It's always nice to see a company doing well - especially if it's a company that gives so much back to the community. Such was the scene last week, as team Everybody Plays descended upon Kent's famous Chatham Historic Dockyard, to celebrate to launch of World of Warships, the latest online WW2 combat game by Belarusian studio, Wargaming.net.In case you missed our hands-on preview (and if you haven't read it yet, you really should), World of Warships is a PC only (for now) free to play multiplayer game that pits two teams of people, each manning one of a number of historically accurate warships, against each other. From humongous aircraft carriers to nimble destroyers and everything in between, each ship has its own strengths and weaknesses (bigger ships may pack a bigger punch, but they're so slow they're vulnerable to torpedoes, for example), so it's a question of finding a ship that suits your strategy, and sticking to it, as you do your best to survive - and potentially take down a few other ships with you.
Here's how to *not* do it
Having been in beta for well over a year, undergoing countless tweaks and changes as it went, the time has finally arrived for the game to cast off and set sail under its own steam - and so, Wargaming rented the best place for the job - the Chatham Historic Dockyards. Home to not one, not two, but three impressive warships of its own (a destroyer, a submarine, and a tall ship), what better setting for a day of naval themed activities?
The day started off in traditional fashion - with Wargaming CEO Viktor Kislyi firing one of the deck guns on the HMS Cavalier, but not before ensuring he was pointing it directly at the crowd of journalists who'd gathered, eager to see something explode. Feeling slightly nervous as the large barrel slowly descended towards us, your courageous journalists made the executive decision to stick their fingers in their ears, preserving their hearing for another day. Or at least, that was the intention. "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" came the cry from the ship, "What?" said Sarah, pulling her fingers from her ears just in time to feel the full force of the explosion from the 4.5" gun...
Still, with ringing in our ears, is was time to head inside and have our minds blown in a different way - with some impressive stats. As the sharply dressed CEO took to the stage, to explain the history of the series, and where the game's going, there were plenty of interesting (and impressive) figures thrown around to make your eyebrows raise. Did you know, for example, that the average ship in game takes three month to model? Perhaps even more impressively, did you know that the average World of Warships player spends three hours on the game every day? We're not sure where they find the free time, but still - no wonder we get sunk so quickly...
It's not just ships at Chatham either - they have trains too.
But while other companies would happily pocket the money and run, Wargaming is different. In fact, the company are always looking to give something back, and are constantly funding various heritage projects throughout the UK, and the rest of Europe. In fact, the company has a long-standing relationship with Bovington Tank Museum, especially around the annual Tankfest - a weekend long event that even includes some genuine tank battles in an outdoor arena (although no-one gets blown up), and is sponsored by Wargaming's flagship title, World of Tanks. And as the curator of the museum told us, it's a relationship that he's only too happy about. While games may get a bad rap from time to time, he told us that World of Tanks has got not only a whole new generation, but an entirely different demographic interested in museums. Whether young, middle aged, or... young at heart, thousands of people who've never been to a museum before have set out to Bovington, because they've played World of Tanks, and want to learn more about the things they're driving (and blowing up) in the games. Here's hoping World of Warships does similarly well, and that this event is just the start of a mutually beneficial partnership between the company and Chatham.
That's a big gun - but it's not as big as the one they fired at us
With the presentation out the way, we were free to explore the rest of the museum for ourselves - and your intrepid journalists didn't disappoint. If you've never been to Chatham before, it's well worth a look, if only because of how mind boggling it is to imagine what it must have been like to be aboard one of the ships at sea - yet alone in the middle of a war. HMS Cavalier, for example, their destroyer, served in the Arctic - something the crew can't have been all too chuffed about, considering it has an open bridge. According to the museum staff, you had to be very, very careful to not touch anything metal, as you'd just stick to it, and lose your skin when you peeled yourself off! Similarly, Chatham is also home to HMS Ocelot, a submarine that held a crew of 68 sailors for trips of up to three months solid underwater. The catch? It only has about half that many beds, no washing machine, and submariners could only take one change of clothes with them. You can only imagine how much that must have smelled...
Later in the day, we got the chance to chat with Richard Cutland, Wargaming's Military Specialist and ex-tank crew himself, a man who wasted no time earlier in the day trying to rib the established international crew of journalists by welcoming them to the "home of the best navy in the world". Still, one of the themes he was keen to stress was how hard Wargaming try to keep everything as historically accurate as humanly possible - whilst also turning it into a workable game, something that's pretty tricky to do. Another interesting topic was how the company decide which charities to support - something that's a little bit awkward considering the company's worldwide user base, and Europe's history. While in the US, Wargaming support a veteran's association, who would be the equivalent charity in Europe? With the history of WW2 being what it was, no matter which association you supported, you'd end up upsetting someone - so the company instead support War Child, helping children in conflict zones worldwide.
That in the middle is a midget submarine, which had a crew of four people, and no room to stand up...
Making the transition from being in the military to civvy life was something Wargaming made easier for Cutland, too. "I'll be honest with you, I was quite sceptical [when they first got in touch]. Talking seriously for a minute or two, I've lost friends in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I've seen plenty of first person shooters and how they handle that stuff, and I couldn't really see where the transition was. But when I got to know the company, I felt a lot better, because we give a lot back. I'm very lucky, because a lot of my job is about working with museums, working with these local groups, working with these renovations, and promoting history - that's what I like. The way to interact with the [younger] audience is with games - and as soon as you've got a hook on somebody, you can get them more involved. And we've now opened this whole period of history to a whole new audience"
And that's perhaps one of the best bits about Wargaming, and their World of... series - they really have helped a whole new generation become interested in WW2, and the history around it. It's how I, personally, first got interested in it too - I grew up playing flight sims on the Amiga, and as I grew up, I wanted to go to museums to learn more about the planes I was flying/shooting down in the game. Doing so much good for museums, for restorations, and for getting an entire generation interested in that period of history once again, there's plenty of reasons to check out World of Warships for yourself. And as it's free to play, there's no cost to getting started either! Why not download the game here - and we'll see you on the seas!
