Global Trends: Wargaming's Evgeniy Shukin on the increasing difficulty of launching new live games

Keeping up with industry trends is key to staying ahead in the games industry and ensuring you don't fall behind.

At Pocket Gamer Connects, we regularly run our 'Global Trends' track, providing an expansive view of the sector's latest ttrends, facts, figures and insights from around the world. In fact, the track will return once again at PGC London 2025 on January 20th to 21st.

In this new regular series, we've reached out top industry leaders to share their insights and expectations on the state of play and how they see the next few years shaping up.

We spoke to Wargaming World of Warships: Legends publishing director Evgeniy Shukin about industry layoffs, the challenges facing new live game launches, and what it takes to be a success on mobile.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you tell us a bit about your company and what you’re currently working on?

Evgeniy Shukin: Wargaming is the award-winning online game developer and publisher behind the hit World of Tanks and World of Warships franchises.

Since our founding in 1998, Wargaming, evolved from a small startup to a global gaming powerhouse we have grown to become one of the leaders in the games industry with 16 offices around the world, including studios in Chicago, Prague, Shanghai, Tokyo, Vilnius, Kyiv, and Belgrade.

How have the last 12 months been for your company?

While many games companies faced significant challenges, we maintained remarkable stability. Our live game portfolios demonstrated resilience, continuing to engage millions of players worldwide.

We strategically avoided industry-wide layoff trends, instead focusing on content innovation. Collaborations like the Star Trek and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossovers weren't just marketing stunts – they were carefully crafted experiences that brought fresh excitement to our existing game ecosystems. 

The mobile launch of World of Warships: Legends represented a calculated expansion, extending our reach to mobile gamers without compromising our core gameplay experience.

What do you think the biggest trends in the industry have been over the last 12 months?

I believe the biggest trend is increased difficulty of launching new successful titles on any existing gaming platform, especially in the live game space.

We’ve seen many new products released, some of them with more success, some with less, but almost none of them sustain their place at the top on their respective platform for long.

Many players return to the games they are familiar and comfortable with, which is the biggest challenge for new products.

What do you think are the key trends, challenges and opportunities for the next year, and how will you be taking them on?

Increased costs, huge competition, players unlikely to drop the games they are familiar with, and of course increased marketing costs – all of that makes it very challenging to develop and launch new hits.

I believe Wargaming has what it takes to surprise the market and gamers in the upcoming year. We are working on some new IPs as well as some major updates for our live portfolio.

For 2025, Wargaming will deliver brand new products and franchises, a refinement of our gameplay mechanics, as well as a constant stream of new content for our new and existing games on multiple platforms.

What do you think is most important to a mobile game’s success in 2024?

Mobile gaming success is a complex equation. It's not merely about technical excellence or marketing budgets, but about creating an ecosystem.

A successful mobile game requires intuitive design, compelling monetisation that feels fair to players, sophisticated marketing that reaches the right audiences, and continuous engagement strategies that keep players returning.

How do you approach making games across platforms?

In our case we started with on PC, then moved to consoles, and finally we brought World of Warships: Legends to Mobile almost a decade after the original World of Warships launch.

Currently, mobile is the most competitive and risky platform, and our approach was to bring our successful console title to phones as we knew it would be a great port that would allow our players to make progress on the go.

World of Warships: Legends on mobile is an extra avenue for us to engage and serve our audience and find new players we otherwise wouldn’t have on other platforms.

Mobile isn't just another distribution channel; it's a strategic expansion that allows players to maintain their gaming progression across different contexts and devices.