A big three-story office building adorned with Christmas decorations at the edge of Kyiv’s Podil district is the birth place for the follow-up to “World of Tanks,” the video game called “World of Warplanes.” Even the meeting room of Persha Studia, the Kyiv Wargaming developing studio, features impressive, new computers with giant screens.
The game is the second one in a series of extremely successful games, the first one being “World of Tanks,” with some 75 million registered users worldwide. The third game, “World of Warships,” is now under development.
“World of Warplanes” is catching up fast. Two months into its existence, it has 5 million registered users, of whom several hundred thousand are active players, according to Igronavty, a popular gaming TV show at QTV channel.
Both games are basically virtual simulations of a battlefield that allow the player to operate a tank or a warplane, and choose to play solo or in a team.
Wargaming spokesman Dmytro Bazylevych sits down at the computer to demonstrate just how it works. But the moment the game kicks off, his plane gets rammed by another player’s jet. “Who was that?” Bazylevych cries out, and then goes into a rant about inexperienced players who spoil the fun by crashing into other players’ planes.
As the game begins, the player finds themselves in the sky, surrounded by enemy planes. Lightning-fast reactions are necessary to keep your plane in the air.
More difficult, however, was Wargaming’s “World of Warplanes” entry into the gaming market.
Persha Studia started working with Belarus-based Wargaming in 2010, when it got a contract to design French tanks models for “World of Tanks,” which was then a year into its existence. Their virtual tanks turned out to be a hit and led to the Kyiv team being commissioned to design a follow-up to the “World of Tanks” game.
Development for that stretched over 2.5 years. In the meantime, the team swelled to 170 people, which included history consultants to ensure the planes were accurate copies of their real-life prototypes from the 1930s-1950s, the golden age of military aviation. Historical accuracy is important to win the love of gamers, designers say.
“We had to start in a highly competitive environment, unlike the ‘World of Tanks,’ which was one of the first successfull free-to-play games in historically realistic settings,” Oleg Gotynyan, the general manager of Persha Studia, explains.
Free-to-play, he explains, is a system that allows game installation for free and ensures that both paying and non-paying clients can play on equal parity.
A new player starts the game with a basic set of features – cheap planes that don’t fly high and don’t shoot well. But each victory earns vitrual money and experience, which allow the player to buy better planes. Those who want to get there quicker can pay real-life money for upgrades. The best plane one can get for real money is a level 5 plane that costs Hr 64.
Gotynyan says those who pay real money are in the minority. “We don’t have statistics on ‘World of Warplanes’ yet, but out of 78 million registered users in “World of Tanks,” only 25-30 percent pay real money,” he said.
“I did pay Hr 20 once and I am still ashamed,” says Oleksandr Ganzha, a 30-year-old TV engineer from Kyiv, a “World of Tanks” player who owns two level 10 tanks. He also has a level 8 aircraft in “World of Warplanes.”
Gotynyan says he worries that the players may find the “World of Warplanes” too difficult to figure out and will go back to the easier game, “World of Tanks.” To keep players interested in the game, the company releases updates with new maps and control improvements every five weeks, Gotynyan asserted.
“The topic of aviation is much more complicated, but at the same time the gaming process is much more fun,” Rostyslav Manko, the lead specialist of Igronavty TV show, says. “And several hundred thousand active players is quite a result for the beginning.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
