🌿 🙌🏼 👩🏾‍🤝‍👩🏽 Interview with Alexander Filippov, Lead Game Designer World of Tanks Blitz 🎹 ☄️ 👩🏿‍💼

On May 14 and 15 we will participate in the DevGAMM conference, at which our speakers will speak. And we thought, why not find out from one of them about the background, experience and work on the World of Tanks Blitz project, which we will discuss in the presentation. What came of this, read in an interview with Alexander Filippov, Lead Game Designer WOT Blitz.

Tell me, please, where are you from?

I'm from Russia. He lived in different cities, and was engaged in games in Moscow. We had a studio with a distributed team: someone in Moscow worked, someone in Kostroma, someone in Kherson. He moved to Minsk even before he got to Wargaming, worked remotely. Married here. In general, he settled in Belarus.

In 2015, I started working at Wargaming as a game designer for the World of Tanks Blitz team.

How did your career in game development begin?

I started at the Point of Reference company (then still a division of Astrum Online, later - Mail.Ru Games), where from 2007 to 2009 I worked on the game TimeZero. I came there to the position of a game designer ... Well, in general, I was just looking for work then, but it turned out that I was a good fit for the role of a game designer. Plus, I played quite a lot in TimeZero, was a member of the top clan, wrote some quests for the game. In general, I was hired 6 times more than I received before in a government agency. So I got into the igrostroy.

And by education I’m a mathematician, I graduated from a mechmath, studied at Moscow State University, and graduated in Nizhny Novgorod. By the way, in certain areas of game design without knowledge of mathematics in any way. Let's say a narrative game designer will do without mathematics, but those who are engaged in some kind of systemic things are definitely not. Here, half of the work is to count something, sort through, analyze, and so on.

How did you get into Wargaming?

Came in 2015, performed a test. Liked. Have taken.

Initially, it was assumed that I would deal exclusively with clans, which I did not like at all. It seemed like a terrible curtailment of my expertise. I came from browser and social games, where there was one game designer and I needed to know all aspects of the game, do everything at once. As a result, in addition to the clans, I “squeezed out” other areas little by little and did something in them too - as it turned out later, I had a hand in almost all elements of the game.

In 2017, the World of Tanks Blitz analytics lead position was released, and I took it. Since I am a mathematician, I know games and have already analyzed something out of interest myself, I thought that such a role is up to me. We had a small department, but at the same time productive. In my report on DevGamm, I’ll just tell how analysts along with other teams helped the game overcome the traditional “three-year crisis” (more about it at the end of the interview - ed.).

In 2018, I headed a new department, which brought together analysts, game designers, balancers, UX copywriters, and UX specialists themselves. Until recently, he held this position. And then we decided to separate analysts. The studio evolved, and it was necessary to accordingly change the structure and processes of work. Plus, when you yourself evaluate your work - it gives a little schizophrenia. In our case, when the game designers who created some things worked closely with the analysts who evaluated these things, it was so.

World of Tanks Blitz is a unique project. Due to what?

In general, World of Tanks, the “Big Tanks,” are unique in their own right.

The hardest part in games is to catch, find core gameplay

If you find it is a victory. And the "big tanks" did it. Of course, we are their heirs. At the same time, we have a different gameplay, more dynamic. We specifically made a bet on him and on the greater contribution of each player to the victory, moved away from the strategy towards the shooter. Everything around the gameplay is also cool. Yes, a lot of things would be nice to change (in the backlog we have 2000 good ideas). But with the gameplay, everything is fine, this is our main USP.

Plus World of Tanks Blitz is a difficult game, but at the same time we are on mobile phones. And when we went out, there weren’t such mobile games at all, which you entered - and got a high-quality, well-coordinated PvP. Now there is something close, but then it was not at all. On the "mobile" PvP was miserable, asynchronous.

Even now there are few such games - with such high-quality gameplay, such graphics, progression, etc. The strong competitors that are now coming out [on mobile platforms] - PUBG, Call of Duty - they are good. But even they do not have everything that makes World of Tanks Blitz strong. For example, in PUBG there is no deep progression, so that you accumulate something, collect: "everything is mine, and it will remain with me."

That is why we are cool. And that is why we have been cautious for a long time with the new modes: we were afraid to break the core gameplay. And then they became bolder, began to experiment - and it turned out that it was very difficult to break the gameplay of Blitz. If you introduce new interesting modes, he begins to play with new faces.

Tell me who is behind this cool gameplay? What does the game designer at World of Tanks Blitz do?

In general, a game designer is, in fact, the point of development of the project.

The one who is responsible for the ideas. If the game does not have high-quality ideas, most likely, the game designer is underworking somewhere.

Traditionally, there is a controlled conflict between the game designer and those who are responsible for ensuring that the features get to the sale. We have these people called product owners. Our studio also has such a conflict, and this is normal: there are resources and desires, and they do not always coincide. And although the roles conflict, at the same time they together develop a vision on how to make a feature in the best way and on time. Nobody comes to us and says: it means we will do so. By the way, in many large studios the latter situation is not uncommon. We still dominate the dialogue.

Please tell about the fan modes in World of Tanks Blitz

Oh yes, fan modes are the tastiest part of the job!

This is not a gradual improvement and change in gameplay, it is an opportunity to do something radically different. The year before last, they chose Halloween for a bold move, because Halloween is usually best visited by all sorts of non-standard things like fantasy.

Our game is historical, we cannot add orcs, elves, and so on to it any day. And on Halloween we can.

So Mad Games was born: A post-apocalyptic mode in which we added unusual abilities to tanks. Plus, two award tanks were made - with the participation of Peter Pound, the designer of the cars of the movie Mad Max 2015. I can’t say that this was our first fan mode: before that, we started the mode with ducks on April 1. But he had one problem: it was impossible to play him for a long time. It was a good experience. And when we developed Mad Games, one of the requirements was just replay value - that is, the player’s desire to go through the regime again and again. The second requirement: the regime was not supposed to completely turn off the player from the "standard" World of Tanks Blitz. The combination of these two requirements resulted in a change in the player’s property. First of all, these are tanks - and now they have become different, they have new opportunities, sides.

We had previously thought of creating special cars, there were many options. The same ballotanks from the "Big Tanks"; By the way, great mode. But at the same time, we wanted to release a mode that would emphasize and force to play with new colors all that the player already has.

One of the pillars of our philosophy - the player must relate to our game with confidence. This, you know, like a bank. If I trust the bank, I know that I put the money there and at any time I can take them.

Or trust in the company: I ordered something and I know that it will come to me. In the same way in the game: the player is ready to come into it and get his share of pleasure - and do it on those tanks to which he is accustomed. Accordingly, we did not begin to create other tanks (although these ideas periodically appear with us). We just added what we needed to the existing tanks.

The success of the regime has not only affected us. I know that the Ships, with an eye on us, made their cool modes. And we decided that the player needs to be given high-quality gameplay that creates a lot of game situations and opportunities, and everything else - monetization, progression, and so on - all this is important, but secondary to the gameplay.

And we have a whole collection of fan modes. On May holidays came out a realistic mode. The other day, our second Halloween regime "Revival" ended. By Cosmonautics Day, we developed the “Gravity” mode, which was very popular with the audience. I myself played 122 fights in a day in it.

How much does the audience of PC and mobile Tanks overlap?

“Big Tanks” is always the No. 1 game, which our players play in addition to us. Therefore, we, of course, are highly dependent on the success of the entire franchise. At the same time, we form a unique image of Blitz. We are still a less historical game, our bold regimes open the way for us to further develop.

For example, they tell us: "You are a game about the Second World War." But we are still not a game about World War II - we are a game about tanks. Variety.

Yes, a significant part of this technique is historical. But we have a lot of "alternative historical" cars. There are cars from the anime universe Girls und Panzer; there are sega tanks. There are tanks that we ourselves invented: Dracula, Helsing. If the tanks are "Defenders" with Tesla engines, which, of course, did not exist. And there will be others - I do not want to just spoil it.

If we talk about the Blitz audience on PC and mobile devices - then yes, there is a segment that plays only on PC. But the bulk are users who primarily play on portable devices. The presence of "Blitz" on the PC allows users to play wherever convenient. So I have two large computers, there are laptops, a tablet, and a phone. If I’m at home - I play on the PC, in the country - I play on the phone. There is no such thing that after the appearance of the game on the PC, everyone went over there. Yes, someone switched, and someone, on the contrary, played on the computer, and then returned to the phone or tablet. For example, our streamers are indicative: some went to the PC, and some remained to the "mobiles". For example, Miracle (CHUDO8585).

“The crisis of three years” - you will touch on this topic in your speech. Tell me more, please.

Suppose you have a project and it is growing very fast: extensively, capturing new areas. And at some point, new areas end. It’s like agriculture: first you cut down the forest, then you improve what has already been developed. Many games do not live up to this point. They begin to get bad results, and they simply close, believing that the project has outlived itself.

We also had difficulties. How did they manifest? You do something and expect the game to react like this. And everything happens exactly the opposite. For example, we introduced a popular pumping system that many games used, and an avalanche of negative comments fell on us. For a year, the players hated us for this.

We did a lot of different monetization things, aimed primarily at new players. We did them for a year, and then decided to see how they work. And it turned out that nothing. That is, each solution worked separately, but together they did not give the desired result. They started to figure out why - and found different reasons. And it was just the analysts who did it. That is, the studio needs such analysts, if they are not, it will be tight.

And so many studios, especially mobile ones, are closing at such a moment, projects are switching to operating. That's all, let's make a new project in which we take into account all the mistakes. In 2018, we did not do this.

And rightly so, because after a year new records were already set almost everywhere: in daily, weekly and monthly revenue, CCU, MAU, DAU, and registered users grew significantly.

I repeat, the most important thing is to find the gameplay. And the gameplay we already had, and cool. Why should we look for a new one? Instead, we began to look for what our problem was. And we realized that our project has grown, but we ourselves have not changed: neither the methodology of decision-making, nor the methodology of team work, nor the structure, nor the approaches. And when we changed all this, we began to show a stable result. After that, they made another qualitative leap - and switched from the studio of one project to the studio, which is developing several projects. This also required major structural changes.

That is, we had two qualitative leaps. The first (and the most important) - we realized that we were not dying, that we had everything to grow, we understood that it was necessary to change. The second is the emergence of new projects. There is still such a philosophy: we treat our studio as a project. There is a game - this is a project, it has bugs, flaws, but it brings some money, gives players emotions. The studio is the same project. And I like the idea. Applying a grocery attitude to the studio, it is possible to change a lot and achieve a lot.

So, what bugs we fixed in the studio project: the game designer took the place in the studio that he should occupy. He is a generator of ideas and proper design, a backlog keeper. He is not the one to negotiate (this is also an important skill, but at some point, these negotiations may crowd out the design itself). He must be a designer and generator. Now he has all the possibilities for this. This has not always been the case, this state of affairs is achieved through procedural and structural changes. And they happened to us. I can’t speak for programmers, I work with them a little and I don’t know what suffering they have and whether they have it. But for game designers, this problem was obvious: “They don’t hear me! I have great ideas, but they are not being realized. ” And we managed to fix it.

And another point. Did you watch the "Big Bang Theory"? There, one of the heroes, Sheldon, periodically stood up in a pose: “I told you!” So we abandoned this pose. In general, as soon as we started fixing bugs in the studio, things started to grow. The key role here was played by the quality of the team. We hire strong, interesting people who like to play games and know how to create them ourselves. All our specialists have great potential. And the changes that have taken place in the studio allow us to show this potential. This does not mean that we are so kind here, we run around, we say, they say, come on, do some creative work. There are terms, there are obligations - this has not gone away. It’s just that now people have the opportunity to influence what they do. And it gave results that are manifested in cool numbers.

The fact that we decided on these new modes and that we managed to get out of the crisis and achieve what we have now is the result of the fact that we unleashed the potential of our people and correctly structured the studio.

At the end of the conversation, please tell us about the topic of your report: “How to set MAU records in 6 years”

I will tell you what, where, how and when we specifically did to come to this. But in the end it will become clear that we have not done anything revolutionary. Most importantly, I just said: we have changed ourselves and structure. In order to do something, make an appropriate decision, you must have the right structure, the right ideas about what you are doing.

Of course, I will talk about specific technical solutions that can be applied to other projects. But the question is rather how to come to such changes, to decide on them. The eternal problem: there is a desire and there are resources. Resources are not enough to do everything.

A colleague comes to me recently, looks at his backlog - and there are 300 tasks - and says: "How can all this be done?" And I say: “No way.”

Man cannot do everything. He can only do what is needed. But what exactly is needed is what needs to be understood.

You can hear the report of Alexander Filippov on the theme “World of Tanks Blitz: Breaking MAU and revenue records in just 6 years after the release” at DevGAMM Online 2020 on May 15 at 12:30.

Interview with Alexander Filippov, Lead Game Designer World of Tanks Blitz