Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi plans to conquer mobile with World of Tanks Blitz (interview)

SAN FRANCISCO — Victor Kislyi, the chief executive of World of Tanks publisher Wargaming, pointed to his free-to-play gaming empire on a map. World of Tanks has been such a huge success as a free-to-play online tank battle game on the PC that the company has been able to hire 3,000 employees. That’s about double the number of workers that the Cyprus-based company had a year ago.

And Wargaming is moving beyond World of Tanks with last November’s launch of World of Warplanes and the pending launch of its World of Tanks: Blitz mobile game, which will compete with a horde of tank-wannabes on iOS. That game, which began its closed beta test today, has been tough to design because it makes the switch from traditional game controls to touchscreen controls. The company also plans to upgrade World of Tanks with all-new graphics during 2014.