Why it’s hard to go from building games on console to mobile

Above: The panel.

Image Credit: Heather Pond/VentureBeat

GamesBeat: Sean, I’d hazard a guess that of Wargaming’s fans, every one of them is a mobile user. What do you think they want on mobile? Are they the same audience you can target on mobile?

Lee: It’s important to understand that the same physical human being can have different profiles as a player, whether they’re sitting there with a PC or a console or a mobile device. You can be an extreme hardcore player on PC, but when you’re in an environment where you just have a mobile device, you don’t necessarily bring that hardcore-ness to that interaction.

Extending from that logic, our players love the historical authenticity and the immersive experience that our realtime battles provide on PC and console. Where we’ve failed as a company in the mobile space, we’ve provided them with a port, a replication of that experience on a mobile device. It’s going to be satisfying to a small percentage of that audience. The rest of the audience are looking for the essence or an element of Wargaming’s entertainment value that are built for mobile from the ground up. That’s what we need to [do] and what we’re trying to do as we continue to explore and expand our mobile efforts.

Ceraldi: Sometimes, we look at a brand that has that hardcore or mid-core audience on other platforms that you want to address. We want to make sure we attract them. But the real challenge is, there’s this whole other user base that may never have tried the product on other platforms. They’re the bigger piece of the pie. They are the pie. That’s the real opportunity. It’s also making a translation that can attract them while still attracting the core audience. If you’re just going after the core audience and creating a companion product that can live outside it, you’ve missed that bigger market opportunity.

Lee: One interesting thing I’ve seen recently — I’m sure all of you know Witcher 3 and CD Projekt behind it. They have an extremely immersive RPG experience. What they’ve recently announced is that a good number of their players within Witcher 3, the core PC and console game, they’ve been spending a lot of time playing a card game called Gwent, which is a fictional game inside the game. They picked up on that data point and announced they’re going to build a separate game out of that pub game, Gwent.

That’s a good example of taking the core brand and extending it out in a way where you don’t necessarily have to replicate the core experience. You don’t necessarily have to replicate GTA or replicate World of Tanks. If you can take certain essential elements and bring them to another platform, that’s a great strategy. Hearthstone is another example of that.

Above: World of Tanks Blitz

Image Credit: Wargaming

GamesBeat: How do you anticipate ways in which mobile games could reach the same emotional heights or narrative depth as console and PC games? Do we want to get there? Is that going to happen in a few years when we reach some kind of technical parity? What do you anticipate down the road?

Early: I think mobile games have already hit that point and then some. There are plenty of passionate players enjoying mobile games. A friend of mine’s 10-year-old plays Clash of Clans and meets together with other players in all these groups. The emotional highs involved in playing that game — the emotions are absolutely there. That’s been taken care of.

With respect to story, the question becomes … you could even have a short puzzle game, like Republic, that has a great storyline. That game’s been ported over to the console and PC side. That being said, I don’t think it’s the most successful of mobile games for a lot of reasons. It’s a game where you have to be immersed in it. It’s not the typical mobile experience.

Olson: Scientifically speaking, the pleasure and the emotion you get is the same, whether it’s a console game or a mobile game. When you’re playing a match-three game, that moment of matching gems is the same chemicals in your brain going off when you rescue the princess. There are different types of fun. Some things take a bit longer. But the emotions and what’s happening physiologically are the same.