SOML: World of Tanks
I wasn’t particularly interested in World of Tanks when it launched in 2011. A persistent PR guy spent about a year trying to convince me that the website I was working for back then should review it, but free-to-play games weren’t a priority for us at the time, and what kind of a name was World of Tanks anyway? To his credit, the PR guy never gave up; I remember he handed me codes for free in-game gold and premium tanks on a couple of occasions while visiting the office on other business, and I redeemed those some time later when I started playing.
My timeline recollection gets a little fuzzy here, but at some point between me playing World of Tanks for the first time and publishing an 8/10 review for the boxed retail version several months later, I was invited to meet with Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi during his visit to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. If memory serves, the meeting was set up primarily so that I could get a first look at the recently announced World of Warplanes, but after that brief demo, Victor and I talked tanks. The aforementioned PR guy had obviously let Victor know that I was a fan, and as we talked it became clear that he was looking for some candid feedback.
I let Victor know that my only major gripes with the game were the result of it not offering any colorblind options, and as I got into some of the specific issues I was having he asked one of his employees to join us and take notes. I explained that I had fired at teammates on more than one occasion because I couldn’t easily tell the red and green in-game player labels apart, and that on certain minimaps I couldn’t even see the small red circles used to denote enemy positions. I also made it clear that, statistically speaking, I might be one of four players having the same issues in every battle. He promised that he’d look into it and, while I take no credit, Wargaming started soliciting player feedback for an “official color blind mod” in its forums a couple of months later and added an alternate colors setting to the in-game preferences menu later that year.
Fast forward a few years and, after over 14 years working in video games editorial for the same website, I was unceremoniously let go as part of a sizable round of layoffs. I had barely begun to look for other jobs in the games industry when, just a week or two later, I received a call from Wargaming inviting me to apply for a job at their US office which, unbeknownst to me, was barely a ten-minute drive from home.
The Pz.Kpfw. II Ausf. J and BT-SV were only available in German and Russian Gift Box editions of World of Tanks initially. I paid WAY too much to add them to my garage before working at WG.
I was encouraged to reach out to the president of Wargaming America to offer some thoughts on how I might improve their current web content, visited the office to interview with some folks, and started work there just a few weeks later. The PR guy who had originally convinced me to play World of Tanks was no longer at the company, but it turned out that the current PR team all knew I was a big fan and, since they were having some challenges with their websites at that time, they pushed for the company to approach me as soon as they heard I was out of work.
My first day at Wargaming America was a shambles; I was taken for a quick walk around the office to shake hands with some folks, but there was no real orientation, no time set aside to discuss plans with my new manager, nor even a formal introduction to the team that would be reporting to me. My manager sat me at one of eight desks that were grouped together, encouraged me to get my PC up and running, and let me know that my team would likely be arriving soon. And that was it; my boss didn’t even tell me how many or which of the seven folks I was sitting with reported to me, so when I sent introductory one-on-one invites to five of them, I missed someone.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out who was who on my team of course, nor that my manager invariably spent his days playing World of Tanks rather than working to support it. Regardless, being surrounded by folks who were also big fans of the game was great, and there was never any shortage of self-proclaimed experts eager to share tips and to team up with me anytime we wanted to complete in-game challenges.
Further improvements to my in-game stats came courtesy of a staff-only map select option (intended for testing purposes but frequently used to choose maps well-suited to my chosen vehicle) and our weekly allowance of in-game gold. Colleagues would typically use at least a percentage of their gold allowance to buy more powerful premium ammo for their tanks, but as someone obsessed with collecting stuff, I used all of mine to buy premium tanks, many of which were no longer available to most players at the time. I also had to use a lot of my gold to buy garage slots to put my tanks in because, much to the amusement of my colleagues, I never sold any of my tanks regardless of whether or not I might ever use them again.
Prior to my arrival, I knew Wargaming as a company that threw lavish parties, always had a huge presence at shows like E3 regardless of whether they had new games to show, and rewarded its staff with generous annual bonuses. I missed out on all of that stuff; the E3 presence while I was there didn’t include a showfloor booth at all if I recall correctly, and the staff parties were all modest affairs that took place at a local hotel, inside the office, and even in the office parking lot on one occasion. And don’t get me started on the annual bonus.
I believe my first full year at Wargaming was the first time in company history that no annual bonuses were paid out. The reasoning, we were told, was that even though the Wargaming America and Europe offices had performed well, the Ruble had not. I can’t speak to how this news was received in other offices, but at Wargaming America HQ this was an especially bitter pill to swallow because our shady HR lead habitually convinced new hires to accept being underpaid in the SF Bay Area by telling them that she factored the annual bonus into compensation. I never knew exactly how many folks handed in their notice that week, but it was a lot.
The wall of one of many meeting rooms at the Minsk office named after World of Tanks maps.
The only major “perk” I enjoyed during my time at Wargaming was a business trip to attend a team summit in Minsk, where my US colleagues and I met with our peers from other Wargaming offices around the world. The time spent exchanging ideas and such wasn’t always as useful as it could’ve been, but the face-to-face time, tenpin bowling time, drinking time, and clay pigeon shooting time with folks definitely made it significantly easier to work with some of them going forward.
When I made the decision to leave Wargaming about a year after that Minsk trip I had made some good friends around the world, grown my team both in size and skill, and gotten a lot better at World of Tanks. On the flipside, the company’s constant attempts to reorganize had seen me reporting to three very different managers despite my job never changing, one of whom I had been friends with before they joined the company but quickly saw in a very different light as their report. Partially as a result of that changing relationship, leaving Wargaming was already on my mind when Blizzard approached me about a position at their Irvine headquarters.
