Text/Wang Dan & Liang Letian

Chinese manufacturers are still thinking about how to go out, but overseas manufacturers are ready to rush in.

The day before yesterday (November 7), Finnish mobile gaming giant Supercell held its 2024 annual meeting for Chinese gamers in Shanghai. This is not the first time they have come to China for an event, but compared with the past, this meeting, both in terms of specifications and content, revealed a huge amount of information:

On the one hand, Supercell's COO Hayato Sekiguchi, former Clash of Clans and Clash Royale master planner, and now Squad Busters producer Eino Joas, and business partnersTamara and other important personnel were present to speak. The company's executives + ace products lead the team to plan...... As far as this battle is concerned, Supercell officials attach great importance to this event.

From left to right: Hayato, Eino, Tamara

Click on the image to enlarge it

On the other hand, Supercell officially announced at the event that it is preparing a new operation attempt to connect China and the global market, and repeatedly mentioned the cooperation with Tencent, saying that the two sides will work together to promote this attempt. Although Tencent acquired Supercell as early as 2016, it is the first time that I have seen the official announcement of in-depth cooperation in China's regional operations.

And when Supercell officially announced that it was going to do things with Tencent...... Presumably, onlookers can feel that this level of cooperation may impact the entire mobile game circle in the future.

01

There's always someone who wants to be the next Supercell,

But so far no one has been able to do it

Of course, some people may think that this is not a big deal, after all, Tencent has not cooperated with other overseas manufacturers. But Supercell is a very special company.

I've talked to some of my practitioner friends about Supercell before. Some say it's a magical manufacturer, and some say Supercell is their dream story...... But one of the comments that stood out to me the most was when a friend said that Supercell is basically the "industry standard":

"Many of Supercell's products have become templates for our peers to learn from. For example, when "Clash of Clans" was popular, it was rumored that hundreds of domestic manufacturers were following up to make COC like products, but none of them could replicate its success. This was also a very interesting 'Supercell phenomenon' in the circle back then. ”

To put it bluntly, there are always people who want to be the next Supercell, but so far no one has been able to do so.

Judging by the data, Supercell's results are really hard to replicate. Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen mentioned in her annual blog earlier this year that someone said of their company: "You're the only company that makes five games, each in the $1 billion category." ”

At the same time, the success of Supercell's products is less of a temporary and more sustainable. In the United States, where competition is fierce in the European and American markets, for example, many of Supercell's previous products are still on the list. Clash of Clans, which has been in operation for more than 12 years, has even reached the top 3 best-selling iOS games in the United States this year.

The performance of some Supercell products on the best-selling list in the United States in the past year

Swipe left and right to view

In April of this year, Supercell, which had not released a new game for 6 years, finally launched "Burst Squad" overseas. And its start performance is also strong - according to foreign media GamesIndustry.biz, the turnover of "Burst Squad" on the first day of launch is estimated to be about 1.1 million US dollars (equivalent to about 7.87 million yuan), and the number of downloads on the first day is estimated to be about 8.8 million.

"Burst Squad" has obtained the national server version number in October this year

Why are Supercell's products so strong? Perhaps the answer lies in the message shared by COO Hayato. According to him, Supercell's mission is to "create great games that can be played by as many people as possible for many years and remembered forever." "This mission is at the heart of what they think about when they develop and operate games; The company's goal is "all for the players." ”

The slogan alone may be a bit empty, but when it comes to development, you can see how Supercell thinks about its mission and pursues its goals:

First, they pursue quality, not quantity, and the online standard is quite strict. Supercell has been around for 14 years and has only six products in operation today. It's not that they only developed these 6 products, but they also cut and stopped a lot of projects.

Earlier this year, for example, they announced that they would stop developing Clash Mini. Fang Fan, the project leader, once said that from the data, "Clash Mini" has a good test performance in terms of players and commercialization, but it has failed to reach the level of becoming a Supercell hit in terms of retention. Even though it was clear that Clash Mini would be a commercially successful game, Fang Fan and his team ultimately decided to terminate the development of the project in accordance with Supercell's launch criteria.

It's not hard to see from this that just being able to explode and make money is not a Supercell game - the product has to be explosive, and it has the potential to become an evergreen game that players are willing to play for many years in order to pass the Supercell level.

Second, their products are unique and innovative, both horizontally and vertically compared to Supercell itself.

From simulation management, tower defense strategy, combat strategy, real-time card strategy, 3v3 real-time competition, to this year's "Burst Squad" Supercell All-Star Smash Bros...... The similarity of gameplay between these products is not high, and it is not easy to form a mutual attack situation on the subdivided track.

What about how you compare to your peers on the track? Someone once described Supercell's ingenuity in the industry as follows: "Each of their games can be described as a genre or created a xx category. "For example, Clash of Clans led to a COC like; Clash Royale CR is also in a class of its own, inspiring many later card strategy battle games.

In addition, Supercell is also constantly looking for ideas in the long-term operation of individual games. Stuart McGaw, the current head of Clash of Clans, has said that in order to continue to surprise players and introduce new content, he will encourage everyone on the team, whether it is development, operations, or marketing, to have their thoughts heard. For example, the later release of Party Mage in Clash of Clans was inspired by a team party, when Stuart and his colleagues went to a singing contest, and after two drinks, someone suddenly came up with the idea of designing a character who "deploys to the battlefield and the background music becomes Dubstep".

Thirdly, Supercell's determination is quite strong, and even if the performance of the product drops slightly, they can save it.

For example, Brawl Stars, which was launched in 2018, began to decline in MAU in July 2021, and its revenue also declined. According to Frank Keienburg, head of Brawl Stars, and Frank Yan, game designer, at this year's GDC, in order to improve the long-term performance of the project, the team began to make a lot of adjustments and modifications, and even removed the "treasure chest system" at the core of the product's design.

They did take some detours, and Brawl Stars' MAU even dropped to an all-time low in March last year, but Supercell never gave up on the game that was already live. In the end, after a series of adjustments such as supplementing the random reward design, introducing new mechanisms, vigorously promoting community activities, and increasing the rewards that zero-krypton players can receive, Brawl Stars' data began to take off, and it topped the best-selling iOS game list in the United States in September this year.

Recalling the success of Brawl Stars, Eino mentioned two core points: first, it has a strong creative team with strong execution; The second is to make some changes that are really meaningful and make the player experience better. "A capable and energetic team will care more about the voice of players, and will make timely adjustments based on player feedback and real data."

Lessons learned from the Brawl Stars team

Therefore, although Supercell games are few and do not have an advantage in terms of quantity, as long as they are willing to release them, they are basically products with long-term combat effectiveness. The evergreen performance of the product has also established Supercell's stable leading position in the global mobile game field.

As of July this year, the world's top 10 mobile game publishers

Source Mobilegamer.biz

Speaking of which, I also remembered a certain practitioner friend's highest praise for Supercell: "If you can make a PvP evergreen hit, it may be a medium-sized manufacturer." Make 2 PvP evergreen hits, we say it's a large company. Make 3 or more PvP evergreen hits, and you have to make them explode, that's called Supercell. ”

02

Pay attention to the Chinese market

And if there is one sentence to sum up this Supercell Shanghai Player Night, it is that I think it should be: value Chinese players.

This is not only evident from the heavyweight title of the propaganda lineup, but also coincides with the above-mentioned changes in the company's strategy and refinement and long-term operation.

Specifically, Supercell's emphasis on Chinese players can be summed up in three words: regionalization.

The first is to speed up the update of the national server.

In the past, considering issues such as version and platform review, there was a progress difference of about 1 month between the national server and the international server; Now, the difference between the progress of the national server and the international server is being further shortened, and it may be expected to be updated synchronously in the future.

Take Clash of Clans, for example. At the event, Eino said that the national server "Ramming Wood Festival" will officially open on November 19, Beijing time, less than two weeks later than the international server. The launch of the "Rammed Wood Festival" also means that the most significant version update of the game year is coming.

Another example is the company's new product "Burst Squad" this year. As soon as the version number was obtained last month, "Burst Squad" quickly announced that it would open the second closed beta of the national server on November 12, Beijing time.

According to reports, in this closed test, in addition to the regular updates such as the new qualifying mode, new maps (lava/ice world), and costume emotes, 33 characters have also been opened, an increase of 6 compared with the first test. Among them, 12 characters can be awakened to the "ultimate form", which further enhances the refreshment of players in the game.

In line with this, the game has added "Star Treasure Chest": players can obtain Star Coins by collecting and awakening characters, and use Star Coins to unlock Star Treasure Chests to obtain new characters and high-star heroes with a higher probability. This design may be able to improve the hero acquisition experience to some extent.

At the same time, in order to improve the balance of the battle, the game removed the battle backpack and adjusted the super unit, refresh dice and key mechanics.

The adjusted "Burst Squad" may be able to avoid the problem of pay to win to a certain extent by removing the impact of in-game payment. This change was previously well received by overseas players when it was updated on the international server.

"Removing the Pay to WIN element is a huge success"

The second is China's regionalized content.

According to Tamara, in the past, Supercell would launch some Chinese cultural content on the national server during important festivals such as the Spring Festival.

For example, "Clash of Clans" has launched the image of Mulan; "Clash Royale" and the Forbidden City have a New Year's cooperation, launching a limited game map; And this year, Brawl Stars also launched the Mid-Autumn Festival skin.

Now, they have taken it a step further and "found locals to do local things" and partnered with Tencent to gain a deeper understanding of Chinese cultural IP. At the event, Tamara also announced two confirmed partners for Clash of Clans: one is the domestic classic animation "Havoc in Heaven" in the 60s of the last century, which has been launched in the theme season updated on November 6; The second is the Forbidden City, and the specific cooperation content is currently being planned.

At the same time, in addition to regionalization, according to Tamara, Supercell also attaches great importance to "bringing the cultural characteristics behind each player to more global players" and is willing to promote excellent cultural content with Chinese characteristics to the world.

This approach reminds me of an example of a few months ago, when Black Myth: Wukong became popular on the Internet with the song "Northern Shaanxi Storytelling", which successfully let players around the world understand traditional Chinese culture.

All in all, making Chinese content in China and spreading Chinese culture to the world may have a lot of room for imagination in the future.

03

Supercell is jumping out

Your own comfort zone

Supercell's official announcement of the new plan may already be traced. After all, throughout the past year, they have actually tried to step out of their comfort zone in terms of operations.

In the past, Supercell has always maintained the characteristics of small but beautiful, small but fine, and prides itself on its simple corporate culture. But in the annual blog, CEO Ilkka Paananen raised the possibility of "going against our ancestors": expanding the team.

A lot of people advised him not to make any changes to the company and just keep it as it is, but Ilkka feels that the vast majority of players don't care about the size of the Supercell team, they care about the experience: "If players care about this and need a bigger team to do it, then Supercell probably should do it." ”

In the first half of this year, Supercell has already begun to put into practice the expansion of the team and the increase in operations. Sara Bach, Head of Live Games, mentioned in a March interview that Brawl Stars was the first product that made Supercell realize the need to expand its team size to meet the needs of players: "The Brawl Stars team has been figuring out how to improve player retention through the introduction of operational activities, new gameplay modes, daily quests, perks, and more. ”

This April Fool's Day, Brawl Stars x Baby Shark

Launched limited-time linkage events and linkage skins

Soon, this ethos of "spending more manpower and energy on operations" also spread to other Supercell products.

Previously run by a team of just 15 people, Clash of Clans always faced technical and design challenges with each major update and new gameplay, which affected the freshness of the game. Now, the game's team has expanded to around 60 people, making Clash of Clans more comfortable with content updates and the ability to offer new events to players more frequently.

This summer, Clash of Clans introduced a live-action-based character for the first time in the game, featuring current football striker Erling Haaland.

The Clash Royale team also made a new attempt, and they collaborated with the online chess platform Chess.com last year, and the game's DAU increased by more than 1 million in the month of the linkage.

It's easy to see that Supercell, which is 14 years old, is undergoing a major shift: the previous focus on developing and selecting games that players can play for years is now looking for room for growth by expanding its team to expand its global operations.

So far, such reforms have worked. Speaking at the event, Hayato said, "We don't want to be too public, but 2024 could be our best year yet...... Our games are constantly growing and evolving around the world to meet the needs of players around the world, and of course we have achieved this without the support of players around the world. ”

Hayato, Eino and others played "Burst Squad" online with players on the spot

Click on the image to enlarge it

The day before yesterday, a meeting was held in Shanghai to officially announce the operational cooperation with Tencent, which may also be part of Supercell's plan to increase its global operations.

It's understandable that Supercell is so focused on the Chinese market. Globally, the Chinese market has the largest number of mobile game players, and the market potential is needless to say. At present, products such as "Clash of Clans" and "Brawl Stars" have performed well in China, and after Supercell, with the support and assistance of Tencent, after launching more operational activities in the face of Chinese players, there is a high probability that these products will further break the circle in the domestic market.

The performance of some Supercell products in the best-selling list in China in the past year

Swipe left and right to view

At this point, you should be able to understand why I said that the meeting held by Supercell the day before yesterday was very informative. To be conservative, it may mark a new beginning for Supercell in the Chinese market; In the big picture, it is also entirely possible to impact the Chinese casual game category, or affect the category competition pattern of the entire Chinese mobile game market.

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