Supercell's Clash of Clans was one of the most successful games of 2012, and it's one of the most discussed games on the international mobile conference scene.
A good opportunity then for product manager Michail Katkoff to kick off the Winter Nights conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Titled 'Clash of Clans: Secrets of Success' Katkoff - who previously worked at Digital Chocolate and Rovio before joining Supercell - described the interdependence of the game's economy.
"It only take 30 minutes to train a dragon, but to get to that stage it takes four days to upgrade your barracks," he said.
You also have up upgrade your town hall, and upgrade your gold storage in order to have enough gold to purchase these upgrades. Of course, with a lot of gold stored, you'll also have to build up your defences to stop enemies stealing it before you can spend it.
Hence the entire process take weeks, but player can always see that they are making progress Katkoff said.
"Providing them with visual progress is very important for us."
Behind the curtain
In terms of the game's development, Supercell spends a lot of time playing a wide variety of games on different platforms to gain creative inspiration. This is combined with a strong vision and theme for the game.
Five people worked for two months to create the first playable version of Clash of Clans.
Supercell keeps its development teams compact, and significantly, doesn't have dedicated game designers. That is something everyone in the team feeds into. Each team has a data scientist embedded, however.
And playing your game was one of Katkoff's key pieces of advice to developers.
"We play our games a lot," he said. "Before I joined Supercell, I didn't know people could play their games as much as we do."
Of course, Supercell also followed the usual process of soft-launching the game in Canada before the full global release.
"You need to test your infrastructure and analytics," Katkoff said. "No matter how much you've played your game, you will have to tweak your economy. It will shift a lot when consumer start playing."
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
Feature
May 7th, 2024
Mobile Mavens: The industry has its say on Squad Busters ability to draw in “untapped audiences” with its “influence from a range of genres”
Feature
May 7th, 2024
Hot Five: Supercell’s Squad Busters supremacy, Brawl Stars bounces back, and a games industry journey at King
Feature
May 7th, 2024
April 2024 mobile game charts: Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile loses launch momentum and Brawl Stars’ astronomical rise
Top Stories
News
May 11th, 2024
PocketGamer.biz Podcast Week in Views E11 - Xbox in turmoil, Krafton champions AI development, and Apple's iPad challenge
News
May 10th, 2024
Unity says restructure that saw mass layoffs is now complete as it posts Q1 2024 revenue decline
News
May 10th, 2024
Week in Views - Xbox's mobile games store is doomed to fail, Sonic meets the Angry Birds, and Apple's iPad problem
Feature
May 10th, 2024
New release roundup: The best new mobile games from a round of roguelikes to a Sonic surprise
Events
Valencia Indie Summit 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Digital Dragons | Europe | May 19th |
GamesBeat Summit 2024 | North America | May 20th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Nordic Game Spring 2024 | Nordic | May 21st |
Impact 2024 - Indie Games | May 23rd | |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
Future Games Show 2024 | Jun 8th |