with the Eiffel Tower, this postapocalyptic kind of theme. We thought it would be an innovative new experience, but it happened that it just wasn’t enjoyable when real players started playing it. The rules of the mode weren’t good enough, let’s put it that way. It was where we promised this super new mode, and we promised it by a certain time, but we didn’t manage to make the mode itself. It happened right before Victory Day in Russia, so we took a big hit in terms of audience, and of course, money follows the audience. There was one technical bug that slipped under the radar of our QA, and when we released the patch, something like 20 percent of our players had a tremendous drop in FPS, which made the game impossible to play. They have a computer they use for doing their tax returns and browsing the web. Many of them, World of Tanks is the only game they play. Now that we’re everywhere in the world, our audience isn’t necessarily made up of gamers. It runs on 5- or 6-year-old computers in Russia or China.
On weaker machines - World of Tanks will run on a calculator, literally. 9.0 was - a technological mistake slipped through QA. GamesBeat: Over 10 years, what would you say was your biggest mistake, and how did you fix it?
#World of tanks blitz 2.5 update
Each update is like a minigame in itself. I think it’s about 100 patches, big updates. I don’t remember how many updates we’ve made since the game launched. In World of Tanks I think it’s the progression and the way tanks fight. But then there has to be some magic sauce in the game design. Whether it’s fishing or football or World of Tanks or other good games, that simplicity allows many people to join in and get into it quickly and easily.
When you look at these types of hobbies, the rules of the game are very simple, usually. Is World of Tanks repetitive? Frankly, yes. Kislyi: I’ve said this a lot today, but after 10 years, I can safely say that World of Tanks is a hobby. GamesBeat: What was key to the runaway success of World of Tanks? Image Credit: Wargaming Mistakes and managing success
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