Wargaming Developers Contest: Seven Top Contest Questions

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    Today, with the help of Habr, we are launching WGDC ​​- the first official Wargaming competition for the developer community. The purpose of the contest is to update our format of interaction with developers of applications and mods of the game client, search for common ground and take a step towards mutually beneficial cooperation.

    We are well aware that in connection with the competition you may have questions that the rules will not answer. Below we will try to cover the most relevant of them and tell us why Wargaming came up with WGDC, what benefits it can bring to the participants, what we expect from the developers, and also briefly run through the rules themselves. If questions remain after reading the post, ask them in the comments.

    Who can take part?


    If everything is clear with "adult individuals", then further rules (format - PDF) require little comment.

    The developer can participate in the competition alone, or can assemble a team. The competition is focused on the RU region, but Wargaming does not impose any citizenship requirements: there are many Russian-speaking developers living abroad, and we invite all of them to take part in the competition.

    If you are a team leader, remember that after you add a project, changing the composition of the team is not possible.

    What is the prize pool and nominations of the competition?


    The total prize fund of the competition is $ 80,000. We will evaluate developers in the following categories:

    • “The best project idea”;
    • “The best mobile application / application for social networks”;
    • "The best functional project";
    • "The best modification of the game client World of Tanks";
    • “For his contribution to the development of products and services for the Wargaming community.”

    To stop at the idea stage, you only need to make a presentation of your project. Those who want to compete for the main prizes will have to confirm their participation in the second stage by making appropriate changes to the profile of their project.

    An important point - the competitive work should be free and accessible to the maximum circle of our users, but we will not prevent the participants from further monetizing it.

    With the last nomination from the list above, we want to say thanks to those who, on a bare enthusiasm, developed mods and applications before the start of the contest, and to choose the best of existing projects.

    The “Special Prize of the Competition Jury” in the amount of $ 15,000 can receive a unique project that fully realizes the potential of integrating the company's products and services with the services of other projects and / or end-user interfaces.

    The prize pool will be distributed as follows:

    Best design idea
    The best modification of the game client World of Tanks
    The best functional project
    The best mobile / social media app
    For contribution to the development of products and services for the Wargaming community
    Special jury prize, $ 15,000

      1st place  
    $ 2,000 + 250,000 gold + Tour 59
    $ 10,000
    $ 10,000
    $ 10,000
    $ 5,000
      2nd place  
    $ 1,000 + 150,000 gold + Tour 59
    $ 5,000
    $ 5,000
    $ 5,000
    $ 3,000
      3rd place  
    $ 500 + 50,000 gold + Tour 59
    $ 2,500
    $ 2,500
    $ 2,500
    1,500 $

    Who will evaluate the work and how?


    Assessment of work will be carried out in three stages:

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    The primary screening will be carried out by Habr employees - this is a kind of spam filter. At this stage, entries that do not meet the conditions and topics will be eliminated.

    At the second stage, Events and Community employees will select the best works in each nomination.

    At the final stage, the jury of the competition represented by Wargaming experts will determine the best works according to the following criteria:

    • Wargaming audience value (30% of the total rating);
    • simplicity and understandability of use (20%);
    • innovativeness (30%);
    • correct operation (20%).

    Each of these points describes in more detail the full version of the rules.

    Of course, the jury has every right to determine the winners according to their subjective assessments and preferences. This should not be afraid: we are fully confident in the experience and expertise of the judges.

    When will the results be summed up?


    Two months will be allocated for the development of projects - from August 15 to October 15. Analysis and evaluation of the work will take another four weeks. The winners will be announced on November 12, and in mid-December Wargaming will gather everyone for the ceremony of honoring the winners of the WGDC. The place and time of the celebrations will be announced in advance on the page of the contest.

    Why do we need WGDC?


    A recent post about our Public API explained in some detail how the Wargaming Developer Partner Program (WG DPP) was born. The production by third-party developers of mods and the services surrounding our projects began spontaneously and quickly reached such popularity that the load on www.worldoftanks.ru at some point became comparable to the load on the English part of Wikipedia. But that was a dubious achievement. We seriously worked out mechanisms for completely disabling the front-end at the peak of calls and received a lot of criticism after each update of World of Tanks: popular mods stopped working, hurting players and paralyzing our support team.

    To deny the existence of a strong community that made popular products and unique localizations would be an unforgivable mistake in this scenario.

    The launch of the API really helped us reduce the load on our resources. But this is not the most important thing. The launch of WG DPP was a major step for Wargaming in terms of development philosophy. To make your product as open as possible for everyone, it was necessary to rethink not only the established approaches to architecture design and development of services, but also to change the perception of the game by developers: this is not ours, but their game.

    At first it was scary, but now we are more and more convinced of the correctness of the decision. At the exit, players get the opportunity to create their own, unique “World of Tanks”, and Wargaming begins to hear a better community of developers, which not only shares fresh ideas, but also regularly reminds “who is the boss in the house” (a great example is the comments on our posts on Habré here , here and here ).

    During the WG DPP PTA, 27 corrections were made based on feedback. After the start of open beta testing, from two to four changes are made with each release based on user bug reports. But we understand that in the matter of working on the API, we need to do several more times more than has already been done.

    Competition is a serious next step in this direction. An API is just a tool, a code. A service will die without people, and you need to work with people no less than with the code. With the help of the contest, we hope to establish long-term relationships with developers, stimulate the development of third-party products and services, and ultimately form a loyal community. At the same time, “loyalty” is determined by two basic requirements: mods and products should not give gaming advantages to their owners and must bear value for the players. However, experience shows that the "tankers" themselves will deal with the latter.

    How will the contest benefit the participants?


    Those who decide to take part in the competition may have several motivations. Beginning developers should not be afraid of competition from more experienced colleagues. Not only projects, but also ideas can apply for prizes - for them we have a special nomination with our own prize fund.

    More experienced developers, or even teams that know their worth and have already gotten their hands on other projects, are likely to be attracted by the prize pool - $ 80,000 - and the chance of public recognition of their level by the community and potential employers.

    If successful, both the developers and the contestants with the best ideas will receive the recognition of the players and the attendance of their resource. Winners will be able to monetize success at their discretion with serious support from our side.

    What do we expect to see in the works of the contestants?


    Among the projects may be the concept of the second screen. And the implementation of the clan tablet, so that the platoon commander during the battle could see the map. And crossing the player’s profile with the social networks API, for example, Foursquare, so that some kind of meta-game appears. And a variety of mobile applications using our API, expanding or improving the current functionality of Wargaming products.

    There are practically no restrictions, however, we rely on the fact that the developers will not follow the tested patterns and produce different-sized "deer measures". Any, even the most insane at first glance, idea may turn out to be interesting. For example, localizations for narrow markets, such as the manga “skins” for tanks that are favorite in Southeast Asia:

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    Another excellent example of an unexpected solution appeared recently on Habré - thisreal speedometer bolted to virtual tanks :



    Learn the rules, ask questions in the comments and, casting aside the last doubts, join the ranks of the WGDC ​​participants.

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