Gaijin Entertainment talked about War Thunder

Just the other day, the announcement of the mobile version of War Thunder took place. As we have learned, this is not just a game “based on motives”, but a full-fledged port that will allow owners of various iOS and Android devices to fight online with PC players in real time. It sounds, to be honest, like fiction. Is this really the case? That’s the way it is, we’ve already played sessions with PC players.

So such matches are not only possible, but have even happened before. The developers, of course.

It is clear that this is the future. But today, the maximum that most publishers of casual and social games offer is account synchronization via Facebook. EA in the recent Real Racing 3 proposed as another alternative the so-called “asynchronous multiplayer”, when the passage of the friends track is recorded, and then the player can ride with this record. Considering all this, it turns out that Gaijin Entertainment is in some way a pioneer in multiplatform PvP. How does it feel to be the first? Why do you think no one has implemented this before you? We’ll find out what it’s like after the launch. 

Why it wasn’t there before is also understandable. There are a lot of technical problems, for example: the game should work beautifully and quickly on modern PCs and on relatively weaker tablets. In addition, there are some organizational problems.

But, we have a strong team of excellent specialists, and the power of modern mobile devices is growing very fast. 

There are genres that seem to be specially created for touch devices – these are strategies, quests, various casual puzzles. At the same time, since the appearance of the first such gadgets, game developers have been trying to transfer their favorite genres to them – FPS, third-person action, now MMO. But after all, there are no sticks on mobile devices, there are no physical buttons, and it is often not as convenient to control such games as on consoles or PCs? How did you solve this problem? Gaijin Entertainment devotes a lot of time to working out game control schemes.

We invented a completely innovative airplane control using a computer mouse, which allowed us to open the world of flight simulators to a wide audience — before our game, flight simulators were a niche, “hardcore” genre. We hope to make the same revolution on touch input devices, and so far we really like what we are getting.

By the way, and here immediately arises a question related to the balance. Won’t PC players who have a mouse and keyboard (and sometimes even a real joystick) get advantages on the battlefield? There is potentially such a problem.

The touchscreen does not provide as precise control of the aircraft as a computer mouse, so it is not yet clear whether the balancer will let players into a match with PC players automatically or will “separate” them to play with each other. Controlling with a touchpad is both convenient and fun, but we don’t want players to have a feeling of “inequality” of opportunities.

On the other hand, once similar concerns were experienced by players in shooters on consoles, they say, the gamepad loses the mouse exactly, and therefore it is impossible to let players from different controllers into one match. History has shown that the convenience and pleasure of the game defeated skeptical moods: several shooters (as well as flight simulators and racing) were released on game consoles that supported the mouse (joystick and steering wheel), but this did not break the balance in games. Unreal Tournament, for example, is a good confirmation of this. 

We’ll wait and see! 

Which DAU and MAU are you counting on?We, by our mentality, are more of a developer than a publisher.

And we publish games ourselves for the simple reason that at one time there was not a single big publisher who would believe that such a genre as an MMO flight simulator (and even free) could be interesting to someone.

So first of all we are concerned about a high-quality game and interesting gameplay.

Will the size of the IAP differ in the desktop and mobile versions?This one is not defined yet.

On the one hand, I don’t want to limit users, and on the other – Apple/Google takes its share, i.e. we get significantly less money from each payment.

Is the game being made with the expectation of dragging some mobile users onto PC rails? Or are you going to develop both projects equally?No, we don’t set ourselves the task of dragging players somewhere.

Players play the same way and where it is more interesting and convenient for them.

You can take a tablet in the subway, and you won’t take a computer with you to bed before going to bed.

We do not perceive the mobile version as a source of users for the PC version, nor vice versa – this is one game that can be played anywhere.

Tell us more about monetization in War Thunder? About average transaction sizes, how much do you need to invest in the game to succeed?The game is free and fair play.

There is no need to invest money at all to achieve success. Money in WarThunder is spent mainly in order to save some time on pumping.

And the last question about competition: recently Wargaming.net The mobile version of World of Tanks has been announced. How do you feel about the competitors’ project? Aren’t you afraid of crossing audiences?     So far, nothing can be said about this game.

The published screenshots look very good, but as far as I know, this company has never announced its games with real screenshots, and not with hand-drawn by artists. In large game dev structures, marketing materials are often handled not by developers, but by special people.

In general, we strongly welcome open and fair competition. Competition forces developers to make their game better, which benefits both players and the market as a whole. Healthy competition is very good for all players.