World of Warplanes CEO sees market as the 'Wild West'
Wargaming.net's Victor Kislyi is never short on words when it comes to either talking about either his studio's games or the advantages of the free-to-play format. In an interview with GamesIndustry, he said that the global market is a "Wild West" and offers unlimited opportunities -- if companies can find their niche, that is. "The market for such games is endless, it's a blue ocean," he said. "The beauty and the curse is you have to be very, very good, because you can't fool people."
Admitting that World of Tanks "looked like crap" when it first launched, Kislyi said that the company worked hard to bring it up to par with the games of today, not of 2008. Wargaming.net has come to a point that it's not as concerned about raking in money. Kislyi noted that Japanese and Russian players were the most willing to spend money, while Chinese players tended to be more tight-fisted with funds.
In regard to World of Warplanes, he talked about challenges of balancing fun, quick action with an accurate flight model. In fact, getting the controls right is the reason Wargaming.net is holding off from stating a release date: "We have two or three parallel control scheme groups developing their own variants. You need to make the controls perfect. You have to find the right balance between making the game historically accurate, and at the same time, fun."
