Interview with Viktor Kislyi

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Hello everyone,

Daniel Chau of ESGN TV (Youtube e-sports channel) recently (in Warsaw) made an interview with Viktor “Big Boss” Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.

 

 

Inside:

- 40 thousand teams were fighting in the WGL regions, out of that only 14 got to the finals
- in organizing the WGL finals, Wargaming cooperated with ESL and Warsaw municipality
- he believes that e-sports will be competing on TV with traditional sports
- this year’s e-sports WG budget was 8 mil USD, next year it will be 10 mil USD
- WGL finals prize pool was 2,5 mil USD
- WoT is not intended as an e-sports game, the e-sports players simply came from the broad player base
- for WoWp to become an e-sports game, a solid userbase is needed
- WoWp is a “good game” and it does generate profit
- the biggest competitor for WoWp is WoT – players go play planes a for a bit and they immediately return to tanks
- Viktor Kislyi admits mistakes in WoWp development: FPS is not always optimal and there are also lag issues
- currently, Wargaming Kiev is working on fixing those issues, development will continue afterwards
- WoWs is in closed alpha, the battles can’t be hyperrealistic (fun is more important), will last 10-15 mins, experiments are going on
- no set release date for WoWs yet
- V.Kislyi’s dream is to make WoT e-sports big, he didn’t pay attention to e-sports before, but he was really carried away by Warsaw finals, he enlisted the help of pro e-sports players to make World of Tanks e-sports viable
- Kislyi is 37 years old and admits e-sports now fascinate him, he thinks e-sports is the future

12 thoughts on “Interview with Viktor Kislyi”

  1. “- WoWp is a “good game”
    ….
    - he believes that e-sports will be competing on TV with traditional sports”

    And that’s why people sold him the boxes of Spitfires. I think I have a bridge around here somewhere…

    • Although I’m not exactly a fan of WOWP we must remember it’s still in development and could be salvaged with some design fixes.

      • “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.”

        Of my Mates who would have tried it, well they did, found it sucked, and had been playing WT before hand. Guess which version they play most these days?
        I’ve tried it, found it to be utter pants, and now ignore it and can’t be bothered to DL it again.

        Player numbers, they had what, 13K global on release weekend? That’s with the captive WG audience, and massive marketing.
        Same weekend WT hit a peak 80k on the EU server alone (I think it was EU only, can’t remember off the top of my head).

        • This time last year I would have agreed that WT was better than WoWP, but now I think the exact opposite. I can’t stand what Gaijin have done to WT, they have screwed up the controls totally and it doesn’t feel like a flying game anymore, just some cheap and nasty arcade mini-game. In fact its got so bad I uninstalled it last month in favour of WoWP.

  2. Hehe ” FPS is not always optimal” I think he spelled it wrong. It should go like this “FPS is only sometimes optimal”.

  3. Seems like big boss Kislyi is a little bit disconnected from reality when it comes to WoWp :D

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  5. Kisly you are just a thief ripping of your customers.

    Give us working servers or just shut up!

  6. E-Sports isn’t the future. It’s a very small audience.

    I watched WGLNA a while back and ever single battle looked the same. Same few maps. Same few tanks. Dull. Repetitive. It was like watching Tier I/II battles, only with good players.

  8. - Kislyi is 37 years old and admits e-sports now fascinate him, he thinks e-sports is the future

    Enron… Just sayin’.

  9. So uhhmmm….how much moneh did Navi got for winning WGL? I haven’t really payed attention so i don’t know if the info is public or not.