The Great Race
We started very small in 1998. Focusing on niche hardcore games, the company evolved slowly and steadily up until 2010. It all changed when World of Tanks came to be. The game’s stellar success allowed us to grow from 120 people in 2010 to over 2,000 in early 2013. Following several acquisitions and partnership agreements, Wargaming turned into a multinational team with specialists in many areas of game development, including middleware and mobile.
Tackling the challenges and embracing the opportunities of a fast-growing company, we arrived at the idea of holding our own developer conference, WG DevCon. We saw it as a means to meet our counterparts face-to-face, to exchange ideas, resolve technology issues, socialize, and thus establish synergy across offices and further push the company’s growth.
How It All Started
In February 2013, over 600 professionals from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Australia, and the U.S. gathered in Minsk for two days of inspiring talks, sessions, and workshops.
The two day event featured over 80 presentations, divided into the following sections:
- Art, Programming
- QA
- Web
- Game Design & Producing
- Audio
- Management
The conference format was not restricted to presentations alone. There were creative workshops, panel discussions, networking sessions and a grand closing celebration to round out the week’s events.
Although it was our first experience at organizing an event of such a scale, DevCon 2013 was a complete success. It bonded teams together, helped optimize workflow across different divisions, and established channels for ongoing knowledge sharing.
Looking at how valuable the first event was, we decided to hold the conference every year moving forward.
Back and Bigger Than Ever
Wargaming’s team has grown to 3,500 specialists since the first DevCon. To realign with the company’s massive structure and encourage other departments (not only developers) to share some valuable insight with the team, we broadened and altered the very concept of the event.
This year’s DevCon is scheduled to take place in November 2014, and is open for all departments. Our goal this time is to strengthen communication within the company and provide our professionals with a better understanding as to what their colleagues do.
The revised concept, along with the team’s continued growth, makes for a much larger event.
DevCon 2014 will have twice as many participants than the first gathering (1,200), with over 150 keynote presentations divided up into 11 sections. Outside of the development-focused topics, the line-up will also include presentations surrounding Promotional Artwork & Design, Business & Management, Marketing & Publishing, and Video Production.
With less than a month before the event, the energy and excitement around the offices are in full force as we prepare to come together once again to share ideas, meet new faces, and grow our expertise even further.