Last week, Wargaming announced the launch of the publishing division of Wargaming Mobile. We talked with Andrey Zimenko, head of publishing at Wargaming Mobile, about what games the company is looking for and on what terms it is ready to work with their developers.
Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru Questioner: I’m a little confused about entities. You have WG Labs, you had WG Cells. Now here is Wargaming Mobile. From the outside, it seems that they all do about the same thing: they help developers with mobile. What is the difference between them?
Andrey ZimenkoAndrey Zimenko, head of the publishing direction of Wargaming Mobile: Great question!
Indeed, over the past few years, mobile games from Wargaming have been released under different brands and from different business units, and it is important for us to clarify. Wargaming Mobile includes all of the company’s mobile studios. With the creation of the Wargaming Mobile department, all mobile games will be released only under this brand — both publishing and developed by internal studios.
The department is headed by Keith Kawahata, a veteran of the mobile free-to-play games industry with extensive product and management experience. In particular, Keith developed the game Kingdoms of Camelot in Kabam, and also led the development and operation of RPG-genre games in GREE International.
It is important to note that Wargaming Mobile includes all the functions that are necessary for the successful development and operation of mobile games — marketing, interaction with platforms, publishing and community management. The department with such vertical integration within the company allows you to create a good springboard for expanding the presence of Wargaming in the mobile market.
Wargaming Labs will continue to work and focus on console and PC platforms. As for WG Cells, this studio was closed in the second half of 2016.
How big is this department now?
Andrey: At the moment, the department consists of more than 300 people and is based in four locations: Wargaming Mobile management — in the main office in Nicosia, the World of Tanks Blitz product team and publishing direction — in Minsk, two studios that develop new products – in St. Petersburg and Helsinki.
We are looking for professionals in publishing and mobile game development in all locations, current vacancies can be viewed on the website wgmobile.net .
Which games are interested in the first place (CA, genre, type of monetization, and so on)?
Andrey: As part of the publishing program, we help developers to enter an effective softlonch, and then during the publication we maximize the potential of mobile games by applying our expertise. The profile of the games we are interested in is frituplay—monetization and targeting a midcore or hardcore audience. Wargaming Mobile has first-class experience and a large audience for such projects, which we are ready to share within the publishing house. We are ready to consider any genre of mobile games within the framework of the Publishing program that fall into our focus, which I described above. However, if we talk about the segment of games that are most interesting to us, then these are strategic action games on technology, like World of Tanks Blitz.
How many support projects will you be willing to take at a time?
Andrey: We have no restrictions on the number of projects that we are ready to accept into the Publishing Program for a certain period of time. All games that fall into the focus of the projects we are interested in and will pass our internal product review will be included in the program and will have the opportunity to use a number of services for effective softlonch for at least six months. We will monitor the projects in the program and, depending on the success of the softlonch, offer additional support to developers to improve the effectiveness of the game.
Who will evaluate whether to take the project or not?
Andrey: We have formed a team of product experts who will evaluate the potential of the projects included in the Publishing Program and make decisions. The team includes experienced producers who joined us from Rovio, Gree, King, Mail.ru and other major players in the mobile gaming industry.
How long will the projects be considered?
Andrey: We plan to conduct an internal review of incoming projects and give an answer about acceptance into the Publishing Program within two weeks from the date of submission of the application. The application can be submitted on the website: publishing.wgmobile.net .
On what terms from your side (percentage, rights, regional rights, other) will you take the games?
Andrey: Wargaming Mobile is interested in exclusive publishing rights for the whole world. We offer fair financial conditions, but we agree on certain figures in each case. During negotiations on publishing, we are flexible and always rely on the fact that for the success of the project, both the publisher and the developer must be interested in the success of the project in terms of profit sharing.
The announcement said that you will give access to tools, but tools are not the main problem. We need traffic and we need expertise. Tell me how much traffic you will be ready to pour and should the teams count on a full-fledged producer from your side?
Andrey: I agree, expertise and traffic are very necessary during the softlonch. We are not limited to access to tools within the framework of the Publishing Program. For projects with good performance, we offer test advertising campaigns conducted and funded by Wargaming Mobile, as well as expertise in game design and monetization from our producers based on an agreement of intent to conclude a publishing deal.
What will you provide to the developer after signing the contract?
Andrey: As part of the publishing deal, we at Wargaming Mobile undertake operations, marketing, community management, localization, multilingual support for players due to the presence of a number of Wargaming publishing offices around the world and communication with platforms on the project.
We provide developers with our expertise in game design, monetization and technical issues in order to increase the potential of the project.
Wargaming Mobile focuses not on the number of published projects, but on maximizing the potential of each project.
The developer also gets access to the Wargaming audience, which is more than 150 million registered players.
As an example, I want to cite the publishing project Gods & Glory from Friday’s Games. We started working with the project at the end of spring 2016, during the softlonch we reached more than 100 thousand installations, significantly improved monetization and retention of players in the game. As a result, the project went into global release in very good shape, having received features in key regions on both platforms.
How ready the game is for softlonch is usually decided by the developer himself. What is a ready-to-play game for you?
Andrey: In our understanding, a game ready for softlonch provides for the presence in the project of the main game cycles and economy, metagame, player training, monetization system, as well as content for at least one month of in-game progression. In the presence of all the above aspects of the product, the developer will be able to get the first metrics of the game on a real audience during the softlonch, as well as identify bottlenecks of the project to improve them and adjust his roadmap.