Is this newspeech for ripping off their customers?
I don't know their games, but I wouldn't be surprised if their clients are mostly teens maxing out their parents credit cards. Yeah sorry, I am a bit in a cynical mood I suppose.
I'm usually inclined to agree, but it's not as clear cut with Clash of Clans as a Zynga game for example. Clash of Clans follows a traditional RTS model, building things takes time. Now, they've given you the option to purchase gems to automatically finish buildings.
This clearly exploits people's need for instant gratification. However, that need for gratification is up to the user, not the game. The game itself is quite fun and easy without ever spending a dime. There is nothing "game breaking" that has to be purchased with real funds. It's one of the truer time = money models out there.
One detail though is that some buildings at the beginning of the game (I couldn't play any more than that) take 10 minutes to build. If you want to shorten that time to a playable amount of time you have to purchase gems.
I dunno. It's not as if mobile games cost $50 bucks, but ship basically incomplete and you have to buy more stuff in the game itself to really play it. We're starting from a baseline of what is, in general, grossly inefficient "monetization", so seeing someone succeed at actually making some money probably isn't grounds for immediate cynicism. (And I too am a natural cynic.) Compare with MMORPGs that did cost $50 and then you had to have a monthly subscription too, or Diablo III and its real-money auction house.
If you look at some recent "freemium" games like My Little Pony [1], then mobile games can very quickly start to cost $50 or more. In that case, it was selling a single in-game pony for £50/$80, but cut the price for that pony to $8 after user complaints.
Are candy/confectionery manufacturers supposed to feel guilty that they make stuff kids like and nag their parents to spend money on their products? Supercell has carefully designed the game to encourage impulsive purchases but that doesn't mean that the players are not deriving any pleasure out of it. And teens maxing out credit cards is something that can be easily stopped.
I belive there is a real moral hazard to selling addicting/impulsive products, especially to children. After all this is part of the reason why zynga has such a bad reputation.
I don't know, are tobacco manufacturers supposed to feel guilty for selling addictive cigarettes that kill?
Is anything that makes money automatically good? After all, somebody is willing to pay for it?
As for chocolate, we still have adverts praising health effects of some chocolate for children (in Germany). I think eventually they might get sued, as happened to the cigarette industry.
You know, Luxemburgerli are ridiculously expensive. But they're mostly marketed to adults, and as a luxury food that you get to indulge on, and don't even buy in huge amounts.
This is different from marketing something to children, or making something addictive, or doing both at the same time. And, this shows that you can make something with a big profit margin without relegating to abusing your customers.
Of course, games may be different. At some point everyone and their dog will own Minecraft, and not everyone can live off donations like Dwarf Fortress. I don't think that justifies going into dependency-forming mechanisms, though. If that means you can't ethically fund the rest of your life out of a single game (nor does it automatically make you ultra-wealthy), well, welcome to the movie business. Or book business.
The question is, are their users children or adults? I have seen it a lot of times that children are being ripped off with mobile games. They don't really know how much they are spending.
I'm not a fan of free-to-play games myself because of this reason. The game mechanics are so clearly calculated based on the revenue they'll bring in. I feel like I'm always just a walking micro-transaction to the developers, even after I pay for something (actually even more so at that point). And one can't truly succeed in the game without paying, so it lacks the healthy competitiveness non-casuals want from their games.
I think this is an unfair comparison. I mean, I could claim that Mandalorian is bigger than EA in terms of monthly penetration testing revenue and be right, but it doesn't really mean much.
Having said that, Supercell have a good product and are shifting volume, so more power to them.
With all this talk about how the good days of the app store are over, it is good to see a relatively unknown company making it. I also noticed that a big part of the Apple selection for the end of the year is made by indie developers, like Super Hexagon, Letterpress or the education stuff from l'Escapadou, which means that they will probably make a lot of money.
With talent and flair, it is still possible to do it. Easy success for trivial apps is over but what Apple did to remove the barriers to entry for indies still makes the app store very interesting.
Now, I wouldn't say that Supercell is an indie developer. They have an experienced team of game industry veterans and over $10M dollars of funding from the beginning.
But that doesn't take away from the fact that CEO Ilkka Paananen and guys are running a stellar company with interesting culture: small teams of 5 people form "cells" that work independently on their own prototype game. Lots of prototypes are killed and these "failures" are celebrated with bottles of champaigne.
Funnily enough I finally picked up clash of clans because a guy in the office kept pestering me to give it a go. It's very nicely put together and I can't remember the last time someone in the office harassed me into picking up a game. Particularly someone I'd classify as a non gamer.
2 years ago they started with a high quality Browsergame in Flash called Gunshine (a casual RPG) which didnt work and was closed down.
They then seem to have shifted focus to mobile and do amazing things there, which was only a matter of time because of their top team.
I wonder if Supercell's widely advetised cells structure explains their success (and could be learned from?) or if it's just a "secret sauce" myth they cultivate to add flair to a well-run and/or lucky company.
All the teams are definitely pretty independent and each person is responsible for a lot. There's lots of swapping around between the teams depending on where the talent is needed too. (source: I worked for them over the summer)
> "Now it's a lot more about the product quality and the product itself," Paananen notes. "If we want to create the best products, we need the best people. That was actually how the whole thing started, and where the name Supercell comes from. We're creating these small but ultra-dynamic teams of developers who work relatively independently. And despite the small size of the group, we have big dreams -- hence Supercell."
Having visited the offices a few times and met the team, it's definitely not a myth. The cell structure is there and in action. Whether it is a "secret sauce" to success remains to be seen in the long run (Say 5-10 years at least).
That being said, the team is amazing and they definitely seem to know what they are doing. Besides, similar company structures already exist in other successful companies, in the gaming industry the best that comes to mind is that of Valve corporation.
Not a cell structure per say, but very similar work and leadership attitude.
There is an explanation for why also. I recently downloaded Simpsons: tapped out. The "game" wouldn't start for two days because it couldn't connect to the Orion servers. I'm not going to spend real money on in-game donuts if it refuses to start. I found out on the forums that it was a common problem. People aren't going to spend real money on something that isn't reliable.
(NOTE: actually I wasn't going to spend the money anyway. It isn't a game. It is a Skinner Box).
I do think that clash of clan is much better than other games i have played so far. I have played other games (dungeon hunter) which asks me to pay up for virtual coins, gems if i have to progress in next set of levels, but with COC i can do just fine without spending any money.
Is this newspeech for ripping off their customers?
I don't know their games, but I wouldn't be surprised if their clients are mostly teens maxing out their parents credit cards. Yeah sorry, I am a bit in a cynical mood I suppose.