CEO of Supercell provides an update on mobile game development.

Supercell's CEO, Ilkka Paananen, has written a blog post titled "The Next Chapter of Supercell." Supercell develops mobile games. This article, which explores the challenges the firm has experienced creating popular live service games in recent years, is surprisingly candid.

Paananen discusses the dual challenges that live service games must overcome: maintaining quality via frequent updates and being excellent from the start. Supercell has a strategy that he describes in startling detail to counter this.

"Assembling small independent teams ('cells'), full of very experienced developers" is the first approach. "Trusting developer intuition, experience, interest, and passion over data" is the second, and "leading, not following" is the third and last point.

According to Paananen, "when this strategy works, it leads to success beyond our wildest expectations with positive secondary effects." We can get even more outstanding developers to work with us. We can draw in more gamers naturally (over 90% of our new users join us naturally and unattributedly, as opposed to heavily depending on advertising and UA).

"This strategy isn't perfect. I've counted over thirty dead, yet we've only released five successful games. Since the worldwide release of Brawl Stars on December 12, 2018, we have not released a new game. Four years, one month, and three days feels like too long—I'm not counting! It's obvious that we can do better.

Even if the tone is humorous, it is mind-boggling that a well-known mobile game developer could go for so long without releasing a game. When discussing how to approach the second difficulty, which is to maintain a live service game, Paananen offers even more candid insights: "We applied the same thinking on team size to both new and live game teams for the longest time, which was a big mistake (my responsibility!), as I wrote about last year."

"Supercell is known today for its mobile games, but perhaps thinking exclusively about mobile is too limiting?" is the company's response. Says Paananen. We just aim to create the greatest new games possible. Because of its reach, I think mobile will continue to be our most essential platform for the foreseeable future. However, we may need to take inspiration from anywhere that innovation is occurring.

Interesting. Perhaps Supercell will expand outside of its current console territory. In any case, it's very fascinating to hear the CEO of a billion-dollar firm express what seem to be rather straightforward opinions. Read it.

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