World of War Games: A History of Wargaming

Let’s Battle

Beginning in the late 1990s, the Cyprus-based Wargaming Group Limited established itself as a developer of military strategy games. In 2010, Wargaming launched the massively multiplayer online, free-to-play hit game World of Tanks, which blended strategic team-based gameplay with thrilling tank battles. Played by millions, World of Tanks and Wargaming’s subsequent games appealed to the company’s and players’ passions for war games, military history, and authentic recreations of historical vehicles.

War Play in Miniature

Science-fiction author H.G. Wells’s 1913 book Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books, laid the foundation for miniature war gaming by setting rules for toy soldier battles. Wells himself was a passionate enthusiast for this sort of miniature play, though as its subtitle suggests, the book imagined war gaming as play rather than training for war or statecraft.

The Rules of the War Game

Tabletop game company Avalon Hill’s Tactics II, the sequel to their landmark 1954 board game Tactics, popularized many rules and concepts that became basic to tabletop war gaming. Players took turns maneuvering multiple combat units of various strengths around a grid of squares that was superimposed on an imaginary landscape. When units met in battle, players rolled dice, consulting probability tables to determine which force had triumphed.

War Games for All

War games flourished in the 1970s as new companies and games entered the market. Board game giant Milton Bradley’s 1975 Tank Battle exemplified the genre’s rising popularity. Billed as “the game of planning and strategy,” Tank Battle’s miniature model tanks and anti-tank guns echoed H.G. Wells’s Little Wars and fed on players’ interests in modeling and customizing miniature war vehicles.

Making War Games

In 1996, Kislyi and his brother produced Iron Age, a turn-based strategy game that echoed the popular board game Risk and its 1957 predecessor La Conquête du Monde. Although only four people, including the two brothers, played Iron Age, it helped Kislyi forge relationships with the war gaming community in the United States.

From the Tabletop to the Computer

Wargaming’s first game, DBA Online, premiered in 2000. An adaption of the historical miniature tabletop game De Bellis Antiquitatis (Of the Wars of Antiquity), the digital version tasked players with controlling an ancient army in battle. Although the game was not a hit, it turned a profit and allowed the staff to develop new games that might appeal to a wider audience.

Reaching for New Markets

Released in 2003, Wargaming’s 3-D, turn-based strategy game Massive Assault allowed players to control vehicles and giant robots from one of two warring factions. Its success in Western markets spawned numerous sequels and introduced Kislyi and his company to the global video game industry.

Returning to the Past

It’s 1944, and retreating German troops holed up in their last stronghold in Belarus. The Soviet army must rupture the German’s front lines by encircling and destroying their enemy. That’s the mission of Wargaming’s first real-time strategy game, Operation Bagration. Released specifically to the Russian market, the World War II-themed game reignited the developer’s focus on historical strategy games and earned the company the Best Strategy Game of the Year award at the 2008 Russian Game Developers Conference.

New Retail Realities

In 2009 Wargaming partnered with game publisher Square Enix to produce its most ambitious title to date, the World War II-themed real-time strategy game Order of War. The game featured massive battles on a scale that other strategy games couldn’t match, but sales lagged in a retail market increasingly taken over by digitally distributed games and the rise of Chinese and Korean free-to-play games, which provided players with access to a significant portion of a game’s content at no cost.

A Passion for Play

This medal celebrated Wargaming’s passion for developing games that could be experienced by players across the globe. In July 2011, Wargaming moved its headquarters from Belarus to Cyprus. The office in Belarus remained a center for game development and the company later opened additional studios throughout the world, including in North America and Asia.

On the Right Track

Early in the development of World of Tanks some in the company worried that players might not identify with a tank. The game’s wild popularity proved otherwise. One fan created this sculpture, a blend of flying saucer and tank, for the development team, which was presented to the developers on Cosmonautics Day, a holiday celebrating aeronautical accomplishments.

Tanks on the Go

In response to the immense growth of the mobile gaming market, Wargaming released World of Tanks Blitz, a seven-on-seven multiplayer version of World of Tanks, for tablets and smartphones in 2014. To promote Blitz in Japan, the company collaborated with Actas, creators of the popular Girls Und Panzer anime about Japanese high school girls competing at tank warfare, to create promotion advertising, in-game events, and tank modifications based on the television series for World of Tanks.

Preserving the Past

Working with the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force Museum, Wargaming supported the recovery of this German Dornier Do 17 bomber, which crashed over the English Channel during World War II. The rescued warplane is the last intact example in existence.

Still Battling

Millions of players across the globe continue to wage war on the digital battlefields created by Wargaming. And the success of World of Tanks and the company’s follow up titles showed other developers that a free-to-play business model could succeed in Western markets. Today, free-to-play games dominate the personal computer and mobile gaming markets yielding giant revenues from in-game microtransactions (small payments for virtual goods).