Lunch with the Developers: Part 4

Pilots,

After Parts one, two and three, our long-lasting talk with developers Oleg Gotynyan and Miroslav Baranenko comes to a close with the fourth and final part of the interview. Let’s get to it!

	Oleg Gotynyan General Manager Persha Studia	Miroslav Baranenko Head of Art
Interviewed by our World of Warplanes Editor Elijah Tabere

In this article we discuss:

• Game mode creation
• Synergies between World of Tanks and World of Warplanes
• Gamescom 2013
• Wargaming in 15 years

Ivan Kulbich, Head of Game Design, was recently quoted saying that before arriving at the current standard battles, ten other game modes have been tested during the development process of the game. Can you tell us about this?

OG: It’s true that we’ve worked and tried a lot of game modes in the past – probably even more than ten overall. However, what you need to understand is that these were, for the most part, only rudimentary draft versions of game modes, which a programmer had rapidly assembled for testing purposes in barely a couple of days. What usually followed was a test of this initial base version by our game designers, who were tasked with assessing if the mode was promising enough for further development.

Overall, we must have run tests like these until about summer of 2012. The closer we came to the end of last year, the more we stopped with these kinds of “experiments” and started concentrating only on either “Must-have-for-release” features, or polishing what we already had.

I seem to remember that there was a mode among these, where the players had to take out NPC-driven bombers, before they managed to reach a target. There were plenty of others as well. But honestly, it’s been too long ago to recall all of them.

All these modes never left prototype stage. You never really considered having any of them ready for release?

OG: Initially it was planned to ship the game with two game modes. However, the more we saw how expensive it creating and balancing such a second game mode would be, the more we thought that it was not mandatory for release at least.

From the past we had seen that World of Tanks did very well with just one game mode for a very long time. We figured that we were in the same position, where it’s more important to first polish one main battle mode, and think about all potential extensions to it later. It’s normal in game development, to shift tasks around, based on the actual current state of the game. In our case, the main standard battle mode had evolved so well, that we felt it worthy and able to carry the release of the game on its own.

What previously acquired knowledge from developing World of Tanks helps your team develop World of Warplanes today?

MB: The basic gameplay principles of World of Tanks, obviously also apply to us. We benefit from their experience, sometimes by building on their knowledge, sometimes by literally being able to employ people, who either have or still actively take part in World of Tanks development.

OG: There are a lot of server-side features, which have initially been developed for World of Tanks, which we also use for World of Warplanes. Their server architecture, which allows to switch between clusters for example, will be necessary for us as well. Obviously we won’t reinvent this, if we already have the technology ready for it from a previous project.

A lot of things that make the game run – not in the client but rather in the web part behind it – like the payment system, support program or Backyard interface, have also been directly copied from World of Tanks.

In terms of gameplay, we knew from the start that we were going to develop a 15 vs. 15 player instance-based MMO. Even the interface of our game is supposed to resemble World of Tanks. However, we try to adapt it for our purposes, avoiding mistakes that have been made in the initial game.

We’ve seen that you’ve been busy changing the interface a lot in the last half a year or so.

OG: Indeed we keep constantly working on it. That’s because the interface largely dictated our release window. We couldn’t release the game without a working in-game shop, a user profile page, an achievements page and so on and so forth. These features were crucial and had to be prioritised for us to be able to finish the game. So we worked a lot on it, even copying more from World of Tanks when we saw that creating a new element from scratch would throw us too far behind time-wise. 

MB: The World of Tanks developers have also helped us a lot with the game’s economy. We could simply rely on their knowledge, to adapt a stable and fair system which benefits both us and the players.

Lastly, they’ve always consulted us on questions regarding the balance of the game. Overall, even though the direct interaction wasn’t too extensive, with everybody being busy on their own project, we still benefitted a lot from their experience.

Developer Oleg Gotynian explains the future of World of Warplanes.

How did you like the Wargaming gamescom 2013 experience? What are your thoughts on the event?

MB: We love it, even though it’s very exhausting after a couple of days on stage in a row.

OG: It is an amazing event and we’re happy to be able to come to represent our game. What I liked particularly was yesterday’s Community Party. It was very heart-warming to meet and greet with our testers face to face and to get their direct feedback. To see their eyes light up when they speak about the game, and to be able to answer their genuinely interested questions was great.

Was this the first time that you’ve met with players in such a fashion?

OG: Well, with European players yes, that was the first time. We’ve met other players before, of course, but it was always in different conditions at focus tests or by individual invitation. We’ve never met with players in such a loose and friendly atmosphere before. That was just great.

MB: I liked this year’s gamescom even more than the last. Our team has grown together now and everybody was more efficient. This allowed us to put together a much tighter-run show, which had an amazing vibe about it.

OG: Everything worked like clockwork. We want to extend a sincere thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the work that our EU team has done – from supporting the game to organizing gamescom, everything was great. I don’t even know how to top this next year.

Miroslav Baranenko and Oleg Gotynyan with our World of Warplanes Editor Elijah Tabere (center) who led this interview. 

Our company just recently celebrated its 15 year anniversary. Where would you like to see Wargaming go in the next 15 years?

OG: That’s a good question! It reminds me of how one of our leading developers has written a development plan for World of Tanks until 2025! (laughs) But in all seriousness, I think the answer to this question can be summed up in our Wargaming motto: “Conquer the world!”

We already have 16 offices worldwide on every continent except Africa and the Antarctic, and most likely, we’ll get to those too. In the end, it will obviously lead to more and bigger games. So far it’s only been World of Tanks, but we’re only inches away from releasing World of Warplanes as well. Next up will be World of Tanks XBOX 360 Edition, where our American colleagues are already mounting an Open Beta test. Then comes World of Tanks Generals, followed by World of Tanks Blitz for mobiles.  After that you’ll hear about the current project of Chris Taylor, which people will be very eager to learn more about once it’s announced.

This is just the beginning! Some of you may have heard that we recently acquired the rights to the “Master of Orion” and “Total Annihilation” series. Obviously we intend to make use of those as well. So there is still a lot to come.

MB: Already every 100^th person on the planet plays World of Tanks (with 70 Million players worldwide). In 15 years, we expect this number to be much higher. (laughs)

OG: Let’s just modestly say that we hope we’ll get to a point, where everybody, who owns a computing device and is connected to the internet, will play some kind of Wargaming game.

As we say in our mission statement, we aim to make legendary games. Just recently, during Research and Development for a future title, we took a step back after the initial discussions and asked ourselves: “Is this a truly legendary game, we’re creating?” For us the answer always has to be yes. We don’t want to produce cheap games to earn a quick buck. We’re in it for the long haul.

That’s it for our developer interview from gamescom. We hope, you’ll join us in thanking Oleg and Miroslav for the time that they’ve attributed us.   

Here’s to our next 15 years together, Pilots!