On Feb. 13, Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen shared the company's overall outlook for 2024, which is one of the things he does every year. Last year and the previous year may not have been easy for Supercell, because for various reasons, Supercell's revenue and profit have declined for two consecutive years, and no new games have been successfully released, until April 2024, when Supercell's sixth new game "Burst Squad" is officially announced, and the spotlight shines on Supercell again.

Therefore, in the review of 2024, Pan Nanen first affirmed the company's overall performance. By multiple metrics, 2024 was Supercell's best year ever. The number of monthly active players of the online game exceeded 300 million worldwide. For the first time since 2014, revenue across all games increased year-over-year. In addition, a new record was set in terms of total revenue.

According to the financial information he shared, the company's revenue in 2024 will be 2.8 billion euros (about 3 billion US dollars), a year-on-year increase of 77% (1.6 billion euros in 2023); Profit before tax (EBITDA) was 876 million euros ($947 million), up 78% year-on-year.

He says the company's success depends on Supercell's operating model: trusting the gaming team to give them complete autonomy and independence, while remaining patient and mind-round. When all the factors fit perfectly, a unique result can be created.

Here's how the game matrix is organized:

In 2024, there are two products that will perform particularly well, namely "Brawl Stars" launched in 18 and "Burst Squad" launched in 24.

Brawl Stars has exploded across all metrics, and it's proven once again that "eternal games" are possible – the best games never go out of style as long as they continue to bring new experiences to players and keep improving. This is exactly what Pan Nanen shared at the beginning of the article: Don't stare at the scoreboard, focus on your game.

Another game, Blasts, despite generating more than $100 million in total revenue in the first seven months of 2024 and winning the Apple Game of the Year Award, still hasn't lived up to the expectations of the gaming team (or Supercell). This game is a great example of the challenges that Supercell and the gaming industry as a whole face today when launching new games. It's disappointing, but it's also exciting, because this game is going to be the next direction for Supercell to challenge, like a boss, challenge it in a new way, defeat him, and finally show off the new achievements.

Let's talk about Pannanen's perception of the changing culture of the Supercell team.

Supercell's definition of a team is different from many companies, and they used to be afraid to expand the team, and their main concern was that doing so would introduce too much process, management, and bureaucracy. They've been working on small teams for a long time, and 10 years after Clash of Clans was released, the team was still only 32 people (and now more than that, of course). So for them, "big" means a team of about 60-80 people. And the Brawl Stars team is actually the first team to expand.

Even as the team grows, Supercell maintains a unique team culture: a culture of "independent teams" that allows the team to maintain autonomy. The goal is to avoid process rigidity and stimulate creativity in the team. This may be an aspect that many companies should learn from.

Part of it is also about the Spark program, a program for top talent, whether from Supercell or not, where participants will be subjected to high-pressure testing through the support of professional sports psychologists and project leaders during game idea competitions and rapid prototyping to identify the most promising teams and give them the opportunity to develop new games at Supercell.

So far, the Spark program has completed two rounds of selection and is about to start a new round of recruitment. 30 developers have gone through the process and successfully incubated 5 new game teams. In this plan, the team is not the creative core, and the top talent is screened through high-pressure testing to incubate new game teams.

Finally, Pan Nanenen said that Supercell will devote itself to "Eternal Gaming", whose mission drives Supercell to look for opportunities in the midst of risk, put player experience at the core, and adhere to long-termism.

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