Wargaming’s gamescom Brochure

If there is one thing that people visiting any gaming expo know, it’s that there is going to be lots of awesome titles on show. However, with great games come great queues. A common sight at gamescom is the long, snaking lines going all the way around the Wargaming booth as people wait to get some play time on our games. This year, it was our biggest gamescom lineup to date, which made for some pretty long queues. To help combat boredom, the EU team made it their mission to create something that would help whittle away the time while they waited. Thus, the very first gamescom brochure was born.

The brochure’s idea was simple: it had to entertain the crowds and tell them about what Wargaming had in store for them at the booth. The project was a collaboration between several different departments in the EU Publishing office in Paris, bringing together our editors, Art Team and Business Development Team, to name just a few.

What Goes in the Brochure?

This was the first step and, perhaps, one of the most difficult. What did we want to include in the brochure? gamescom has a diverse audience. A total of 335,000 visitors from 88 countries across the world came to gamescom last year. The biggest age range for visitors is between 16–24 years old, so that’s a lot of people that you are potentially engaging.

We chose to focus on packing the brochure with as much information as possible. We knew there would be long waiting times. We wanted to provide something that would complement a person’s experience at the booth that went beyond simply playing our titles and picking up free swag.

So, that meant we wanted to let people know just what they were in for in the Wargaming booth. We wanted them to know about the goodies they could pick up from visiting our zones; put the focus on interesting information surrounding our games; give some sneak peeks; and let people doing something fun.

The Wargaming Universe

Our “World of” series has a lot of history buffs in its ranks, as well as many people who ignite a passion for history when they play our titles. Because of the cool announcements that we had scheduled for gamescom, not to mention the fact that we were in Germany, we wanted to create something that resonated with the audience.

Our content editors who work across our titles and write about them on our website collaborated with our historical specialists to get all the information throughout the brochure. For the in-depth look at the Leopard 1, one of Germany’s most iconic tanks, and the mighty Bismarck, our content editors gave readers a detailed overview of both iconic vehicles. These beasts were also available to play in our zones, too.

We also knew that people visiting the booth may not have played some of our newer titles. World of Warships was making its gaming convention debut to the public for the Open Beta version. We saw a lot of enthusiastic captains readying to take to the high seas, so decided to tell them a little more about the classes available in the game. By checking out the brochure, players could discover if they were a fan of a cruiser or battleship, and much more.

World of Tanks Console had its sights set on gamescom, too, with its first outing for the public. This was a great opportunity to let people know more about how the Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore team assembled the game and the challenges that they faced. We even had the Lead Designer Jeff Gregg and Lead Artist Andy Dorizas on the stage presenting every day.

World of Tanks Generals was also making its debut on iOS at gamescom, which allowed us to talk about some of the cards that players won’t find in World of Tanks. For World of Tanks Blitz, players could find out what it took to bring the game to mobile, as well as some information on the new “Sahara” map.

The brochure also presented a new opportunity for us to introduce players to some of our other cool goings on. The MGT-20, our swanky Wargaming tour bus, is busy going around Europe to various events. There were also our social outreach activities, like our partnership with the USS Iowa, Tankfest and our work with The Tank Museum at Bovington, as well as the revival of the Dornier DO 17 aircraft.

Building the Brochure

Now that the information had been gathered, it was time to design the brochure.

We began with amassing all the information that we would need for each of the pages. We have a really cool program on the PCs which allows us to isolate the 3D models of our vehicles, so we can show you tanks in full HD glory. The Leopard 1 and the Bismarck battleship were taken straight from the game. Our Art Team had also produced fantastic, highly-detailed vehicle renders and promotional art that you’ll see everywhere from our websites to billboards.

Another great feature was in obtaining the screenshots for our gamescom exclusive look at the “Sahara” map for World of Tanks Blitz. Developers have a special version of the game which allows them free reign of the camera, so they can grab screenshots and aerial views that would otherwise be impossible. For World of Tanks Generals, we have a special program that can grab any card featured in the game at high resolution.

The colors used had to be in-keeping with our brand guidelines. Each of our titles have a specific color pallet that you can find on all of the portals and promotional artwork. World of Tanks is represented by orange, World of Warships by blue, our mobile titles World of Tanks Generals and World of Tanks Blitz are red.

We even included a game of “battleships” in the brochure. Readers could play against each other in the line, or even challenge one of our community members who were busy entertaining people in the queue.