A Visit to the World of Warplanes Development Studio

Russian gaming magazine GameWay recently visited the Wargaming.net studio in Kiev where they met the developers of World of Warplanes.  As the article is in Russian, we have provided a translation below so that you can see what they found!

The GameWay editorial staff was represented by Kiburga, the chief editor, and Lar, a columnist.  They visited the Kiev office of Wargaming.net – the location of the World of Warplanes design and development team.  This is their report.

This office, where the most hotly anticipated MMO game of 2012 is being developed, occupies the whole of a two-story building which has been recently reconstructed with a transparent roof.

On the doorstep, we were met by designers having a smoke break (obviously, the building itself is a non-smoking area). There were plenty of bicycles in the hall – many of the staff enjoy keeping the environment clean by cycling to work.

We were welcomed by Public Relations Manager Dmitry Yazovitskiy and Oleg Gotynyan, the development director of the World of Warplanes project.  Our visit began with some videos about the game and then they gave us a full tour of the office.

It’s impossible to miss the posters all over the building showing vehicles from both World of Warplanes and World of Tanks, and the office design itself is noticeably of a Western European style. Most meetings and discussions take place in special meeting rooms, which are located all around the building. Along the corridors there are plenty of blue and orange sofas with coffee tables and houseplants nearby.  The corridor is marked by a row of columns which support the roof above.

Oleg Gotynyan explains that there are currently over 100 people working in the Kiev office, excluding managers.  Employees fall into two general groups – programmers who write and test the code, and artists who work on all the visual  aspect of the game. As each team is independent of each other with their own managers, the development process occurs simultaneously without any interference with each other’s work. This means that the creative process for both groups can continue unhindered by delays.

In general, this spacious modern building has all the facilities needed for efficient work.  The offices are  large, modern and comfortable. In some of them, one can see just three or four specialists working, whilst others have been designed as open-space rooms and contain whole departments. In addition, the employees have two dining rooms at their disposal, fully equipped with coffee machines, microwave ovens, electric kettles, fridges, cups and dishes, and even fresh biscuits and pastry.

The next part of the tour takes us to the programming and testing rooms on the second floor. It seems to be compulsory to have warplane models on your desk – no room is complete without them!  The rooms are also decked out with posters, blueprints, t-shirts pinned to the walls and two monitors per desk.

In the Wargaming.net Kiev office every employee is advised to play World of Warplanes for at least one hour every day. It’s considered to be an integral part of the daily work and everybody plays, even the senior management.  On one display, someone is hard at work entering code or designing visuals, whilst at the next station, a fierce dogfight for air dominance is taking place.  Sadly, there are no bonuses offered in game for shooting down a developer! 

After chatting with people in the testing and development department management on the second floor, we headed down to art department located on the first floor. On our way we dropped into the gym where anyone can get some exercise.  This is located on the first floor and includes basic gym equipment as well as a mini table-tennis table.  There is even a punch-bag for taking out your frustration when your code refuses to compile!

In the art department, we found the 3D artists and Texture designers hard at work. We were welcomed by the head of department, Miroslav Baranenko.  His desk was stuffed with as many miniature car and planes model that could be fitted onto one desk. 

The art department was mainly busy with working on the models for the Japanese and British warplanes.  We also noticed some work taking place on the environment and terrain. We were told that the game was continuing to receive extensive additions and that building the surface of the maps will bring life to the game. For instance, anti-aircraft guns will not only appear on bases but will also be placed strategically across the map, for instance to cover a port. The on-surface vehicles will become animated and start moving across the map.  Of course, there are also plans to introduce more brand new maps into World of Warplanes.

The 3D artists work in Maya rather than 3D Max. According the Miroslav Baranenko, his artists not only have to be good at creating good 3D models, they also need to make good use of 2D editors which are used for creating textures.

You can see that artists are creative thinkers from the first glimpse. Their desks are basically surrounded by various characters from comics, movies, video games and so on.  In other words, creative spirit is in very much in the air here!

The warplane models are not created by scanning miniatures as one might expect.  Instead, all the in-game models are built according to the historically accurate blueprints. Indeed, many of the prototype aircraft featured in the game only ever existed in blueprints. The process of creating warplanes is taken very seriously taken here. In the Kiev studio as well as in the Minsk HQ, historical consultants are employed to continually seek out and provide historic information, often by delving into museums and archives.  This is to ensure that the warplane models are created as accurately as possible. 

After spending 2 hours in the Wargaming.net Kiev office, it is time to head home. We at GameWay have only positive thoughts after the visit.   It was so clearly visible how much effort, resources and labour hours are being invested into the project, not to mention the positive energy. This office clearly loves its work and values its employees.

You can visit GameWay for more pictures of their visit at the bottom of their page.