CombatACE Interview With Developer of War Thunder

[Skyviper 1,101]

CombatACE Interview With Gaijin Entertainment

 

 

Because flight simulation is a pasion and hobby for most of us here at CombatACE, we are always staying on the watch for new flight simulation programs. War Thunder, an award winning MMO, has definately grasped our attention as well as the attention of 3.5 million users. But who is behind this awesome MMO? To answer that question CombatACE contacted the developer of War Thunder; Gaijin Entertainment. We are honored to have met with its founder and president, Anton Yudintsev, who agreed to do an interview with us and tell us the awesome story of Gaijin Entertainment, which is Russia's largest independent game developer.
 

Thank you Anton for doing this interview with us. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your role as President of Gaijin Entertainment?

I founded the company together with my brother Kirill, who became Creative Director, and Alexey Volynskov, who had became Technical Director, and since then we take part in everything our company does: development, talking to press, running business, working on technology. Our team isn't that big yet (it's like 100 people in different offices), so we have the unique opportunity to oversee every department and every member of our team which larger companies lack.

 

What interest you about flight simulation and gaming?

We started to make games when we were in school. Some of those games had become very popular (for example, Doom2D, which was side-scroller game inspired by famous Doom 2, had audience of millions of players), some not - but games were our passion.

And Russian developers always had passion about WW2 history and especially, aviation.

The best flight sim games were always from Russia, and one of the most famous was IL-2 Sturmovik. When we were offered to develop the console version of IL-2 Sturmovik, we saw it as a unique challenge. This legendary flight sim was already one the most famous (and well-received) games created in Russia. To make our own version, updated for modern (at the time) Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems, and to show everyone that you can make a popular flight sim for consoles - you just can't miss an opportunity like this.
 

 

What are the events that inspired the creation of Gaijin Entertainment in 2002?

When I was a student at the Moscow State University, I was already employed in game development studio. It was the end of 90s, so there weren't a lot of them around in Russia. Anyway, I had a lot of my own ideas for new games and for the development process and wasn't satisfied with the inefficient development processes. That's why I decided to found my own company.

 

 

Becoming Russia’s biggest independent game development company must have been challenging. What were some of the obstacles Gaijin Entertainment encountered and how have they been overcome?

One of the hardest things was evolving into a self-funded company and loosing the big publishers grip. A lot of Russian gamedev studios were basically living from one game to another (and spending publisher's money) without any means to survive on their own. When the economical crisis of 2008 struck, almost none of them were left afloat. But we already had switched to console development and started working with such companies as Activision and Konami and gained international renown by that point.

The next big challenge was embracing the free-to-play model and getting to know how MMOs work as it is obvious that in current market it is the only way to create a truly popular game for PC.
 

 

Did you ever think Gaijin Entertainment would be as big as it is today compared to what it was when you first started?

I don't think a lot of people create their own game development studio and think "Eh, I'll just stick to making some small budget titles". Not us, that's for sure! Almost everyone wants to achieve success, earn a lot of money and become famous all around the world. And we're proud that our hard work and dedication made it possible. Of course, back in 2002 that size of game development company was something unusual, we would be very big (that time) if we would have 100 people. Nowadays, 100 developers are considered to be a "rather small" company.

 

 

Over the years Gaijin Entertainment has received numerous awards for its games such Flight of Fancy, IL-2Sturmovik, and the recent 2013 War Thunder that has numerous awards for its quality. Will Gaijin Entertainment continue to make more flight simulators and if so what types of aircraft would you like to use?

War Thunder already has like 300 planes inside. And it is going to have more.

 

That is impressive to have 300 aircraft in one game when most games only offer a handful. Besides flight simulators what are some the other games that Gaijin Entertainment make and will continue making in the future?

Right now we're focusing on the development of War Thunder and we still have a lot to do - main goal being implementation of ground and naval forces in addition to aviation in our game. And this enormous task will take all of our resources for a couple of years to come. 

 

What do you think the future of gaming and flight simulation is and how do you see Gaijin Entertainment doing its part to shape that future?

We see one of the main missions of our company as showing everyone that military vehicle simulation in general should be accessible and popular genre, like racing games, not some niche one. This was our thinking during development of Birds of Prey, Birds of Steel and Apache: Air Assault.

And success of War Thunder with its 3.5 million players is living proof to that.

 

 

Living proof indeed. Once, Anton Yudintsev, again thank you so much for taking the time to an interview with us and for making the awesome games you make. I wish you and everyone else at Gaijin Entertainment continued success.

 

Thank you for stopping by. I’m Andre “Skyviper” Ford with the CombatACE news team, signing off.

 

If you are you interested in more titles released by Gaijin Entertainment you can check them out here. The photos are links to their respective pages. Click on the Gaijin Entertainment logo for a complete list of all of their games. Please note that Modern Conflict 2 is an app.

 

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