Wargaming on Hiring During the Pandemic and Opening a New Studio

MS-1 General Manager Thaine Lyman talks about how drastically the COVID pandemic changed the company's life and discusses the advantages of having an international team with multiple offices across the globe.

Introduction

My name is Thaine Lyman, and I am General Manager for MS-1 — Wargaming’s premier mobile development studio behind World of Tanks Blitz. We are a multicultural development and publishing studio of over 350 people of various backgrounds and experience across all disciplines.

It has been over 20 years since I entered the game industry. I started at Activision and spent 17 years there. I worked on a bunch of games as a Producer, Executive Producer, and eventually VP of Production, including the first 10 years of the Call of Duty series and Destiny, among many other things. Then in April 2015, I joined Wargaming and moved first from LA to San Francisco, then to Cyprus, and finally settled down in Minsk where I have been for the past 4 years.

During my time here at MS-1, we have grown World of Tanks Blitz very substantially, and the game is doing better than ever, with now over 170 million global downloads and tons of new features and content. We have also started building a couple of new action shooter mobile titles and just recently added the World of Warships Blitz product to the MS-1 portfolio, with the team in Shanghai and Berlin responsible for that product joining the studio just last month. We are now a multi-product and multi-site studio, with teams in 5 different cities: Minsk, Moscow, Vilnius, Berlin, and Shanghai.

Opening a New Division

For the past several years, we have been embracing the advantages of what is called the “distributed development” model, where teams in multiple locations around the globe work on a product together. When you look around at development teams, you will notice that it is fairly uncommon for them to work in one location anymore. And it is for a good reason: working from different locations has many positive aspects to it — not only does it allow you to hire talented people from many local talent pools, but it also allows you to add cultural diversity to your teams, which gives you a more well-rounded view of what gamers around the globe want, and brings a wider variety of ideas, methodologies, and best practices to the team.

As far as what the Vilnius team will be doing for us specifically, we will have people from all of our products there, but the teams there will predominantly be focused on our new products, and the leadership of those products will primarily (though not exclusively) be based in Vilnius. Vilnius is a great location — it is a fairly small city but it is very culturally diverse, and it has a fast-growing technology industry, so it is a perfect fit for the MS-1 approach. We have already started hiring some very experienced, high-talent individuals from all around Europe and as far away as Southeast Asia into the Vilnius studio and it is showing promise as a great place to attract talent.

Current Projects

At MS-1 studio, we make AAA action shooter games for mobile. That is our mission, that is who we are, that is what we do. We believe that it is the genre whose time has come on the mobile platform. Shooters always end up being one of the dominant genres on platforms once the technology and design evolve sufficiently to be able to support that. And we are there now. So that is what we are working on now — two new, in-development AAA action shooter titles for mobile, in addition to continuing to provide high-quality new content and features on World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships Blitz.

Goal-wise, for the latter two titles, we aim to increase their quality and continue to grow them into bigger and better products. As for the new games, our goals are quite ambitious. World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships Blitz are the flourishing continuation of the renowned Wargaming franchises World of Tanks and World of Warships, and we want our next titles to further Wargaming’s overall success!

At the same time, we are not the only ones who have noticed that shooters are becoming a deal on the mobile market now. Unlike when World of Tanks Blitz first launched, when there were very few of this kind of game on the platform, now there is a number of quality competitors coming into this market. So, for our new products, our main goal is to make sure they stand out and become true high-quality offerings that the people will be really excited to play. And this is where the cultural diversity of our team comes in handy — because we look to be a worldwide success and not limit it to the boundaries of a certain region.

Managing the Teams

Instead of having a discipline-led focus, we have adopted the feature team approach, where a cross-functional work unit of designers, engineers, and artists all work together on a specific set of features. For example, we have got a team working on new game modes and comprising professionals of miscellaneous disciplines needed to build them as a whole piece of game.

In most instances, our feature teams have generally worked in a common location, but with the onset of the new world and remote work becoming more common, we have figured out the ways to help feature teams work in different areas in some instances — of course, preferably in similar time zones and sharing a lot of daylight.

As for dividing responsibilities: we are not a typical developer. One of the biggest MS-1 advantages is that development and publishing are integrated under the same roof and all those functions have a single reporting line. For example, the World of Tanks Blitz publishing team and development team collectively report to the Product Director who in turn reports to me. We think it gives us a huge advantage by ensuring unity of purpose, creator alignment, and teamwork while removing a lot of traditional infighting that the more traditional models can create.

And it helps us keep everyone on the same page, which is especially vital now given how many people are working remotely. We have explored a lot of different communication methods to keep everyone marching to the same beat and keep the sense of camaraderie and shared purpose high, be it using tools like Slack and Teams, "virtual offices" on Discord or other tools, or holding periodic streams to update people on what is going on. Both the leadership team and individual teams are constantly talking, exchanging news and showing off progress, so people continually see how their individual work relates to the overall project and overall studio goals.

Industry Trends

To us as a primarily mobile shooter-focused studio, the biggest and the brightest part of this evolution is the higher-quality Internet and the ubiquity of it. The Internet connection is now faster than ever which allows for a better, uninterrupted gaming experience for our audience. It also mitigates latency and packet drop issues that are a big worry for any shooter, no matter what platform, and that now have become less of a problem with faster and more stable high-quality Internet setting in.

The next important thing is the rapid pace of mobile tech advances. Our phones and other portable devices are undergoing revolutionary changes, which enables us to step outside of the game development box and literally break the ground. Just imagine, the very idea of playing AAA games on mobile was beyond belief years ago, but that is where we are right now.

And, perhaps, the most fantastic side to the game industry evolution is that the new generations are coming to this world where mobile phones and mobile gaming are commonplace. Meaning playing games on portable devices will come as naturally to those kids as playing on PCs or consoles—actually, even more naturally. This phenomenon opens vast horizons for us as a mobile game studio: we will explore shaping gaming experiences depending on how this new generation lives and plays their games. And this is why working on mobile is so exciting to me: this field is destined to be the main driving force of innovation in gaming for the next decade. All those drastic changes we have witnessed recently are just the beginning.

Trend-wise, I believe that more and more players will want to play their favorite games on mobile, so the platform will be housing more and more AAA games. We are still in the relatively early stages compared to other gaming platforms, and there is a lot that could happen with mobile gaming. But it is very clear that mobile has already become a place where gamers can play and want and expect to play, these kinds of games. They do not want to only be able to play them on their couch or at their computer desk anymore.

The Challenges of Cross-Play

World of Tanks Blitz now supports cross-play between PC, mobile, and Nintendo Switch. It was a lot of work for the team to ship the game on multiple platforms and add cross-play. We have faced many challenges along the way, from putting all players on equal footing (whether they play with mouse and keyboard, using touchscreen controls or the Joy-Cons), to making specific changes to get World of Tanks Blitz running and looking great on platforms with widely varying system specs, and ensuring that the game supports some of each platform’s unique features.

However, porting a game to a new console is only the beginning. Studios need to dedicate resources to squash bugs, furnish updates, and address player concerns for months after launch on a new platform. Because you do not have the right to leave your players unsatisfied. So, yes, cross-play is quite a massive challenge to address. But when addressed right, its benefits are enormous, especially when a player can share their account progress across platforms and thus can play on different devices based on their location or their mood without losing anything.

The Impact of Game Industry on Local Economy

To start with, the games business is a vibrant, rapidly growing, and highly innovative industry. When a city or a region houses a game studio, their economy goes up: it brings money, it attracts highly educated, bright, and dynamic people who pay good taxes, it creates new jobs. Eventually, such cities grow a pretty live technical and innovative kind of infrastructure which makes them even more attractive for more top-notch professionals and other businesses, too. Because games are entertainment, it also brings an extra “cool” factor to the city — every city has a bank, but not many have a game developer, and which one is more fun?

Cities all around the world are seeing this effect, from places like Montreal to Austin to Minsk (to name just a few) who have established programs to make these cities financially attractive places to house a game development studio (tax breaks and/or credits for the company and employees, a smooth immigration process, and help with relocating potential employees from abroad, "integration" programs to help new people become comfortable with the city, the ability for spouses/family to get work permits to also work in the region, etc.).

Any place that has done this has seen great benefits to their local economy, both directly and indirectly as other industries spring up to support them. There is also the benefit that even in harder times, like the pandemic, but even in more traditional economic downturns, video games have proven to be a very resilient type of business. Because people always want to play games, to be entertained, and it is great value in terms of time vs. money spent and quality and engagement of the player.

The presence of game companies in a region can contribute to education, too. Being in constant need of new specialists, they tend to create university outreach and local job-training programs like Wargaming’s "Forge" program, which can provide new job opportunities in the region. Thus many aspiring talents who would previously leave to another country or even continent to pursue a career in the games industry, now can stay and apply their talents to the advantage of their home city.

Hiring Process

Well, in this new world of the COVID pandemic everything has been turned upside down and of course, HR had to adapt quickly to a bunch of new things. Hiring-wise, I can say that in the last year, I have hired more people that I had never met in person than I did in all of my previous years combined. And we have all gotten used to hiring people via video screens with no personal contact. The onboarding process has been tougher when moved online, but like everybody else, we have learned to adapt — it is either that or stop hiring, and we are not going to do that!

The tougher part actually is keeping track of everybody’s mood and morale. When you see someone eye to eye and live, it is easier to see what is going on, how somebody is doing, how they are feeling — you do not have the same cues anymore. With teleconferences, everything becomes more complicated, and "fixes" for the lack of visual contact like having everybody in mandatory "camera-on" mode all the time, as easy as that sounds in theory, is not good for anybody. So, we try to be more conscious of the fact that people may be struggling with things, and we do not always know what those things are. It can be as simple as trying to focus with your kids playing around. Or they may be fighting with really serious emotional or psychological issues. Or their loved ones may have gotten sick. So, our intent is to be careful and respectful and to make sure that our people know that we care for them. And I think Wargaming and MS-1 have performed well in this regard, finding ways to care for them more and making sure they feel that care, and generally we have had good feedback from our team about that, but it is definitely not something we can ever take for granted or say it is "job done" — every day brings new challenges.

The important thing when we are sitting in our apartment is to stay connected and feel that we are not alone but part of the team and the community. And we are trying to bolster that feeling. For example, we had a big online stream team Christmas party — and it was actually really good! Instead of the usual holiday stuff with leads getting up on stage at a big event delivering speeches, raising toasts, and thanking the team for the hard work, we tried to ensure full participation of the team members, and give everybody a chance to see each other. Several of the teams did performance bits, whether it was goofy videos or TikTok style funny things, or music performances.

We try other ways, too. We run fairly regular World of Tanks Blitz tournaments for the team and try to get people to play together — as well as pay attention to what our game is like. Some guys get on video on Friday nights to have a virtual drink together. So, we are on the constant lookout for these little things that are helpful or create social connections, or both. Of course, as the world is starting to open up again, it is getting easier to start to get together in person, bit by bit, and that helps a lot, but these new tools are helping us to keep people more connected even when physically based in different locations. Learning new lessons and adding new skills. This is what we all do as humans — evolve and adapt, right?

Thaine Lyman, General Manager 

Interview conducted by Arti Sergeev

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