Wargaming Nexus: “We are ready to provide $100 thousand to create a prototype”

Nikolai Nebyshinets

A meeting with Wargaming Nexus is scheduled at the Qin Restaurant. The first impression is a giant concrete box with a claim to constructivism. Up close, you notice paper lanterns, dragons at the doors, hieroglyphs and other Asian coloring.

— The largest Chinese restaurant in Europe, — says Nikita Matsokin, business development manager at Wargaming Nexus, as we climb the healthy stairs to the entrance.

The scoop style with oriental notes is unexpectedly reminiscent of Warren Spector’s Deus Ex architecture. There, too, the buildings were gray boxes with rare bright textures.

Inside, the restaurant resembles a mix of a Soviet boardroom and a theater. In the center is a large screen with a red flag and an inscription in Chinese, against its background, girls 18-19 years old are rehearsing a group dance, around the stage are tiers of amphitheater platforms.

It may not be the best place for an interview, but it is quite consistent with the ambitions of Wargaming Nexus.

— We want to create cultural phenomena! — says Nikolay Nebyshinets, head of the newly announced Nexus division.

— We want to create with the help of our inventive approaches such products that would become part of modern culture, like World of Tanks, — Nikita reveals.

— “Tanks” is not for nothing called something more than just a game, — continues Nikolai. — This is the creation of a whole lifestyle around the product. Many companies look at games as a set of mechanics. We have another task. We believe that we must build powerful cultural layers around our products. Accordingly, when we are just starting to work out the concept of a future product, we are looking at whether it is possible to turn it into a whole story, into a whole culture.

Then the waiter comes up, and after ordering a couple of drinks, we begin the official part of the interview.

***

About business and audience

Alexander Semenov, App2Top.ru : The desire to create cultural phenomena is cool. However, behind this formulation, it is not clear what Nexus is and what exactly it will do.

Nikolai Nebyshinets: We consider Wargaming Nexus primarily as a multifunctional business structure. It will include a full range of tasks related to the product:

• generating ideas;
• prototyping;
• translating prototypes into production;
• bringing products to market and operating.

In fact, this is a full-cycle grocery unit. You can even say — a ready-made business.

Why does the company need another ready-made business? You have an R&D department in Wargaming, a mobile publishing house, and investment initiatives. Why multiply entities?

Nikolay: Because it is impossible within a large company to focus on one department and one function to achieve success, especially in a very competitive and high-risk gaming industry. We at Wargaming believe that success is possible, but we don’t know which entity will fire.

What is success? It is a combination of certain competencies, ideas and people who, through certain processes and interactions, lead to an outstanding result. No one knows how to put this combination together for 100% success. Therefore, within the framework of Wargaming, there are many different entities that have one task: creating super hits and bringing them to market.

Nexus is another entity, with completely different mechanics, approaches to work, but with the same goal — to release hits.

As a rule, publishers diversify their portfolio by buying third-party companies. Are you, in turn, instead creating new “daughters” for your own company?

Nikolay:All right.

And they can overlap each other in functions?

Nikolai: They can. But these are really separate businesses.

Even World of Tanks on PC is a separate business unit that includes all the necessary functions. This business unit has its own development, operation, and publishing. The purpose of such a structure is to work on the product as efficiently as possible for our players.

Well, then what is the key difference between Nexus and other business units?

Nikolay: We rely on innovation, design thinking, and how we will create new products in the first place.

What exactly will the innovation consist of?

Nikolay: It is primarily about creating new value for players, not gameplay, mechanics, or monetization. We immediately begin to build on the needs of our target audience.

We are based on the audience and select the mechanics for it, we design the gaming experience for users that resonates and engages the players.

How does the concept discussion usually take place? People choose a genre, for example, match-3. Then they think about how to make the new product reach the existing audience of this genre. This is not our approach.

Instead, we start just by identifying a possible target audience for our future products, in-depth study of this audience. We think that the audience can understand why and how an abstract game can become a part of people’s lives.

This is our first difference from other units.

The second is technology. Unreal Engine 4 was not previously a common solution for developing games in Wargaming, however, based on the results of a detailed technological assessment, we signed a studio-wide agreement with Epic Games and decided to base our new products on this engine. At Nexus, we believe that it is on Unreal Engine 4 that you can create mobile AAA projects, which can then be transformed into multiplatform stories.

Nexus also has a slightly different corporate culture, more dynamic. We try to be as flexible and fast as possible, to test and work out new hypotheses instantly.

I didn’t quite understand the story about how you’re going to walk away from the audience. Can you give a concrete example of how exactly you are going to do this?

Nikolai: For example, there is John Smith, who is in America. He gets up at so-and-so, has breakfast at so-and-so, works so-and-so, and now he has ten minutes when he reads the news.

We understand that he has ten free minutes in which we can offer our product. And we evaluate what kind of gameplay will suit him, how exciting he will be, so that in these ten minutes he will read the news and play our project.

Then we study how many conditional John Smiths there are in such and such a region, we understand that there is a whole layer of audience to which we can close these very ten minutes. Next, we analyze what kind of product.

Nikita: We go from the audience, we build the game from the end users. The focus of our attention is not only what the user is playing, but also in general — what he is interested in, what he is interested in. We look at what motivation he has for the game. If he plays any strategies on a mobile phone, we decompose his motives: what is the most important thing for him in the game, why he comes to it.

Considering the success of World of Tanks, which was a complete surprise for the team, don’t you think this approach is too synthetic?

Nikolai: No. Maybe we didn’t have a methodology then, but now we clearly understand from the point of view of internal analysis how and why the game fired.

About Unreal Engine 4

You have chosen Unreal Engine 4 as your main engine. This is a great engine for consoles and PCs, but a rather heavy toolkit for mobile. Why didn’t they go into console gaming with such an engine?

Nikolay: Several teams work in Wargaming with Unreal Engine 4. Including on console projects. For this reason, we cannot say that we do not enter into this technology from different sides.

Plus, when we talk about consoles and PCs, this is usually considered the mission of big Wargaming.

To understand why we chose Unreal Engine 4, it is important to understand one of the main tasks that were set for us by the management: quickly bring products to market, develop them as brands, and then distribute them to other platforms as quickly as possible.

We don’t want to develop a product for consoles for three or four years and only then port it to mobile. We have the opposite story.

Nikita: Last year, Wargaming conducted a comprehensive analysis of all technologies available on the market. The choice of Unreal Engine 4 was based on the results of this evaluation. When analyzing it, we identified those moments that are most important to us:

• rapid prototyping of three-dimensional games, including genres such as shooters and action;
• the ability to create projects with the highest image quality for mobile devices;
• the engine has a very good cross-platform potential.

If, for example, we make a hit on Unreal Engine for mobile, then we have a clear and clear way to further develop this project on the existing technology stack for other platforms.

Nikolay: Over the past six months — before the official announcement of Nexus — we managed to work with 22 studios. Our hypothesis that three-dimensional games can be prototyped quickly and efficiently on Unreal Engine has been confirmed, it has been well worked out.

About partners and projects

What kind of partners are you looking for now?

Nikolay: We have clear criteria for choosing the development studios we want to work with. For example, we look at whether the studio has preliminary experience, a portfolio, at least one adequately released mobile project, whether there is a systematic understanding of the processes and culture of game development, whether there is an understanding of how to work with the server infrastructure of multiplayer projects, etc.

Nikita: We want the studio to have a product vision, an understanding of the development of a complex product from prototyping to release.

What kind of product?

Nikolay: Adjacent to our portfolio. We are not currently working with hyper-casual and casual games. We clearly understand that we will not do match-3. We are rather about complex AAA stories. I would like such studios to have experience in developing three-dimensional competitive online games in the shooter and action genres.

Exactly mobile?

Nikolai: Yes. The experience of mobile development is very important because of many aspects, as an example – the management system in mobile is very different from management on other platforms. Therefore, for effective development of mobile products, it is important that the studio has a clear understanding of the UX, technological and other features of this platform.

We have a rather contradictory experience working with studios that had no experience working on a mobile platform at that time.

Why?

Nikolay: Such studios manage to implement projects with a very beautiful picture, but at the same time there are big problems with UX and some questions about the iterativity of development. The reason, in our opinion, lies in the fact that such studios have a way of thinking that is not focused on mobile.

Are there any other requirements?

Nikolay: Motivation for the release of successful products.

Is there any way to check this?

Nikolay: We communicate with the studio, see how ambitious its employees are, whether they understand the market and trends, whether they have expertise in game design. The latter often suggests that its employees will be interested in working on new products with us.

About prototypes and financing

What are you ready to offer for your part? Are you investing, buying?

Nikolay: We start with full funding of the prototype. This is just a preliminary stage of work, in which we test the hypotheses laid down at the stage of the concept of new products, and also check the studio.

Accordingly, after the prototype is implemented, we, together with the studio, determine the ways of further interaction. It can be a joint product development, and strategic cooperation. Everything is very individual.

How do you assess the effectiveness of working with studios and prototypes?

Nikolay: This is a complex process. During the implementation of the prototype, we work closely together with the studio on aspects of development, game design, actively play-test intermediate results and test hypotheses. According to the results of prototyping, the technical director and game designers from our side give their assessments of the studio’s competencies. We evaluate the prototype itself from the point of view of the quality of development, testing the hypotheses laid down at the concept stage, as well as the target audience of the concept of this game and its market potential as a whole.

We have a comprehensive process of reviewing and testing projects in development, starting from the concept stage and up to launching into a global release with decision—making gates – greenlights.

Nikita: We are moving step by step with the studios — first we finance the development of prototypes based on the concepts that we have created internally based on audience and market analysis. Then the effectiveness of collaboration and the quality of the prototype is evaluated by the product team from our side. If the prototype is promising, we will organize focus tests inside Wargaming, as well as on the target audience of the future game. Based on the results of the final evaluation of the results of the focus tests of the prototype, we, as part of the greenlight, make a decision to switch to the joint development of a full-fledged game together with the studio.

Can you voice how much money you are willing to give for a prototype?

Nikolai: Yes, we have certain budgets. We are ready to invest up to $100 thousand in each prototype if we work with a studio from the CIS and Eastern Europe. This is a very decent budget with which you can implement a Minimum Viable Product and test all the initial hypotheses.

That is, if a team comes to you that has already made a mobile shooter and wants to make another one, are you ready to give her $ 100 thousand for a prototype?

Nikolai: Yes. Usually, after the announcement of such figures, studios begin to sharply adjust the crutches for her (laughs).

Nikita: We understand that there may be some adjustments for studios from the USA and Western Europe. $100 thousand is not a hard border. Everything very much depends on the specific project, prototype and mechanics, but we focus on this budget.

If the prototype passes your internal greenlight and goes into production, is it no longer limited by the budget?

Nikolay: We have some boundaries, but as part of the development, decisions are already being made at a different level and in accordance with detailed documentation, plans, and a road map. Moreover, budgets are discussed not only for development, but also for marketing. Accordingly, the amounts for development and publishing are of a completely different order.

In the CIS market, companies that meet your criteria can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Most of our mobile studios still came from casual and stay there. How strict is the requirement to have a mobile shooter experience?

Nikolay: If there is an interesting idea with high potential, then we are ready and happy to talk. However, our current focus is on those studios that have experience in developing in the genres of shooters and action games, which have the appropriate expertise.

You mentioned that Nexus has actually been running for six months. And during this time you managed to partner with 22 teams?

Nikolay: We didn’t start prototyping with each of them. Interaction with some studios ended at the level of discussion of concepts. Six studios successfully started prototyping, and we appreciated the collaboration and hypotheses embedded in the prototypes. However, only one studio has created a prototype at the moment, which we plan to lead to greenlight in joint development. Here is such a funnel that we managed to work out.

Nikita: We do not stop working with studios that have made a prototype that has not gone into full development for one reason or another. If we believe that the collaboration was successful, then we continue prototyping with these studios on a long-term basis until we stop at a prototype that will be worthy of the attention of players as a full-fledged product.

I see. Thanks for the interview.