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Mantas Katinas. „Wargaming“ nuotr.
“People who imagine that gaming and game development are one and the same thing should give up that idea. Game development is a long creative, and complex mathematical, process that encompasses numerous algorithmic, psychological, and artistic decisions,” M. Katinas added.
During an open-ended discussion, he shared the reasons for taking the the helm at Wargaming, the most important lessons he’d learned in leadership, and what IT companies should be preparing for this year.
– How is Wargaming doing today?
– I’d call it a period of stabilisation because last year was very intense. When the war began, a decision was made to completely terminate all operations in Russia and Belarus. This meant the organisation shrank in size and voluntarily sacrificed a large part of its revenue generated by this region. The founder’s attitude, however, was militant – let’s regroup, make some painful decisions, and move on. It was a unique experience to see how a company can do a backflip three or so times in one year and still manage to land on its feet. More than half of its game development capacity is now concentrated in Vilnius. It’s also the largest branch in terms of workforce, sometimes jokingly referred to by some of our managers as a “small nuclear power plant”.
– Wargaming’s move to Vilnius was truly impressive – growing from 0 to 600 specialists within a year, and now it’s almost at 1,000. How do you manage such rapid growth?
– From the very beginning, Wargaming saw Vilnius as a major centre for growth – and the war increased its importance threefold. We didn’t really have the opportunity to first build a core team, develop a corporate structure, hire people, and then proceed onto game development – everything had to happen simultaneously. In the end, we chose highly experienced people because we needed them to immediately take over our stalling operations. Given the large number of employees to be transferred, real estate also became a huge concern. We purchased several dozen apartments to facilitate the move of employees responsible for the most crucial functions.
– Tech companies are known for big salaries, but also for the especially attractive employee benefits. Have you noticed people’s interest in the latter?
– I’m an optimist regarding the younger generation. Uniquely talented people are entering the labour market with their exceptional skills in digital technology and mastery of productivity-boosting tools. To be fair, some of them discover their comfort zone perhaps a bit too early. But, hey – to each their own. All I can say is that, in life, nothing comes for free. Those who are effective at their jobs will achieve more, while others won’t grow as much professionally, but will still probably have an easier life than was the norm 20 years ago. Around 35 or thereabouts, most people hit a wall, a point where they need to decide how much they want to continue growing and succeeding. Prior to that, we all grow very quickly and even begin to assume that it will just continue automatically, without any real effort. Ultimately, however, only the “athletes”, as I call them, rise to the top. My personal advice would be – you should love yourself, but also remember that it’s difficult to create anything significant and interesting without a lot of work.
From the very beginning, Wargaming saw Vilnius as a major centre for growth – and the war increased its importance threefold.
– How did you develop professionally?
– I had to put a lot of effort into every stage of my life. While still in school, I decided to become a journalist. I was relying on emotion, just like most young people. The competition, though, was steep and I failed to gain admission on the first try. After which I went into Real Property Cadastre studies, but it only took 4 months for me to realise that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. Quitting university at 18 based on intuition alone was a bold decision. That’s how I learned not to compromise on my desires. With some perseverance and preparation, I managed to enrol in journalism studies on my second attempt. That fundamentally changed my life, shaped my worldview, and brought a group of friends that’s still with me today. That being said, although journalism seemed like exciting waters for a young person, after “diving” there for a while you begin to notice there are quite a lot of shallows.
Then I went into public relations and eventually started working at TEO, where I stayed for 10 years, taking a variety of roles – from the manager of the marketing department to head of digital channel strategy. That was my de facto “occupational school” and journey in professional development. It was there I learned everything that’s necessary for large-scale tech business. Fifteen years ago, the telecommunications market was among the most developed in Lithuania, both in terms of technology and business management, which made it an excellent career-accelerator for young people.
– Afterwards, you went to work for Invest Lithuania. During your time as General Director there, Lithuania attracted a record number of direct foreign investment and carried out several major industrial projects. How was that period for you personally?
– It was probably one of the most interesting stages of my professional life. Invest Lithuania is a fast-acting organisation that collaborates with top-level international companies and conducts B2B sales worth hundreds of millions. It also implements the country’s marketing strategy by applying cutting-edge tools, builds up Lithuania as a product by working alongside political leaders, and travels around the world to convince foreign corporations that by founding branches here they can generate new value for themselves. Having this kind of mission allows you to communicate with company founders and CEOs, the kind of people whose opinions make it into the pages of Financial Times and Bloomberg. Not only that, you get to meet them on their own patch, in New York, London, and Singapore. At the same time, it was a meaningful, creative period that made Lithuania’s regional and national economies stronger, and generated thousands of well-paid jobs in sectors ranging from advanced manufacturing to fintech.
But even the most exciting periods of your professional life eventually give way to the pursuit of new challenges that have the power to inspire you and prevent you from staying too long in your comfort zone. Different stages of each organisation’s development cycle require a different leadership style. After six intense years at Invest Lithuania, I just didn’t have the energy to launch another cycle there, and besides it didn’t seem financially realistic for me anyway. In addition, Lithuania is now gradually entering a new stage of development that rests primarily on startups, innovation, and building unique final products. At the highest state level, it’s paramount that high value-added companies and areas of education that could open the gates to a new stage of economic growth are bolstered. Even the investment attraction strategy is partly related to this because high value-added businesses prefer to buy unique, market-ready products and young companies.
– How could this developmental transition be implemented as smoothly as possible?
– The experiences of successful countries have to be thoroughly analysed, specifying the factors that seem to repeat. For instance, large-scale financial intervention by the state into venture capital structures (as, e.g., in Israel). The business angel ecosystem, which is related to each country’s fiscal environment, is also key, because it encourages wealthy people to fund innovative businesses, rather than invest in RE. At first, this is done by having a suitable fiscal scheme in place, and then people are motivated by the actual ROI. It’s also important to adapt the education system to the innovation ecosystem – fostering experts who are qualified, but don’t have the entrepreneurial gene is a mistake. And let’s not forget “international bridges” with competency centres (accelerators) and mega startup capitals, as well as connections and know-how. All other industries apart from the ICT sector (biotech, medtech, robotics, etc.) also require major capital investment from the state, as well as research centres with global patent-granting capacities and equipment.
– Why did you decide to join Wargaming after leaving Invest Lithuania?
– One Sunday, I got a call from the founder of Wargaming: “Mantas, we’re facing some big challenges with establishing ourselves in Vilnius, and we think you could help us. Would you be interested in that?”. He was totally genuine and got straight to the point – no need to talk about stages of recruitment or finance. I liked that quite a lot. Regarding Wargaming, I knew that the video game industry was probably among the 5 or so that were going to grow the fastest in the coming decade (all the largest tech corporations, from Google to Amazon, have their own ambitions in this area). I thought it was a unique enough opportunity that I might not get again for a long time.
– Are you a gamer yourself? How do you relax from, or recharge for, work these days?
– There are many people who play more than I do, but during the past few years I have spent quite a bit of time playing both our own and other well-known games. During strategy sessions at Wargaming, we have people playing and testing games developed by our team, and sharing insights. It’s a unique experience when enjoying being in the video game industry.
At different points in my life, I have tried parachuting, diving, canyoning, mountain climbing, and sailing Ambersail. Eventually, I chose sailing – I take part in regattas with some friends. To those who take an interest in shaping their own personalities and going to leadership seminars, I’d suggest spending 3 weeks with people on a boat or in the mountains. Under these conditions, you’ll learn more about leadership than reading books for a whole year.
– What discoveries have you made during this experience?
– One is that we tend to reflect very superficially. In other words, people often think of a solution and then firmly believe it’s the right one. Before experiencing strong psychological strains, it’s hard to understand your own internal mechanisms. Do you feel courage or fear in extreme situations? Do you stop or keep moving? Many startup founders exercise, go running or cycling. When your psychological blocking mechanisms kick in and tell you that it’s impossible to continue, but you push yourself nonetheless – it shapes your character or perhaps “breaks it”, in a sense. I’d recommend people look into existential psychology and the ideas of Erich Fromm and Martin Heidegger. For leaders, self-knowledge is only the first stage. You can’t help others develop if you don’t understand even your own motivational structure.
Lithuania is now gradually entering a new stage of development that rests primarily on startups, innovation, and building unique final products
– What discoveries have you made during this experience?
– One is that we tend to reflect very superficially. In other words, people often think of a solution and then firmly believe it’s the right one. Before experiencing strong psychological strains, it’s hard to understand your own internal mechanisms. Do you feel courage or fear in extreme situations? Do you stop or keep moving? Many startup founders exercise, go running or cycling. When your psychological blocking mechanisms kick in and tell you that it’s impossible to continue, but you push yourself nonetheless – it shapes your character or perhaps “breaks it”, in a sense. I’d recommend people look into existential psychology and the ideas of Erich Fromm and Martin Heidegger. For leaders, self-knowledge is only the first stage. You can’t help others develop if you don’t understand even your own motivational structure.
– Does your team also take that into account when scouting for talent? What kinds of compensation do video game industry employees need?
– Although every game studio director has a lot of freedom when it comes to building their own teams, the company knows that in order to make a successful game, you must love what you do. That’s why they make every effort to hire people who are passionate about the industry. It’s not mandatory, of course, but coming to the video game industry because of the wage on offer, exclusively, would be very odd.
Most of our Vilnius team is currently made up of foreign nationals. In my view, this experience is also important to other tech companies in Lithuania. When international growth is the goal, it’s crucial to hire people with global competencies – sometimes you also need people who know the languages spoken in your new markets. This kind of transformation requires large-scale internal changes. For instance, we’ve built a 6-person team dedicated entirely to meeting the out of work needs of employees who’ve been transferred. Although these needs are already being tended to by special institutions like International House in Vilnius, we’re nonetheless curating an in-house department to provide quality assistance at scale. If the Vilnius ecosystem wants to grow, having such a globally-minded approach will be indispensable.
– There’s a lot of talk about the lack of talent capable of building and developing tech companies. What changes would you say are the most necessary to fix this?
– Unfortunately, education changes tend to progress at a slow pace because they affect hundreds of thousands of people. You first have to develop and transform the educational content, train your teachers to use it, and only then can you make itl accessible to children. Why are Vedliai, Lithuanian Junior Achievement, and other similar initiatives still looking for private investors, rather than operating in all schools by government decree? Children need to learn to use the latest tech tools in class. They can also learn to hammer and draw, but if it's an innovation economy we’re concerned with – they should be deploying those skills to build rockets, proteins or 3D models. To make Vilnius, and Lithuania more generally, an exceptional place that attracts talent, we also really need a university that would act like a beacon from afar. Maybe we could try something new and strange – futuristic – using world-class experts and equipment? Lithuania has everything it needs to implement these changes, but lacks a breakthrough mindset in education.
– People in tech are now actively discussing things like economic winter, looming changes, and turbulence. What’s the best way to navigate all this, in your opinion?
– Smart people say that when everyone is downsizing, you should do the opposite. Regarding startups, results only start first becoming palpable after 1.5 years or so. Therefore, a crisis is the best time to create something new – later, when the economy starts growing again, you’ll be the first at the starting line. This period will be the most difficult for mid-way startups that already have a team and a product, but no revenue. They’re likely to face a financial “drought” and struggle to survive for several years without actual earnings. On the other hand, Lithuania also has a number of business angels and state-led venture capital structures that will try to ensure funding to startups. The madness that existed for the past two years, which defied even the most basic of economic principles, had to deflate like a balloon sooner or later.
– What goals will Wargaming pursue this year?
– We’re in the process of approving a new global product strategy. Large game studios are not unlike accelerators. We have several games that have been successful for quite some time, which help the company generate revenue, a part of which we allocate to developing new games.
