At Tokyo Game Show, Senshudo TV had a great opportunity to interview Wargaming.Net the creators of the World of Tanks, Planes, and Ships series. We were able to ask them a few questions about each of the games, how they found the Japanese gaming market, and if they had any future ideas for the World Of series.
When asked about how difficult it was trying to bring the series into Japan, the first thing that they said was they were proud to be celebrating their first year in Japan. They went on to mention that bringing the franchise over to Japan was a very good decision, stating that they had over half a million PC players as well as over half a million mobile players. With the Japanese markets having some of the longest gaming sessions in the world. Again iterating that they did make a very good choice bringing it over.
Brining the World of franchise to Japan was a very different as the market is very conservative, they had to approach it differently. Instead of directly bringing the games into Japan and seeing how it does, the introduced the game through a manga. The manga ガールズ＆パンツァーã¯ã˜ã‚Âã¦ã®戦車é“(Girls und Panzer: World of Tanks for Beginners) they were able to capture the market the way they wanted to. This manga is basically the instruction manual for World of Tanks. Wargaming also noted that Girls und Panzer is an anime series, and around October first there will be a new game mode in World of Tanks that will bring the anime to the game by using the voice actors. They mentioned that they were going to introduce World of Warships in the same way, through a manga, 蒼ãÂÂ鋼ã®アルペジオ:ARS Nova (Arpeggio of Blue Steel: ARS Nova).
We went on to talk about the balancing of the games, the statistics, the abilities, the history, and the fun of the games. They mentioned how, in Tanks and Planes, there is a 10 tier system, with over 5 different classes, so the players will always have options when they play. They also mentioned that someone on a higher tier player would not be able to go against a lower tier player. They would be able to play with their own tier group. Wargaming also mentioned that all the tanks and planes in the games are based off of actual military documents and blueprints. The only difference was to balance out history and fun, they sped up stuff like turrets turning and so on in order to make it a little more fast pace and fun. They also mentioned that they provided a balance between “Play to win” and “Pay to win”. This balance is that there is no “Pay to win” if you’re a student who has the time to play and don’t have the money, then you can earn everything just by playing the game. If you’re working and not able to play as often then there is the option to buy the upgrades.
Finally you can’t talk to Wargaming without talking about their latest upcoming instalment of the World of series, so we went on to talk about World of Warships a little more in depth.
In order to get the right idea for the Warships, they did a lot of traveling around the world to museums, and even worked with the different world governments to get the military documents and blueprints for the game. Again in order to balance the fun and historical aspects of the games, they mentioned that the changed a few aspects like how fast guns rotated. Similar to World of Tanks and World of Planes there are 10 tiers with 4 classes of ships. The Destroyer class, they are small but fast. The Air Craft Carrier, they are the support class of the game. The Battle Ships, they are bigger and stronger but they are also slower. Finally they have the Cruisers, they are the middle ground of the game. With these different classes of ships, Wargaming mentioned that Warships work on a Rock, Papers, Scissors style of gaming. Destroyers can beat Battleships, Battleships can beat Cruisers, and Cruisers can beat Destroyers.
We went on to talk about how your own visual detection of the enemy is crucial in this game. Unlike World of Tanks, where if your teammate spots the tank your whole team spots him, you need to detect the ship in order to see the ship. If your teammates detects them then you will see them but they will be far off in the distance. They also mentioned that bigger ships have the option of going into a top down view and setting waypoint on where your ship will navigate, allowing you to just focusing on targeting. We ended up talking a little on the technical side of the game it was mentioned that on the big ships there are over 300,000 polygons, and it takes one year to make these big ships. They also mentioned that on these bigger ships that one cannon has as many polygons as one tank in World of Tanks.
When asked about the possibility of a space type World of game, Wargaming mentioned that they have so many titles both out and in the works that they want to focus on, that they have enough on their plate at the moment. But they did mention that these games were a bit science fiction with a hint of alternate reality in which some of the tanks, planes, and ships have never been made that the blueprints were just drawn up.
Finally when asked what their favourite tank was in World of Tanks, and what their favourite ship was in World of Warships, they responded that for World of tanks it was the upgrade to the German Panzer the E-50. And for World of Warships, it was the Japanese Battleship the Yamato.
On a final note, Senshudo TV would like to thank the people of Wargaming for taking time out of schedule to facilitate this interview. It was a great experience that we hope to repeat in the future.