It wouldn’t be a PAX without Wargaming. Making their presence known each year, Wargaming again took centre stage at PAX Australia 2015 with a gigantic booth dedicated to all things World of (insert machination) . A number of kiosks gave eager fans, and potentially new ones, a chance to go hands-on with the company’s famous F2P multiplayer games, meanwhile community tournaments were streamed to a gigantic screen, much to the delight of a very vocal and surprisingly packed audience.

Meanwhile, I had the opportunity to sit down with Max Chuvalov, marketing product manager at Wargaming, to discuss the competitive scene, development history, and strengths of their latest title World of Warships.

Jarrod Mawson: Starting with the most recent title, World of Warships, was it a goal to build a project with a similar level of accessibility as World of Tanks without fully replicating the exact formula simply with boats?

Max Chuvalov: Yes, the idea was 100% not to repeat the World of Tanks gameplay, to make it completely different. Because we’d already had four or five years experiencing variation in developing World of Tanks, we learned a lot and tried to implement all the best practices. So you can see in World of Warships there’s much deeper RPG elements with captains and skill trees. And all the classes are different, not only within the classes but also between different nations. They’re quite different. So that was the basic idea, to provide different gameplay depending on the class of the warship and also the nation, as every nation is quite unique.

Jarrod: And I suppose with World of Warships you’re tasked with lining up multiple guns on your ship, over the single cannon on a tank.

Max: Plus they have different abilities, guns, armour, and speed. There’s recon planes, smoke screens, torpedoes, etc etc. So we can tweak and balance classes and nations in different ways. For example if you take destroyers for some nations they’ve heavier armour and artillery, and instead of smoke screens they’ve got anti-aircraft defence. Good defence systems. Whereas Japanese destroyers are more like stealth, very little armour, and they’ve got smoke screens and boosters for their engines so they can move faster, torpedo, then hide away.

Jarrod: Was it challenging to balance this new design over something like World of Tanks?

Max: It was challenging, which is why we started with only two nations to balance the ships more accurately. Then we added more nations, keeping in the same paradigm. Such as the Soviets with destroyers and cruisers from Germany, which are heavily armoured and armed but not great at long range shooting. Meanwhile Soviet destroyers are even heavier than US destroyers, and there’s variations within these types too, such as a level three destroyer using short range, fast reloading torpedo blasts. Like a shotgun spray.

Jarrod: Do you feel the ship diversity and design encourages teamwork?

Max: Yes, especially when you’re playing in a platoon with your team mates. For example if we’re playing with destroyers, one of us takes Japanese destroyers and the other takes US destroyers in order to counter the enemy. Because if you’ve got two Japanese destroyers you’ve got good torpedos but if you’re countered by a US destroyer you’re in trouble, because he evades your torpedoes and destroys you with his artillery. So when we play in squadrons we have one person play one nation and the other plays another nation so we can counter the enemy. It’s the same when we play cruisers; where one has taken the US cruiser which has a lot of firepower, but without torpedos, and the second has taken a Japanese cruiser with torpedoes and anti-torpedo systems.

Jarrod: Have people adapted to this teanwork design quickly? Understanding the role of a ship?

Max: Yeah, I think it’s not so hard to understand the role of a ship at this stage because there’s not too many of them. But if you want to understand it deeply you can watch videos on the class specific ships and you’ll be into it right away. A bit of practice and it’ll come naturally.

Jarrod: Was the aim of something like World of Warships to provide something fresh for the World of Tanks and Warplanes crowd, or bring in new people like naval enthusiasts?

Max: One thing was to cover the niche, because you can’t find sophisticated naval warfare games. There was Navy Field some time ago, like seven to eight years ago.

Jarrod: A decade or so ago there were some good single player PC navy games, but they’ve all kinda fallen by the wayside.

Max: Yes exactly, so one of the goals was to cover this niche, this playstyle and setting. The other goal was to satisfy our gamers who love just armoured vehicle warfare, so everybody, depending on their mood, can jump between tanks or warships. That’s why we’ve got the unified accounts, so people don’t need to register all over again. They’ve got one account, with upgrades like premium accounts, for all the titles.

Jarrod: What’s the uptake on World of Warships been like? Something like tanks are probably a bit more accessible; it’s a tank, it has a gun, you point and shoot. Ships might be a bit different for some players. Has it been a positive response?

Max: It’s been a really positive response, and actually we found it a bit easier to approach. We’ve learned a lot about players, such as how they convert from one title to another, and how they progress through a game. So we used a lot of learned features to help players out. When you begin, you start with a vessel with one or two cannons, and nothing else. And with your low account you can only play with bots against bots. So you have plenty of time to learn how to navigate the ship, rotate your turrets, shoot with turrets. It’s a pleasant environment. Then when you open the second to sixth levels you can edit turrets, access different classes, and start to learn different roles and manage multiple guns. Then you’ll unlock ships with recon planes, torpedos, and other abilities, and you’re also unlocking the co-op mode where you play with real players against bots. Then you’ve got aircraft carriers, learning how to co-operate with teammates. Finally you’ve got access to all classes of ships, and the complete PVP environment. So you’re already prepared, it’s a smooth transition.

Jarrod: Was this a result of lessons learned in developing World of Tanks? The way players approach multiplayer games, leading them to mechanics without making them feel overwhelmed?

Max: Yes, this is one of the examples of how we learned from World of Tanks to implement features into World of Warships from the start. There’s also other features like positive feedback in battles. You’ll see ribbons when you accomplish things, allowing you to observe what exactly you did, and what it influenced. So you’ve got a completely clear idea of what actions are beneficial and what are not. After that we introduced this system in World of Tanks. It’s very good for us to have all this experience. And very surprisingly for us, or not so much surprising as positive, is that lots of completely new players are coming to World of Warships. And lots of players returning who haven’t played World of Tanks for three or four years. So they’re the old players who enjoyed World of Tanks but then stopped, have come back to try World of Warships and then returned to World of Tanks as well.

Jarrod: With World of Warships is there a wide spectrum in age range of players?

Max: It’s completely the same as World of Tanks, so about 22 to 35 years old as the main core audience. Which isn’t a big surprise for us. Lots of grown-ups and mature people playing. I think it’s one definition of our franchises, because there’s not much shame in saying or discussing playing warships or tanks.

Jarrod: Are you guys trying to grow the competitive scene in Australia? I understand it’s big in Europe, and we’ve got a big fighting game community.

Max: For World of Tanks we’re very into E-Sports right now. We’re enlarging it, co-operating with players, updating our infrastructure to 2.0, paying salaries to teams to encourage them to make useful content to educate other people to evangelise World of Tanks E-Sports. And according to the contract they participate in focus tests, giving us feedback on how to improve the rules and change the format. Soon we’ll introduce another change in our World of Tanks E-Sports format, as the latest change bought us 25% of audience, as the game became more spectacular and enjoyable to watch. We eliminated draws and added more aggressive gameplay, which came from suggestions from the players. So yeah, we’re definitely trying to grow. With World of Warships there’s already some demand for competitive gameplay, so right now we’re organising some community tournaments. Right now there’s not a critical mass of players to make it E-Sports, or to make it popular to watch. But if there’s a demand we’ll follow.

Jarrod: Great. I’m sure local World of Tanks fans would love to see the Australian competitive scene grow. Thanks for taking the time to speak to me.

World of Warships, and of course World of Tanks and Warplanes, are available to play now over at Wargaming.net. Tune in tomorrow for part two of my Wargaming coverage, where we move from World of Warships to the Master of Orion reboot.