World of Tanks – Studio Visit

Hey everyone, Sam here to tell everyone about our recent visit that we had at the Chicago branch of Wargaming. For those unfamiliar with the studio, Wargaming is the company in charge of the popular World of Tanks series. They have studios across the world and the studio we visited, the Chicago branch, is primarily in charge of the console version of World of Tanks. While not all of the team was able to make it to the studio visit, the majority of us were able to make it and the experience was a great learning experience for us all. It was very interesting to see, especially since I am a producer for the team, how Wargaming is able to successfully manage such an ambitious title and large team. The biggest takeaway from our meetings with many of the team members as that you should not rely on any one given style or tool to manage (for example, you can’t just expect waterfall agile development to work in any given circumstance) and that you should create a unique style of sprint that works best for the needs of your team. This is something that I definitely should focus on doing especially for our next quarter of capstone. It was also interesting to see the advancements Wargaming has in terms of playtesting, as they have motion tracking cameras in order to better see and understand the emotions of their playtesters to collect better data. Obviously, we don’t have access to that type of tech, but it’s always great to see what other tools developers are using to maximize playtests. All in all, the studio visit was very insightful and the information we learned we will try to apply to our own team.