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Lukas Podolski, HandOfBlood and MontanaBlack promote World of Tanks Blitz: The online game is (also) developed in Berlin and is now celebrating its 10th anniversary.
The 80-strong workforce at the Berlin branch, which in addition to World of Tanks Blitz also to World of Warships Blitz is working.
For the 10th anniversary of World of Tanks Blitz Natallia Pershyts takes us behind the scenes: The manager has been working for Wargaming Europe for over 11 years and, as Publishing Product Director, is responsible for the games portfolio and live operations.
GamesWirtschaft: Germany has always been one of the most important markets for wargaming. What does the local audience do compared to other countries “particularly” – and what does that mean for marketing and user acquisition?
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Natallia Pershyts: First of all, they are very active players. They are not the kind of players who only play the game once a week. If they like the game, they play a lot – that's great and we're very happy about that. This also applies to e-sports, where we have a lot of German teams.
They are also very active in the game's social environment. That's why we have also created German-language social media offerings, such as our own German-language Instagram and German-language Discord support.
And they are also very active in terms of offline events. This year, for example, we are planning a party for players of the World of Tanksfranchise. The largest group of participants will come from Germany – which is fantastic.
German players also value localized content and the quality of localization – and they care about the way How they get information. So all the things that are happening around the game – they always want us to be honest and very direct about updates and describe in great detail what we are doing and why we are doing it. So here we have to have every, really every Providing detail and explaining everything that is happening. Communicating why we do this and that is sometimes a big challenge for us.
There are currently a lot of different activities and campaigns specifically for the German market, including as part of the anniversary. We are continuing the activities of previous years, such as the UNI-FEIER event in Berlin – a large community meeting combined with in-game action with several famous influencers.
We had Lukas Podolski as an ambassador for the game, we worked with Montana Black and for the 10th anniversary we will be holding the Blitz Streamer Jam. This tournament with several German influencers also involves the local community a lot. Lukas Podolski was the starting signal for our involvement last year and we have continued since then.
How does the Berlin office differ from other offices and countries?
Germany is one of our key markets. It is among the top 3 in terms of revenue and MAU, i.e. monatically ative Nusers.
When it comes to promotion and working with the audience, we have built a dedicated team consisting of a German Community Manager, a German Marketing Manager, a German Monetization Manager and a Designer.
These colleagues take care of our players, our presence and our activities on the ground. They discuss and develop ideas related to the local market, such as memes. This is very important for us and we try to develop it within our team in Berlin.
Berlin is important to us especially in terms of talent. We were able to find a lot of creative people to take care of game design and game balance – everything that has to do with production rather than programming.
Similar to other long-lasting online games, World of Tanks Blitz has grown into a huge project – which can be intimidating for new players. How can you ensure that the game appeals to a new audience that is unfamiliar with the brand and mechanics?
Good question. More than 50 percent of our players are between 18 and 24 years old, so we have to constantly work on that onboarding part. I can't even count how many times we've changed it. It's a constant process.
We have great analytics capabilities and can pick out and analyze every single step. Literally every Step. We also see what causes the most difficulties for our players and how we can optimize it.
This is not only about the gameplay itself, but also, for example, the registration process. We found that it is almost impossible for new players to get unique nicknames, since we already have a fairly large project and have been on the market for a long time. We already have over 180 million registrations. That is why we have postponed the nickname step to a later stage of registration so as not to frustrate players right at the beginning.
Another point is the way we take care of newcomers. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to get started: Of course, they start by playing against bots. And we don't allow our experienced players to join them in these battles.
Because you have to learn to move and shoot in different ways, because that's one of the biggest differences in our game compared to first-person shooters. You move in one direction and shoot that way. But with tanks and the turret, you can move forward and turn the turret to the right and shoot the other way. That takes a certain amount of experience. If you put an experienced player in these matches, he can destroy all the bots – and that doesn't help the newbies. So we're going with a completely separate matchmaking.
Also, we've built some storytelling into the onboarding process – for example, you have to build your hangar, inside is your tank and so on. It's just about making it interesting for players and motivating them to learn and practice.
Real wars and conflicts around the world are a constant topic in the news and social media – especially in recent years. What does that mean for the marketing of a game whose name alone makes it clear that it's about tanks and other military equipment?
About six or seven years ago, we stopped positioning our game as a pure military shooter and instead introduced the first fantasy tanks like Dracula and Helsing. We built in various game modes in which we have tanks with special abilities like healing or vampire abilities.
When you enter the hangar, it looks more like a dance hall or an open-air party than a military base. This was the strategic decision and main direction for us in how we want to expand and change the perception.
But of course the game is about shooting and big machines, but there are other things that are not just directly military. And we did that years ago – so we haven't changed our communication strategy much.
If you look at our current promotional videos, you will see this kind of mostly colorful, bright atmosphere. There is a lot of fun, a lot of lightness, a lot of team play. That is what we try to focus on. I think we have succeeded in doing that.
“In two to three years, platforms will no longer make sense.”
World of Tanks Blitz is available on PC and mobile. What makes cross-play and cross-progression even more important than before?
To be completely frank, we may not be at that point yet, but in two to three years, platforms will literally no longer make sense. If we look at gamers five years ago, there was a big difference between console and mobile gamers – in terms of profile, preferences and so on.
But we can already see that there are not so many differences between them. Especially when we talk about Generation Z players – young people – they don't care about the platform. They are interested in the game and if they like the game, they will play it – no matter what platform: console, PC, mobile. For this reason, many big games try to cover all platforms from the start.
There are new platforms appearing all the time, about every six months, and this trend will probably continue. It will be quite easy for us to expand our presence, as we already have the infrastructure to do so.
What are Wargaming Europe’s goals with World of Tanks Blitz – where are the opportunities and risks?
After ten years, this is a real challenge: how can we surprise our players – even after 500 tanks, tons of battles, dozens of game modes, literally hundreds of events, Battle Passes and so on and so forth?
It's always difficult to create something completely new and offer a new, interesting experience. But we're doing our best, we're working on some big things. We hope that we'll also be able to surprise our current audience and make our game even more attractive to our future audience as well.
And we will always have special promotions – such as at Christmas with celebrities or this summer for our 10-year anniversary with the upcoming Star Trek collaboration, the Blitz Streamer Jam or the comeback of the Mad Games.