Confession: I am not a gamer, aside from one summer circa 1998 when I played Crash Bandicoot on my friend’s 14 inch portable TV screen for 7 days straight. Another confession: I wasn’t very good.

That friend, Sadie, is now a conference producer focusing specifically on events in the gaming industry. Sadie was clearly better than me at Crash Bandicoot.

The gaming industry, I’ve learned, is expected to generate $108.9 billion in revenue in 2017, an increase of $7.8 billion from the previous year.

A large portion of the sector’s growth is being driven predominantly by mobile gaming and the “free to play” model, which allows gamers to play a game for free, online.

Wargaming: Let’s Battle!

One of the ‘mightiest PC free-to-play games there has ever been,’ (the words of PC Games News) is the aggressively named World of Tanks.

World of Tanks is a multiplayer tank simulator game developed by Wargaming, an international business, operating across 15 countries.

Since its launch in 2010 World of Tanks attracts over 140 million players around the world.

In my quest to learn more about the gaming industry, I now understand that the online gaming community is very vocal and communicates across multiple platforms including social channels and more actively forums.

A post my colleague recently wrote about Super Mario and the main character, Mario, or more specifically his nipples, made it to the front page of Reddit. HOT CONTENT!

You might like

SHOCK DATA: Thousands React to Mario’s Nipples in Super Mario Odyssey Promotion

The Brandwatch React team examines the very important and complex conversation surrounding Mario's nipples and lack of chest hair.

Player insights

To better understand its customers and how, where and what they talk about, Wargaming started working with Brandwatch Analytics to glean insights from its players conversations and ultimately help with player happiness.

Elena Loucaidou is the Voice of the Player Senior Manager (what an awesome job title) at Wargaming. Elena is obsessed with the Wargaming players experience, her number one goal is the happiness of its players.

Before using Brandwatch, we would pick up different information from forums and blogs – it was a very manual process. Now we are able to bring everything under one umbrella. We’re now able to understand the sentiment of our customers, what is trending, and what conversations they are having. 

Elena Loucaidou, Voice of the Player Senior Manager, Wargaming

A truly customer-centric approach

The voice of the customer is embraced across every department within Wargaming, from the social teams to product development.

Elena ensures the real-time feedback gathered from Brandwatch is shared and impacts the work across the entire organization.

Wargaming uses Brandwatch Analytics as a window into the players’ world, bringing those insights right back into the heart of the business.

Customer success at Wargaming

As a global business, Wargaming was looking for a social listening platform that they could scale across multiple departments, quickly.

Brandwatch covers all the languages we operate in, which is not very easy to find in a listening platform. Using Brandwatch, we are able to adopt a global approach. 

Elena Loucaidou, Voice of the Player Senior Manager, Wargaming

 

The Brandwatch Customer Success team has worked with Wargaming from day one of the partnership, and will continue to support Elena and the team from data, to insight, to action.

The training was brilliant; we found it was actually quite easy to build the Queries – even someone like me can do it, and I’m not an expert analyst. 

Elena Loucaidou, Voice of the Player Senior Manager, Wargaming

 

Hear from other customers on why they chose Brandwatch.

Social insights put into action

Following the release of an update to World of Tanks, Wargaming used Brandwatch Analytics to understand how its players felt about the changes.

The real-time analysis and having insights from across the web all in one place, as a single source of truth, allowed Elena and the team to quickly analyze, understand and communicate to the internal teams the reaction from its community.

Read the full case study to understand how Wargaming put customer insights into action during this crucial time.

Last week Wargaming announced the acquisition of Hapti.co, a Danish mobile studio that will now be rebranded as Wargaming Copenhagen and will work on new projects as well as continuing to support its back catalog of publications.

This expansion into further territories establishes Wargaming as one of the biggest players in the free to play market and enhances its move into the mobile world.

Brandwatch is excited to support Wargaming through its evolution and future development, always maintaining the key goal and drive, player happiness.