Wargaming Fest: Meeting Dolph Lundgren and Taxi Rides from Hell
December 20, 2016 | 16:23
Companies: #wargaming
It was a ten-minute walk from the hotel to the event, which was held at a Russian convention centre and sprawled across two floors of this massive complex. I was completely taken aback by the scale and the lavish nature of the event. On the bottom floor was a huge arena hall complete with a stage that played home to famous Russian music acts like Elka, whose name translates to English as 'Christmas Tree', and a band who are the Russian equivalent of U2. On the top floor, 20,000 people stood in ridiculously long queues to play World of Tanks, World of Tanks: Blitz, World of Warships, and a bunch of other games that they could easily play at home. There were top World of Tanks eSports teams competing live on stage, and Wargaming had even hired Dolph 'Rocky IV' Lundgren to be its 'tankbassador' for a Swedish-themed expansion to World of Tanks.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised at this. World of Tanks alone has 110 million registered users across the globe, which is a staggering number for what is ultimately a very simple game about mobile gun turrets shooting at each other. Nevertheless, I was slightly mystified at the reason behind the event. There were a couple of big-ish announcements, such as a new tactical shooter called Caliber, which is being developed in tandem with 1C, and Creative Assembly was also there to talk about its free-to-play strategy Total War: Arena. But I would have expected that an event of this scale dedicated entirely to Wargaming games would be accompanied by an announcement along the lines of, I dunno, World of Tanks 2. Ultimately, I think Wargaming’s reason for the event came down to 'because we can', which, when you’re as insanely profitable as Wargaming is, is all the reason you need.
After a long day of interviews and press conferences interspersed with choking down food from a bizarre Russian buffet, which included chunks of beef the size of your fist and only plastic cutlery to eat them, we were provided with a brief opportunity to interview Dolph Lundgren. It was scheduled as a group interview, but there seemed to be some confusion over what 'group' meant, and so it ended up being more of a crowd interview. Fortunately, I only wanted to ask him one question. Unfortunately, it was a very big crowd, and I am a fairly small man and ended up squeezed out of the crowd like a pip from a squashed orange. Luckily, a very nice Russian PR lady came around and asked if anyone else wanted to talk to Dolph. I said I did, at which point she grabbed my arm and carved a path straight through the throng of international games journalists, planting me in front of probably the most famous person I’ve ever met.
Dolph Lundgren is about six-foot-six, in excellent shape for 59 years old, and was currently looking at me like a man who had had a very strange and tiring day and would quite like to go to bed please. I was the last obstacle standing in the way of this former European karate champion who had once hospitalised Sylvester Stallone by accident, and I was acutely aware of it. But I had a question to ask and I thought it was quite a good one. Earlier in the day Dolph had mentioned that he had only recently begun playing games (around the time he was hired to promote these Swedish tanks in World of Tanks, oddly enough). It’s quite hard to think up relevant interview questions for a man who has been hired to promote a game but doesn’t really play them or know that much about them, so I wanted to ask him what his experience of gaming culture had been like so far, what he had found surprising compared to his experience in the film industry.
Sadly, at this moment the recording software on my iPhone decided to throw a wobble, and as I desperately tried to fix it with a circle of journalists around me and a Hollywood A-lister looming over me, I accidentally deleted another interview I’d recorded earlier in the day. Now in full blown panic, I spluttered out my one question in a way that made it sound like a totally different question. Dolph answered patiently and to the best of his self-admittedly limited knowledge, but it wasn’t the answer to the question that I hadn’t really asked.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised at this. World of Tanks alone has 110 million registered users across the globe, which is a staggering number for what is ultimately a very simple game about mobile gun turrets shooting at each other. Nevertheless, I was slightly mystified at the reason behind the event. There were a couple of big-ish announcements, such as a new tactical shooter called Caliber, which is being developed in tandem with 1C, and Creative Assembly was also there to talk about its free-to-play strategy Total War: Arena. But I would have expected that an event of this scale dedicated entirely to Wargaming games would be accompanied by an announcement along the lines of, I dunno, World of Tanks 2. Ultimately, I think Wargaming’s reason for the event came down to 'because we can', which, when you’re as insanely profitable as Wargaming is, is all the reason you need.
After a long day of interviews and press conferences interspersed with choking down food from a bizarre Russian buffet, which included chunks of beef the size of your fist and only plastic cutlery to eat them, we were provided with a brief opportunity to interview Dolph Lundgren. It was scheduled as a group interview, but there seemed to be some confusion over what 'group' meant, and so it ended up being more of a crowd interview. Fortunately, I only wanted to ask him one question. Unfortunately, it was a very big crowd, and I am a fairly small man and ended up squeezed out of the crowd like a pip from a squashed orange. Luckily, a very nice Russian PR lady came around and asked if anyone else wanted to talk to Dolph. I said I did, at which point she grabbed my arm and carved a path straight through the throng of international games journalists, planting me in front of probably the most famous person I’ve ever met.
Dolph Lundgren is about six-foot-six, in excellent shape for 59 years old, and was currently looking at me like a man who had had a very strange and tiring day and would quite like to go to bed please. I was the last obstacle standing in the way of this former European karate champion who had once hospitalised Sylvester Stallone by accident, and I was acutely aware of it. But I had a question to ask and I thought it was quite a good one. Earlier in the day Dolph had mentioned that he had only recently begun playing games (around the time he was hired to promote these Swedish tanks in World of Tanks, oddly enough). It’s quite hard to think up relevant interview questions for a man who has been hired to promote a game but doesn’t really play them or know that much about them, so I wanted to ask him what his experience of gaming culture had been like so far, what he had found surprising compared to his experience in the film industry.
Sadly, at this moment the recording software on my iPhone decided to throw a wobble, and as I desperately tried to fix it with a circle of journalists around me and a Hollywood A-lister looming over me, I accidentally deleted another interview I’d recorded earlier in the day. Now in full blown panic, I spluttered out my one question in a way that made it sound like a totally different question. Dolph answered patiently and to the best of his self-admittedly limited knowledge, but it wasn’t the answer to the question that I hadn’t really asked.
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