Who is Victor sour? Interview with Viktor Kisly about the life of Wargaming, entrepreneurship and the future. Chasing new emotions

The founder and CEO of the gaming company Wargaming, Viktor Kisly, gave an interview to Vedomosti about how the company’s revenue was affected by the fall in the ruble and euro exchange rates, about e-sports and doing business in the countries of the former USSR.

CPU publishes excerpts from the interview.

Wargaming was founded in 1998. The studio's assets include: popular games, like World of Tanks, World of Warplanes and others. The organization's offices are located in Minsk, Kyiv, St. Petersburg, Seattle and other cities around the world. According to Vedomosti, the World of Tanks title alone brought the studio more than $500 million in 2015.

The founder of the company, Viktor Kisly, spoke about how the crisis is affecting earnings and about the development of the studio’s business.

About the World of Tanks audience and work during a crisis

According to the editors of Vedomosti, due to the crisis, World of Tanks users began to spend less time in the game and also began to pay less. Kisly notes that residents of the countries of the former Soviet Union have not started playing less. The CEO of Wargaming calls the Japanese the most paying audience - there are few players from this country, according to him, but if a Japanese is captivated by a game, he plays it for a very long time.

Now Wargaming is promoting World of Tanks to new markets - the team is finishing new version games for Xbox One, which, according to Kisly, should attract more Americans, studies the characteristics of the markets of Brazil, Korea, America, and so on.

Now our audience for the game is distributed approximately 50:50. Half are Russia and the countries of the former USSR, the other half are the rest of the world. That is, the dynamics are still moving towards an increase in the international audience, which is logical - after all, the population of the entire world is larger than the former USSR.

The game's revenue in Russia, according to Viktor Kisly, decreased in dollar terms due to the fall in the exchange rate of the ruble and euro. The game has 25% of paying users - and because of the crisis, schoolchildren and students, whose purchasing power has fallen, began to pay less. For the rest of the audience, according to Kisly, there was no difference in payments - including because the game is built in such a way that it does not have particularly expensive slots, and “there is nothing to spend $1000 a month on.”

One of the most expensive purchases that a user can make in World of Tanks is a “golden tank” for $400, which the developers introduced into the game at the insistence of Chinese partners.

On average, according to the company's CEO, one paying user spends about $25 per month in the game.

About Wargaming's revenue

As Vedomosti notes, the analytical company Superdata estimated Wargaming's revenue in 2014 at $505 million. Viktor Kisly refused to comment on this assessment - he only explained that real revenue is actually measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

It is clear that due to the fall Russian ruble Our dollar revenue has not grown, to put it mildly. How much she has not grown is not very important. We still expect that the situation will improve, peace will come and everything will return to normal.

At the same time, the drop in revenue, according to Kisly, is associated not only with economic reasons, but also with technical ones. Thus, in 2014 the company released World update of Tanks with several technical errors - and the number of concurrent users fell by 20% in two months.

About other studio games

Wargaming also has other games - for example, World of Warplanes or World of Warships, which is on this moment is in closed beta testing. According to Viktor Kisly, World of Warplanes is not so popular because the studio was in a hurry to bring it to market. World of Warship “has excellent statistical parameters in the closed beta, across all regions.”

About the future of eSports and eSports competitions

Viktor Kisly sees eSports tournaments in another way Development World of Tanks. In April 2015, one of these competitions, organized by Wargaming, was held in Poland - and the finals, according to the company’s CEO, attracted twice as many visitors as the year before.

It has now become clear that eSports is growing so quickly that we can already assume that it will soon become very big - both in terms of audience and, possibly, in money. But the whole question is in the content. It seems to me that this can be compared with ordinary sports, which people watch with great pleasure on TV.

According to Kisly, in the wake of the popularity of e-sports, successful business projects are already beginning to appear - such as Twitch, bought by Amazon for $970 million. Advertisers are interested in such services - the area is developing rapidly, which no one could have predicted a few years ago: “Everyone thought that this is such a purely Korean thing and it won’t go anywhere further.”

Kisly believes that e-sports could become a “new media reality,” which is still at the beginning of its journey.

About conducting international business in the countries of the former USSR and working in various offices of the company

In post-Soviet countries, progress in creating favorable conditions for business is huge. Wargaming unites studios from Kyiv, St. Petersburg, Minsk, as well as offices in Europe, Asia and the USA under one roof, and we can compare the conditions that different countries provide us. In the countries of the former USSR, we feel support and interest in the company and in our recovery initiatives military equipment, popularization of history.

According to Viktor Kisly, the main office of Wargaming was and remains in Minsk - it is there that the development of World of Tanks and World of Tanks Blitz (mobile version games). The financial and legal departments, the global UX design team, and so on are also located there. Work on World of Warplanes is carried out by the Kiev branch of the company, and on World of Warships by the St. Petersburg branch. In Seattle, work is underway on a new, as yet unannounced project.

About the spread of mobile platforms

As Victor Kisly notes, “general mobilization” is a trend that cannot be ignored. There are, in his opinion, other unconditional trends: the introduction of cloud technologies, active promotion of streaming and virtual reality.

Kisly Viktor is one of the richest and most famous Belarusian businessmen. The creator and owner of the Wargaming company, who became acquainted with computers only in high school. He invented the game World of Tanks, which today is played by about 90 million people around the world.

Gamer biography

Kisly Victor was born in 1976. He was born on the territory of the Belarusian SSR. After school I entered where I graduated with a degree in Laser Physics and Spectroscopy.

His first steps in the computer games market were the founding of the Game Stream company, which appeared in 1998. She immediately began producing computer games. Among her flagship projects are Operation Bagration, Massive Assault, DBA Online.

In the same year, he registered the Wargaming company, where he took the post of CEO.

Personal life

The businessman’s personal life was successful. The hero of our article has a wife. Victor Kisly and his wife are raising a son. At the same time, financially he is a very wealthy person. In 2016, Viktor Kisly’s fortune exceeded the one billion dollar mark. He himself reacted calmly to this news, noting only that he leads a very modest lifestyle, emphasizing that his task for the future is to create a high-quality conveyor for the production and sale of high-quality computer games around the world.

Now he has moved his company from Belarus to Cyprus, where tax legislation is favorable. World experts estimate the value of his company at one and a half billion dollars.

Introduction to the world of computers

Victor Kisly himself says that his acquaintance with the world of computers began in the scientific laboratory in which his father worked. There he saw the first computer game - a primitive one in which he had to manage a kingdom.

Soon after this, computer clubs emerged, and the industry began to develop rapidly. Together with all his friends and classmates, he went to a spaceship to run somewhere and shoot at someone. It was fascinating.

First steps in business

Kisly Victor began to engage in entrepreneurship while studying at BSU. Now he remembers that it was this education that his father insisted on, for which he is immensely grateful to him today.

The young man’s mathematical thinking was developed since childhood. It’s not for nothing that his father sent him to chess school. The grandmaster from Viktor Kisly, whose photo is in this article, did not work out, but the ability to think clearly and competently remained for life.

When Victor graduated from school, the Soviet Union was just collapsing. The most obvious thing was to get an accounting degree and start your own business. But then his father insisted that there would soon be too many accountants in the country, but few would be able to really create and think. And this can be taught at the Faculty of Physics of BSU.

The education received there helped in terms of business modeling.

The first game

Kisly Victor began writing his first game in 1996. He created it based on a well-known tabletop. There was no Internet then, so all you had to do on a black screen was enter various squiggles.

The first online game was played by email. It was chess game, which was carried out on the world map. The player made a move, the data was packaged, attached to the email and sent to the server. Everything was already unpacked there and the changed situation was sent to the player. This game was relatively small, but was already considered an online multiplayer game.

DBA

In 1998, Victor Kisly, whose biography is given in this article, began developing new game. Even then, the realization came that a successful project must be tied to a certain situation or event, people must understand the atmosphere in which they are immersed.

In this project, he exploited board games that were popular in narrow circles, in order to participate in which it was necessary to purchase exact copies of soldiers from different armies: Macedonians, Romans.

Then 12 more followed variety of games. The loudest of them was Massive Assault. It became one of the world's first 3D turn-based strategy games. In the universe of this game there were helicopters of the future, tanks, ships, etc. It was based on a deeply developed mathematical concept that ensured pleasure from the dynamics and development of the plot.

During a battle with a serious enemy, I had to engage in strategic thinking and master tactics. It was simply impossible to win with just one thing. This was the first project that was able to enter the Western market.

"Operation Bagration"

The next significant success was the game “Operation Bagration”. This is an operation that took place precisely on the territory of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War. The game recreated specific places and battles of 1944.

Victor Kislytold Vedomosti about life before and after the creation of the legendary Games World of Tanks, mistakes and victories in business, reasons for moving to Cyprus and plans for the future.

"To think with your head, to invent, to create"

Kisly, who was in 13th place in the latest ranking of the top 200 largest Belarusian businessmen, spoke about the path to creating Wargaming, which began with an acquaintance with computers in the last grades of school, in the first year of university. “In the scientific laboratory where my father worked, there were computers - old, pot-bellied ones. And there were the first games in the form of kingdom management - primitive, I don’t remember the names, I remember, they were terrible and scary. But we have nostalgia for them. Then computer clubs appeared, and they already had video games: someone was running somewhere, shooting, a spaceship was flying somewhere. All of us boys really liked these games, they fascinated an entire generation!”

Path to serious business I started by studying at the physics department of BSU, which my father insisted on. "There are several things in my life that he insisted on. In the first grade, he sent me to a professional chess school - I studied there for seven years. We began to think about what to do after school. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was fashionable to go to Narxoz. The concept is this: you go to Narxoz, get, say, an accountant education and then start your own business. And my father explained to me that there will probably be enough accountants in our country without me, and administrators too, but to think with your head, to invent, to create - in Narxoz. They can’t teach this. And he literally insisted that I go to the physics department of the Belarusian State University.”

“What were they studying then - mathematical analysis, tensors, thermodynamics, quantum, etc. real life we don’t need this, but looking back, I can say that not only me, but also many people who started in Wargaming a long time ago, were trained as physicists, chemists, radiophysicists, and mathematicians. Education helped us a lot in terms of modeling and so on. What does physics do? He tries to give answers to what the Universe is, asks sacramental questions and builds models on this. Reality is observed, a model is made - and then, based on this model, experiments are carried out, hypotheses and theories are built, and conclusions are drawn. I honestly attended the physics department, however, because of “Civilization” I practically failed one session.”

In 1996, recalls Viktor Kisly, they began to write the first game, “one might say, with a claim to taking over the world.” "It was created based on our board game. But then the Internet didn’t really exist yet. A black screen, and some squiggles could be entered in text form. Everything there was still in a simplified form, but we intuitively managed to see the future in this. Our first game was online. It worked via e-mail - it was a chess game on the world map: I made my move with my soldiers, it was automatically packaged, attached to the e-mail, and sent to the server. The server unpacked, processed and sent you a new situation. Our practically very first game was already small, but MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game, MMO - massively multiplayer online game. - Vedomosti).

Wargaming: computer game developer.
Shareholders are Viktor Kisly (38.5%), his father Vladimir Kisly (25.5%), Nikolai Katselapov (17%) and Ivan Mikhnevich (17%). Financial indicators (IFRS, 2012): revenue - 217.9 million euros, profit - 6.194 million euros; (IFRS, 1st half of 2013): revenue - 234 million euros, net profit - 25.6 million euros.
The company has not yet reported for 2013.

"We, five or six students, lived on a scholarship. My father helped a little with pocket money. The salary of the first programmer was $25 a month. We worked and earned extra money, just so as not to die of hunger. But we understood that if we made a game of all times and peoples, it will take over the world and then we will get rich! But then, until the 2000s, everything was based on enthusiasm. In 1998 - and this is an important point - we, techies (physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists), we understood that we were doing something beautiful, with internal technical logic. Then the understanding of marketing came. the world will focus on this. They began to think: why didn’t it work, and what did we do wrong here, because how cleverly everything was conceived and implemented. It turns out that it’s too clever.”

The developers realized that there had to be a connection to some event or situation so that people could understand the atmosphere, and in 1998 they began developing a game called De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA). “This is a very popular set of board games in narrow circles, when grown men buy tin soldiers, well, very, very accurately made - Romans, Macedonians - and start battles,” said Kisly.

After the DBA there were 12 more games. "Game Stream" Kisly then teamed up with another small company, a little smaller than us - Arise. And together with Arise they made many games. "Probably the loudest is Massive Assault. It so happened that we made one of the world's first three-dimensional turn-based strategies. We took the sci-fi universe - in it large humanoid walking robots, futuristic helicopters, ships, tanks, plasma - and made it smart a chess mathematical concept where you could enjoy explosions and dynamics. And at the same time, when you play against a good opponent, you had to strain both strategic and tactical thinking. It was almost impossible to win with just strategy or just tactics. We are proud of this game. With it, we entered the Western market for the first time. The game appeared on the shelves of American, German, and English stores. After that, we moved to a higher league and decided to make a real time strategy."

“Before tanks, our most famous title on domestic territory is Operation Bagration. That is, God himself ordered. The whole of Belarus in the places of specific battles as part of Operation Bagration in 1944 was recreated, as far as the computer game allowed. They made a beautiful story liberation of Belarus in detail - it turned out beautifully. We honestly took the well-deserved first prize at the game developers conference. best strategy. This was our first expensive award, which we still appreciate. They have declared themselves as a serious player in the domestic gaming industry. We made the next game for the West, it has already been renamed by the publisher Square Enix in Order of War, because no one knows Operation Bagration. There is Normandy and then the liberation of France by American troops. These games were performed at a very respectable competitive level."

"Bagration" and Order of War occurred during the crisis years of 2008-2009. “As always, we didn’t make any money. I attribute this to the fact that the “box” as a business model has ceased to exist for small and medium-sized projects. There are several mega-superhits that have been developing for 20 years (Call of Duty, for example), and plus multi-platform, but we did it for PC. These franchises have a chance and are earning normally. Their income is increasing due to the fact that small and medium-sized games are simply dying out. But games with a budget of $0.5-1 million have no chance to compete. , of course, there is always, that’s why we are in this gaming industry, where you always hope for this chance. But if we take the statistics, there were no chances against Call of Duty or GTA. We realized that if we sell games in a box, We’ll drag out a miserable existence, living from payment to payment. We had to either close down or come up with something radically new.”

“I myself have about 12,000 fights, and every day, if possible, I load and cut”

And then “World of Tanks” appears. “We went through all these circles of hell and realized: the box is NO. Online! We understood: there must be localization for each individual market, we wanted to reach a wider audience - so that a Russian, an American, and a Chinese could click the download button and download. We decided to come up with our own universe. We decided to narrow the choice: after all, there are a lot of games where infantry runs back and forth. And then we decided - and this was the craziest point: let’s just have tanks! Then we had no idea how big this idea would grow! And a month ago in Russia, at a specific second at 20.00 Moscow time, 1,100,000 men were sitting and cutting into tanks at the same time. This is a record for us! , recorded, all the certificates are worth it, we are proud of it, and this is very important to us.”

The “Tanks” did not fire immediately, says Viktor Kisly, the partners even considered the possibility of selling part of the company. “Me and several of my colleagues traveled around Russia and the whole world. We thought, maybe, to find a publisher. In Germany, in America, we tried to find a publisher, but it turned out that we didn’t find it, and, as they say, thank God. Because that it was here that a fundamental change occurred in the industry itself. Publishers only knew how to sell a box, but it was getting ridiculous: they simply did not understand how to do business online, how it is - free game? They didn’t understand that you could download and not pay anything at all, because the same World of Warcraft came with a subscription - $10-20 per month. What if we never get paid? As our statistics show, 70-75% [of players] really don’t spend their money. The publishers said: no, no, no, we can’t do this. Approximately the same dialogue took place everywhere with publishers."

The narrow tank theme also aroused mistrust. But in the end it turned out differently. “Well, we were lucky, too, of course. We might not have guessed right, it might not have worked out, we might have missed something,” the Wargaming CEO modestly notes. “But we uncovered the very idea of ​​free-to-play. It was popular, it flourished in Asia, in Russia too. So simple. game mechanics— you’re sitting at work, just clicking. In Russia this was already clear. Plus, the payment infrastructure has arrived. It didn’t exist in 2003.”

"I have about 12,000 battles myself, and every day, if possible, I download and cut. The game is really exciting."

Victor Kisly noted that the company has very soft monetization. 70-75% of people will never pay anything in their lives, and the company owners consider this normal.

The game is designed in such a way that you can simply play and enjoy gameplay without investing real money. “Our players themselves advise their friends: listen, Vasya, buy it already, or something, you can’t do without it at the tournament. And so on. The concept is simple: you can play as much as you want for free - if you like the game and play it regularly. It's important to us that you get back into the game and play a couple of days a week. Gaming session- one seven-minute fight. The limit is 15, but the average is seven. You can play with anyone until you're blue in the face without paying. Another thing is that when you really like it, you play in a platoon with friends, with your brother, with your little son.”

“And then by August 2010, it happened one day, the money came in! The first numbers were quite modest, but literally a month or two later they significantly exceeded our forecasts, and growth began. And at some point it even became almost exponentially. Naturally, we carried out advertising and traditional promotion activities. But many people did not come through advertising tracing - we can see it: people are just coming, and it is not clear where they are coming from, word of mouth. or word of mouth. People themselves drag their friends into the game - the game itself encourages this, because when you cooperate on the flank with three tanks of different types (artillery, firefly and middle tank), the game becomes more interesting. Cooperation and well-coordinated teamwork help a lot. . That’s probably why they drag their friends along. Well, the game turned out good,” notes the general director.

About choosing Cyprus: everything here is fair and, most importantly, clear

The story of how a Belarusian’s business ended up in Cyprus is interesting. "We needed special place, which will allow us to organize our essentially international business correctly, openly, honestly, with the payment of all required taxes and fees, so that it is transparent, sustainable and develops further. We looked at many jurisdictions. Wargaming was mostly an informal formation, a group of fellow enthusiasts, as is traditional in any gaming startups, who worked together towards the same goal, without really thinking about exchanges and so on. Have you looked at what we have between East and West, what we have in Europe at the same time plus many Russians, what is similar in mentality, including the Orthodox religion and certain elements of lifestyle (coffee, dreaming about life, etc.)? This is the Republic of Cyprus. What is good for a German is good for a Russian... Or vice versa. This is a really good jurisdiction. At the same time, we had no intention of using it as an offshore."

In Cyprus, Wargaming turned around and even managed to buy shares of Hellenic Bank and real estate.

“We used to be small, we sat quietly working - about 10-15 people. But now we already have about 50 people in our office, and how many people come constantly! Therefore, when we moved here, my dad and I had separate offices, and the rest of the people who move in are already sitting on top of each other. And we need a lot of space. There are 2,800 people in the company around the world.”

“Here you can wear shorts and flip-flops. Today I dressed up for our meeting. And I can dress simpler for work. It’s not scary here. The food is delicious. In the summer, everyone still goes to the sea. sea ​​point by car about half an hour one way. The sea there is considered to be a little cleaner and more beautiful than in Limassol. By the way, there are mountains here, two kilometers away. There's a dam there. There you can even... build in the mountains. There are a lot of beautiful monasteries here. There's a story here. Aphrodite came out of the foam over there, if diagonally... - says Victor Kisly. - It's actually normal here. The taxation here is clear and understandable. This is the European Union. That is, everything here is tough, European. But on the other hand, everything is honest and, most importantly, understandable. If something is not clear, there is Deloitte or KPMG, which will explain and, if something is needed, help. If it’s not at all clear, then, in the end, you can ask for a meeting with the Minister of Finance, talk to him, explain the situation. I’m exaggerating a little, but that’s the atmosphere.”

"Two hundred people work at Wargaming. About half of these people are so-called publishers. The tank development group is about 600 people. Artists, programmers, product managers who create product value. And about half of the entire company are publishers, 1300-1400 people , they are engaged in service. For 3.5 years, we, like no one else, can say that this game is not just beautiful tanks driving around the screen, no. This is a service. Why do we have an office in Paris or San Francisco? a cheap location and not the most tax haven. But because we tried to operate in Europe, etc. from Minsk, this is no longer possible. good story- cultural phenomenon, game. Tanks went into cartoons, comics, etc.,” says Kisly.

Wargaming is actively promoting the tank theme in real life. “We must approach reality objectively. Yes, we defeated everyone! But we cannot slow down so as not to make a mistake tomorrow that will change the opinion about us. Therefore, every day we keep our finger on the pulse, we have a scientific approach to this whole matter. We We carry out a huge number of events to restore equipment and monuments from the Second World War as part of our own initiative “To Remember”. Basically, we hold almost all meetings with players in museums - this is great for the Museum, and for us it is an opportunity to gather players, hold a tournament, talk about tanks, look at them, sometimes even take a ride somewhere. In Belarus, we restored the T-34 just nuts and bolts, and it took part in the Victory Parade. This is the legendary T-34 with the 76th gun, old.

“If a Belarusian is transported to Cyprus, his wife immediately appears and says: “But in Belarus the school curriculum is better...”

The general director also has his own view on why truly large companies in the industry come from Belarus. “I am inclined to believe this: firstly, Belarusians as a people are a modest people - we understand that there is a balance in this world, today you are on a horse, and tomorrow a war could start. That is, we are modest people, this is true. This can be traced both in our literature and in our history. Go to Minsk and ask. Secondly: it probably happened that after the Great Patriotic War, Minsk was in ruins and a large amount was brought to Belarus and returned at that time. technological production - this includes electronics, BelAZs, MAZs, color TVs and military equipment, etc. A lot of things were done, including optics. And my father is a man of science in Belarus, that is, Belarus at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, etc. for some time after that, it had a huge part of the production potential: production, the technical potential of this production and, accordingly, engineering, scientific. And all this resulted in the fact that Belarus has a very strong university, technical universities, and a strong school program. For example, one of the problems is that if a Belarusian is transported to Cyprus, his wife immediately appears and says: “But in Belarus the school curriculum is better. In mathematics and in other subjects. Despite the fact that the British system is here.”

“Education can always be adjusted if you do this, if you want to invest knowledge in a child. And then let them decide for themselves whether they need Harvard or Physics and Technology, everyone will have their own choice. I, as a person who studied in a physics class at school and at the physics department , I say that our base is wonderful. The Belarusian Olympic programming team is constantly, if not in the top three, then somewhere nearby, and sometimes takes prizes. It so happened that my brother studied applied mathematics and was friends with all these Olympiad participants. , and many of them went to work for us. I think there is a lot of scientific and technical potential in Belarus, of course, they lost something in difficult economic times, but there is a result - “tolerant”, that’s what we are. there were many dark days in our history, by the way, according to this type, here, too, for the last 3000 years, either the Greeks, or the Turks, or Richard Lion Heart. They are also a stoic people here. You can say this half-jokingly: since Belarus doesn’t have much natural resources, except for the forest (and if you cut it all down, there won’t be any more), and beautiful girls, so you have to think with your head. That is, you can’t stick a stick into the ground - oil won’t come from there. There is some fertilizer and a small piece of oil somewhere near Mozyr."

Victor Kisly. Screenshot from a video interview about business

What happens to a company when the number of employees exceeds 2.5 thousand. Why does an optimistic leader need people on his team who know how to “spoil the party.” How Wargaming will develop in the future. What will the new Decree on HTP give to Belarus? What books should every leader read? About this and much more in our long Skype interview with the founder and CEO of Wargaming, the developer of the legendary computer game World of Tanks, Viktor Kisly. We publish the most interesting quotes and full video version our conversation.

About entrepreneurship and the task of an entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship for me is creating something big and bright that people need. This could be a product or service. It should be beautiful, comfortable, and bring obvious benefits. We are in the entertainment industry, and in our case, a computer game should be beautiful, exciting and should develop some skills - in the case of World of Tanks, we are talking about teamwork on the battlefield, the ability to think strategically, and cooperate.

Moreover, any big business requires a lot of people to create this value and provide it to the consumer, buyer, client. And the main task for a leader, an entrepreneur, in addition to conceiving an idea and thinking through its details, is to organize a certain number of people. Sometimes it is measured in tens, sometimes hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or, as in the case of Walmart, millions (according to data for 2016, the number of employees of the Walmart retail chain was 2.3 million people - approx. "About business").

About the difficulties of growing

You need to get used to working hard, and when success comes, begins to come, you make a choice for yourself: is this enough, can you stop here, somehow fix yourself, or move on? In my case, after the first successes of World of Tanks, I said to myself, and my colleagues supported me in many ways: why stop? Let's move on - the world is big!

Today we have approximately 4.5 thousand people in our company. However, they are scattered geographically. Our offices operate in Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Kiev, Minsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nicosia, Paris, Helsinki, Prague, San Francisco, Texas, Austin, Chicago, Seattle. All these are different cultures, different legislation. And here completely different management principles are required.

Our chief strategy officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Matthew Haradon. We invited him to us from the New York Times, one of the largest and most successful newspapers not only in America, but also in the world. In addition, Matthew also teaches at the university and has seen many different companies in his time. So he says the following: while the company has not yet grown to 2.5 thousand employees, you can manage it based on personal charisma, family or startup values, and be constantly aware of what is happening in different departments. If the company has 100-150 people, then you can manage it at full capacity.

But as the number of people grows and exceeds 2.5 thousand, it will not be possible to move forward successfully on charisma alone. Different management principles are required.

Yes, probably this concept of “corporate governance” has already set teeth on edge, but at some stage you can’t do without it.

I'm talking about the board of directors, the management team of top managers who are responsible for very large areas, but do nothing with their own hands. Under them are people, if the company is large, who also do not do anything “with their hands” themselves, but are responsible for directions, a little smaller within the framework of some large direction. And maybe already at the third, fourth level - people who do something with their hands.

That's how Walmart is run, that's how Apple is run, that's how Google is run - I met with Eric Schmidt (chairman and former CEO of Google, also former board member of Apple - approx. "About business"), we communicated with him on these issues. We read books, go to conferences, go to Stanford - the conclusion is: unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this corporate level of management cannot be avoided.

About the leader's dilemma

There is always a dilemma: how much do you, as a manager, as a leader, want and be able to delve into the details and advise something. On the one hand, the people you manage don't like you to interfere. They say - I’m exaggerating, but the conversation goes something like this: “Well, wait, buddy, you gave me the direction. You trust me, right? Let me do it. Trust me. I'll do everything in at its best. If there are problems, I will ask you, but leave it to me, don’t go to my people, don’t tell them what to do. You are undermining my authority as a leader." Here it is on the one hand.

On the other hand, you still need to find mechanisms where things that are critical for the company, in which it is easy to make a mistake, are somehow checked or agreed upon. Mistakes in the gaming industry are unfortunately expensive and very painful. And the task of a leader today is to very competently balance between delegation and mentoring, a certain amount of cooperation in order to minimize the risk of mistakes.

About the features of a multinational team

The growth of Wargaming was really very fast, just instantaneous. In just a couple of years we grew from five hundred people to three to four thousand.

Plus, our team is very diverse and multinational. In the main governing body of Wargaming there is a Finn, a Korean, a Greek, a couple of Russians, Belarusians, a German, a Briton, and Americans - it’s such a cultural cauldron. And yet still so hot! But we need this national, cultural diversity. Because we manufacture and distribute our products, games, literally all over the world. And different people bring to the team knowledge of different territories, where our consumers and our developers are.

For a manager, this means more communication. It's a constant work with the team. Let’s imagine, for example, that I, as CEO, write my strategy and “pump out” it. And people on the team will say: “Wait, you didn’t consult with us. It won’t work here at all...” Therefore, you should not be lazy to communicate with people, discuss strategy, important points. Moreover, each conversation must be specific, you need to look at the numbers, at the graphs, and understand in each case (of course, to some extent) the subject of the conversation.

Why do companies need pessimists?

The first month of World of Tanks' success on the Russian market was a period of certain euphoria. But, fortunately, in our company, among my colleagues, in addition to such “shirt guys”, “hurray, we will tear everyone apart”, like me, there were conditional pessimists or, as they call themselves, realists. These people who, despite the general joy, always “spoil the party” a little with phrases like: “Wait, wait, well, what if suddenly this is just a splash due to the novelty? Wait, okay, Russia is good, but what if it doesn’t work in the West? Wait, what if the fashion for “tanks” ends soon, what will we continue to show and sell to people?” There must be such people too.

The leader himself does not need to be a pessimist; the leader must shine in front of his employees with optimism.

Because people want to see success not only now, but also in the future. But having a couple of such pessimists on your team is necessary for the team to be balanced. Fortunately, there are plenty of pessimists!

You need to listen to them, see the signals, risks and calculate a possible plan B and plan C in case something goes wrong. In war it is like in war: battles do not always go according to a bravura plan; sometimes you have to prepare alternate airfields, retreat a little, regroup, maneuver. Over the years of Wargaming, we have already seen a lot of things and put both Plan B and Plan C into action.

Can a company remain “forever young”?

There is no law about a company withering away if you act correctly. A company is what you make of your company. That is, I believe that there is no such universal force that would lead a company from youth to withering. If you are the CEO, a member of the board of directors, you and your team are the universal force that moves the company left, right, up, down, to America, to Russia, to China, etc.

Yes, when success comes, there is a certain euphoria, a temptation to sit in large leather chairs, light an expensive cigar and sip a martini. Naturally, this is a road to nowhere. Well, just don't do it, that's all! Be in the saddle, be on a horse with a saber.

Know what’s going on, keep the team, update it if necessary, follow market trends, talk to employees, talk to consumers. For example, I very often meet with players, with video bloggers who have millions of audiences. If you watch video blogs, read the press, collect information from players, conduct surveys, then your consumers will tell you where your company is going, sometimes better than, for example, your financial director.

About the Decree on HTP 2.0

As part of our membership in the Hi-Tech Park, Game Stream was asked by Mr. Yanchevsky, the head of the Park, to present their proposals [for IT development in Belarus]. And our specially trained people, lawyers, people who understand how it all works, sent their proposals. These are quite obvious, simple and understandable things, but formalized in legal language.

I believe that if the Decree is adopted in the form that is now being talked about, it will be a colossal, simply fundamental step forward.

How business can develop the ecosystem in Belarus

I think that, first of all, through the creation of incubators. I remember how I started a business in my bedroom 20 years ago... Entrepreneurial initiative very often comes from young people, students, who, by definition, do not have an extra million in their pocket. Therefore, incubators - infrastructure in the form of premises, computers, the Internet, some kind of financial assistance - are important. And, of course, incubators should have mentoring, conferences, training, and a library. That is, all these things are accumulated in one place, and in terms of one participant it turns out cheap and cheerful, while, as world practice shows, in such incubators businesses can grow that become billions of dollars.

About books that entrepreneurs and top managers should read

There is such an author Patrick Lencioni - he’s just a bomb! He has a series of books, I read them in English. The first is called “The Five Temptations of a CEO,” the second is “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” and the third is “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive.” (“The Four Manias of Extraordinary Leaders”).

Everyone should read these books. This is about what a leader, CEO, general director should actually do. My only regret is that I was not able to accomplish everything that was written there. I did it partially, but I didn’t get the job done. And for many of the problems that we, like any company, have, I see where their legs grow from. Because I didn’t follow Lencioni’s advice at the time.

Patrick Lencioni. Photo: thesweeneyagency.com

And two more books that I think are definitely worth reading are “Funky Business” by Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstrale, this book is becoming more relevant over time, and “Good to Great” by Jim Collins.

About the future of Wargaming

It’s actually simple - we make games, online, shareware, free-to-play, and we must turn these games into a hobby for people and for ourselves. I play myself computer games on average seven hours a week... To create a hobby, you need to be a very pumped-up company. These are ideas, this is creativity, this is art, these are experiments, and plus this is a very heavy line production so that all this beauty is on the market.

We are currently working hard on updating World charts of Tanks. I recommend everyone who played before and has already given up a little to follow our news. It's already Hollywood!

And people need Hollywood, people like to go and watch, for example, great films by James Cameron. True, they have production budgets of half a billion dollars, a billion. But we are also starting to get closer to this. The number [of investments in game production] amounts to tens of millions. And all this just needs to be done well. There is no magic recipe or slogan here. Our current games demonstrate this. Look, World of Tanks is already more than seven years old, but the game has not lived on its own all this time. We are already approaching the hundred update mark.

And each update is essentially a separate mini-game with improved graphics in some places, physics in others, new tanks, new maps, new Game Mode, something is “balanced”, the interface has been corrected, etc. Plus to all this localization, taking into account national characteristics in the same Korea, in the same China.

If you look at videos from seven years ago, the game looks like some kind of kindergarten craft. If you look at what we are working on now, it almost feels like you are playing inside a film.

And so we must learn how to properly update the cellular composition of games that have already been launched. Do it on stream.

And think about new products - this world does not live by “tanks” alone. For this we have created an R&D division. We want Wargaming to release, say, a hit product once a year.

Wishes to young entrepreneurs

Dare and create! Of course, everyone chooses for themselves what to do in life. You can study somewhere, find a job from 9 am to 6 pm and, in principle, be a happy person, there is nothing wrong with that. But entrepreneurs, people to whom I consider myself and my team - we are not about these things.

We get up in the morning, drink the first cup of coffee, run to the gym - and right at that moment the brain begins to work: what else can we do, how to improve, how to expand, where to read something else or gather a team and “brainstorm”.

An entrepreneur is a person with an inquisitive mind.

An inquisitive mind is good. He develops through chess, physics, mathematics, playing “Civilization” - by the way, I recommend everyone to play “Civilization.”

It is important to train your brain, load it with complex mental activities, and be inquisitive. Well, use your mind for the benefit of yourself, your friends and loved ones, colleagues and, ultimately, for the benefit of all humanity.

Watch the full video interview

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They literally scoop up all users. This is the truth of life on the market now: even if the game is very good, it is still not enough. You need to have approximately the same kind of budget and pour several million a day into advertising. How much exactly they spend - $2 million or 5 million, I, for example, would really like to know. But I do not know. It is important for everyone to know each other's numbers. Therefore, everyone hides everything as much as possible.

— What accounts for the majority of the company’s expenses—on advertising or on employees, of whom there are already 4 thousand people?

— The staff drags a lot. It is clear that salaries in America and Minsk are slightly different. On the other hand, the level of training that we need requires very high salaries even for developers and programmers in Belarus.

After employees come rent and advertising. I don't know the exact distribution, but it doesn't change much. As I already mentioned, when entering the mobile direction, advertising will most likely drag on. We haven't fully deployed yet, we're getting ready. Gaming companies For several years in a row, they have been buying, for example, advertising during the broadcast of the American football Super Bowl final. This is their number one event. Just during the break between two matches is the most “delicious” advertising time, where the creators of advertising videos also compete. Who will win - San Francisco or Denver? good question, but an even more important question is who will give the best advertising. Advertising must be at the Cannes Lions level.

— Your competitor Mail.Ru Group is actively promoting its game about tanks “ Armored Warfare: the Armata project and mentions you in its advertising campaigns. For example, they used the slogan Make love not WOT, while WOT is an abbreviated name for the game World of Tanks. Ka How do you feel about this?

— The industry is small, everyone knows each other. There are many games on the market that are similar to each other. In this regard, we are pleased to realize that when they start copying you, it means you did something right, without it you can’t go anywhere. Lately we have stopped paying attention to this.

Our most main boss and the investor is a player. The project is developing according to a free-to-play model, that is, 70-75% of our players play for free, investing time and interest. There were cases when we did something wrong, and regardless of competitors, we experienced a drop in audience. We've made mistakes and released bad updates. We managed to come to our senses and correct it, but such mistakes hit us painfully. If we continue to release good updates and hold eSports tournaments, everything will be fine. Old players will remain in the game, new ones will come and bring friends.

— Is some kind of partnership possible between you andMail.Ru Group?

— Companies have a business development department - specially trained people who travel all over the world. Everyone knows each other, they meet each other at exhibitions, on the sidelines. Some kind of dialogue, in principle, always takes place between everyone, with companies on all continents. Conversations, quite possibly, took place somewhere, but in such cases there must be mutually beneficial interest, some specifics. At the moment I can’t say that we are doing anything with them, we are not.

— Do you reinvest all your profits?

— Games are a very investment-intensive industry if you want to be ahead and not fall behind. Most of our profits go into development. Projects like World of Warships and World of Warplanes took years of development by a team of several hundred people. So yes, for now we have to engage in severe reinvestment.

— How are World of Warplanes and World of Warships developing?

— World of Warplanes, unfortunately, turned out to be not as popular a project as World of Tanks. We have repeatedly explained the reasons publicly. At the same time, I have a personal explanation as a player, which is not necessarily true: a person is like Living being created by evolution to walk on the ground, at most climb a tree, but not fly in three-dimensional space with six degrees of freedom at a speed of 400 km/h, and also shoot while moving. Few people on the planet can fly an airplane: pilots are unique people who are chosen and trained for a long time. Therefore, World of Warplanes has a small but loyal community that, despite all the ups and downs, plays this game. With each update, the audience is gradually growing. But World of Warplanes did not become a mass product. We will not close the project, this is my clear decision. Because closing it will make those who are already playing unhappy.

World of Warships already has approximately 7 million registrations, and this is a remarkable pace. It is clear that it is a little difficult for ships in the shadow of tanks. If we take Russia for example, everyone plays tanks. Personally, for example, I have little time left for ships, I try all the updates personally, but more often I play tanks on a PC and World of Tanks Blitz with my eight-year-old son.

Victor Kisly

Born on April 30, 1976 in Minsk, in the family of a scientist. Since childhood, he became interested in computer games: his father’s laboratory had monochrome computers, and in the late 1980s, the future creator of Wargaming tried to play for the first time. Kisly graduated from the Faculty of Physics of the Belarusian State University with a degree in Laser Physics and Spectroscopy: his father insisted on choosing the faculty.

Together with other students from BSU, Viktor Kisly and his brother Evgeniy came up with the first version of the online game - turn-based strategy Iron Age: the brothers created a paper version of it when they were children. In addition, Kisly wrote letters to the creator Civilization Sidhu Meyer, in which he told what needed to be improved in the game. Viktor Kisly still plays - not only his own tanks, but also Civilization. In 2011, Kisly moved the Wargaming headquarters from Minsk to Cyprus, where he also moved with his family.

"Our global strategy is like football"

— How are Wargaming’s revenues distributed in different countries— Does the CIS still bring in the majority of revenue?

— Due to the depreciation of the ruble, now approximately half of the revenue, perhaps a little less, comes from the CIS. There has been success in the Russian-speaking region, but you never know how life will turn out in the future. Therefore, since 2010-2011, we have been very active in flying around the world and finding ways to launch the game in the countries of North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Thanks to this strategy, which allowed us to go beyond the Russian-speaking world, we are firmly on our feet, despite the difficult situation in the last 12-15 months.

— Which countries outside the CIS bring you the most significant income and how much is it in the revenue structure? Have you managed to conquer the American market?

— We consider Europe as one country. Naturally, there are the most Germans and Poles there, both in terms of population and interest.

The US is the hardest market to sell everything from chewing gum to soft drinks. There is fierce competition everywhere, especially in video games. The largest American game makers - publishers Activision, Microsoft, Blizzard - have a tight grip on their market and know how to do it. In the USA, people play less on computers and more on consoles. We came out on Xbox 1.5 years ago, on PlayStation 4 a few months ago. Now our share is naturally growing. Currently, the number of registrations on Xbox One and Xbox 360 is 8 million, on PlayStation 4 - 2 million.

Photo: Andrey Kovalev for RBC

— People usually say about the Chinese market that it is difficult. At the same time, you are in China. How did you get there and what was your success?

— China is now the third market for us, after the CIS and Europe. We began to negotiate about entering China back in 2010, that is, before we released World of Tanks in Russia. We printed a suitcase of brochures, boarded a plane and flew to Shanghai to meet potential partners in person. According to Chinese law, you must work through a local publisher. The game itself must receive a special license, so we had to make some changes: for example, the game cannot be released in China with the symbols of countries - instead of the original flags, the game uses visually similar images and colors.

We currently own 10% of KongZhong [publisher Wargaming games in China]. This is such a friendly agreement for a strategic partnership. There is the concept of the “right of first refusal”: when it became clear that tanks had a good chance of success in China, we were already preparing planes and ships. Any publisher wants to be the first to see the developer's next game. KongZhong gave us a number of options that we had to buy back. It is now believed that we are brothers forever: we have no reason to quarrel, but it makes sense to agree on some controversial issues that inevitably arise between the publisher and the developer.

— You said that you had to change the game a little for China. As far as I know, in Chinese World versions of Tanks has, for example, a gold tank worth $400. Is this also the wishes of the locals?

- Yes, this [golden tank] was a big request from our Chinese comrades. The locals couldn’t live without a golden tank. If you look at it purely Chinese games, there’s everything you can’t buy for money - it’s needed to show chic. You can, for example, buy the right to kick people from your team. We are forced to know and understand these features in all countries where we are present, and to implement them. In our work we adhere to the principle of “think globally, act locally”.

- Wargaming now has 15 offices around the world - in Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo, etc. There was also an office in Moscow. How long did it work and why did you abandon it?

— It was rather a few people who represented Wargaming. We decided to abandon it because this office did not have any important functions: just a few people could tell about the company and performed a marketing function. The work was mainly carried out with museums, with Kubinka, for example. Moscow is not the cheapest city, and modern business conditions allow you to do everything remotely.

— Do you separately develop a development and promotion strategy for each market?

— Our global strategy is similar to football: its rules are the same all over the planet, but football federations in each country have their own characteristics. In our case, these features are especially pronounced: Japanese players need anime - pictures in this style, appropriate information support for our activities; Americans like to play a little more relaxed and have fun rather than stress and compete; and Russian-speaking players have a strong competitive spirit - they need to go into battle and tear everyone apart.

We also have a lot of funny stories worthy of National Geographic. For example, when a Japanese office opened, its employees got a cat, sewed special clothes for it and named it Hellcat [after the anti-tank self-propelled gun, which is in the game]. They set up a page for him on local social networks, the players corresponded with him, and he “responded.” In Korea, for example, at the opening of the office everyone wore national costumes. There is a tradition there to loudly trample the shell of a fruit - an empty melon or pumpkin - so that it breaks into small pieces, otherwise there will be no happiness. I stepped on one of them too.

I now feel like a citizen of the world. On almost every continent I have an office where I can go and be welcomed. It's exciting.

About company

Wargaming's first office was located in Viktor Kisly's apartment in Minsk - he and his brother Evgeniy moved into one room, cleared the second one for work and installed five computers in it. The founding date of the company is considered to be August 2, 1998 (then it was called “Game Stream”). Now Wargaming is an international company with offices on all continents except Antarctica. Before launch World of Tanks Wargaming company has released several games - in particular, DBA Online, Massive Assault, Operation Bagration, Inhabited Island. In the second half of the 2000s, the developer worked for about a year on an online fantasy game that was supposed to become a competitor to the popular World of Warcraft, a role-playing game about orcs and elves from the American Blizzard Entertainment.

However, at the end of 2008, Kisly and partners decided to create an MMO game about tanks, since there were no popular products in this niche at that time. In May 2009, the first promotional video for the future World of Tanks was released, in which orcs fight with elves, and at the end they are run over by a tank. A few months later, the first test of the game took place - acquaintances of Wargaming employees took part in it. Since spring 2010 of the year World of Tanks entered open beta test mode, and in August the game officially launched in Russia.

IN 2013 year Wargaming bought 30% of the Cyprus bank Hellenic and a high-rise building in Nicosia for €20 million.

“In the coming year we will restructure the business”

— Today, Wargaming employs thousands of people; the company has more than a dozen offices around the world. Moreover, you started 18 years ago with ten people. Which state is more comfortable - a startup or a corporation?

“The success of tanks and other projects has really forced us to expand all over the world in terms of production and publishing. You can, of course, open an office somewhere in the American agricultural outback, and it will be cheaper, but there are no programmers or marketing specialists of the required level there, and the necessary infrastructure is poorly developed. We must go where the talent is, and our colleagues also settled in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Silicon Valley.

A large number of people and offices in fact make us a corporation. We can pretend otherwise, but there will be consequences. It is clear that you need to deal with boring things related to taxes, laws, and different jurisdictions. But we have specially trained people for this; I don’t do this very much.

At the same time, we have recently begun to realize that having a large number of employees has both pros and cons.

— What are the disadvantages?

— Due to the size of the company, internal bureaucracy, and difficulties with communications, misunderstandings sometimes arise. We cannot ignore this. Until now, we have been spreading around the world, running fast and not doing everything efficiently. The time has come to collect the stones: in the last and coming years we will restructure the business. The goal is to increase efficiency.

It is important to act without excesses here. We are all creatives and game fans, and if we forget about this, it will not lead to anything good. With all this structure building, we should not forget our main value - the player. We must not lose his face behind numbers and columns in databases. Finding this balance happens every day.

— In March, you announced that the company was moving to a distributed development structure: now employees will work on one or another project, regardless of geography. Why was this done?

- This is a completely logical technical concept. IN Eastern Europe there are no strong specialists in console development. We do not have this culture - everything related to graphics, since there are no corresponding institutions, no Hollywood. California has a strong advertising industry for obvious reasons. That’s why you need to look for artists or video directors there.

The heart of the game - the engine was and will be Australian. So our development, by definition, is already distributed. Now we establish this phenomenon as a rule. For example, the Airbus A380 aircraft is assembled in Toulouse, and parts for it are brought from all over the world. And it won’t matter where a piece of code or a picture is written, what’s important is the final product.

Yes, such a system, on the one hand, slightly complicates the overall process, on the other hand, it disciplines us, because everything needs to be monitored. But if everything is done correctly, there will be greater freedom of action. If you take tanks with such a huge number of distributed users, they want a lot of different things. Chinese people need to celebrate Chinese New Year, for us - May 9. Without new system we will do something for the Chinese, but not for Russian speakers. But in fact, all these blocks are needed here and now at the same time.

— Do you give greater preference to foreign managers?

— Wargaming, by definition, has already become an international company. We produce games in Australia, Eastern Europe and the USA, and distribute and publish them around the world - in Tokyo, Seoul, San Francisco and other cities. It would be unreasonable to bias in any one national direction. Yes, we originated in Eastern Europe, so initially Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians largely ruled the roost.

Now in our leadership team [analogous to the board of directors in a company] there are several Russian-speaking people, Americans, a Briton, a Greek Cypriot, a Frenchman, a Korean and a Finn. Over the years, we have learned to coexist and understand cultural characteristics - here is a Korean, here is an American, and here is a prim Englishman, and these are different types. Our headquarters in Cyprus employs more than 200 employees - half are local, for example accountants, but overall it is a hodgepodge. In all this, by the way, there is also a huge challenge - how to make multinationality work to our advantage. I think we are getting better and better at this.

“I was lucky: my passion turned into work”

— You said that you almost never do “boring things.” What are you personally responsible for in the company?

— The company structure involves the distribution of areas of responsibility according to geographical or product principles. Discussions and approval of strategic initiatives and major new projects cannot be done without me. Naturally, I must approve an investment in some new location. I approve the development of strategy - what we do, where we go, whether we stay within the military-historical setting [theme] or make single-player games. For example, [restart space strategy] Master of Orion was my personal initiative. Bringing a legend that was lost about 20 years ago back into the gaming community is almost like a gift.

The company has certain levels: there is the head of global development, the head of global publishing, the head of the research division, and the list goes on. They are my subordinates, although we work more as a team, I don’t really use directive methods. My key task is to ignite them, motivate them, show some path not only to an individual, but to the entire team.

You have to read smart books, [monthly magazine] Harvard Business Review - how to manage, delegate, you can’t live without it. And we have to constantly learn: for example, in April, 60 of our managers and I went to Stanford for a week, where we took a course specially created for us on the topic of leadership in the context of innovation in a rapidly changing world.

- Why do you need this?

— The world is changing quickly, and game industry, show business and IT - even faster. About many things, for example virtual reality, neither I nor you heard a couple of years ago. Or that you can play such a heavy, photorealistic game like World of Tanks on a mobile device. By and large, iPhones appeared recently, but there was life without an iPhone, and without cellular communications, and without Wi-Fi. I still remember life without the Internet.

The speed of change is accelerating, and it is impossible to live and create in this, to stay afloat, if you do not improve yourself in different areas. We have a lot of different specialties: artists, database programmers, game designers - the list is huge.​​

The higher the level, the more leadership qualities come to the fore - management, management. If you don't keep up with this, you will fall hopelessly behind.

— You mentioned that you play tanks yourself...

— Yes, my nickname is VictorKis. I've been playing computer games ever since I can remember. My dad works with me now, but in 1989 he was a scientist and in his laboratory I saw the first computer. I played a simple game on this not black and white, but monochrome screen, and it struck me like lightning: a “smart piece of hardware” was playing against me, it was thinking and making me think. Then games quickly began to become more beautiful: Civilization, StarCraft, Warcraft, SimCity and so on appeared. Now they are practically outperforming cinema - both in terms of budget, and in terms of picture, and in terms of involvement, and in distribution.

When I play our tanks, it allows me to see what is wrong, so from time to time I make recommendations to those responsible for game design - whether they are accepted or not, criticized or said “no, we won’t do this for this and that reason” That". I also play Civilization, my favorite game of all times. As soon as we finish it, I’ll be playing Master of Orion for a long time - it brings back childhood memories. I was lucky that my passion turned into work. In this regard, I am a happy person.

— The tanks will soon be six years old. How long will the game continue to play?

- This is a very long story: they will last for several more decades, 10-20 years for sure. A tank battle lasts approximately seven minutes, with a maximum of 15 minutes. There are many people who have played 100 thousand fights, that is, on average, a million minutes. They don't get tired of it, they continue to play.

All this happens because we will continue to work and release updates. We have already released more than 60 major updates - this new content, new models of tanks, maps, locations, we are constantly improving graphics, physics, effects, that is, we are doing everything that brings the game closer to greater photorealism, to a war movie from Steven Spielberg or George Lucas.

— Does Wargaming have a secret project - some kind of new tanks?

— Until we are completely confident in the success of the future project, including tests in secret laboratories, we do not spoil our karma, otherwise players and developers will be upset. The laws of show business dictate this to us. Therefore, I will say this: a significant number of ideas are currently in various stages of development.