Interview

Supercell on mobile: We're competing with 'the smartest guys on the planet'

CEO Paananen on why there's room for rivals

Supercell on mobile: We're competing with 'the smartest guys on the planet'
Last week, Finnish developer Supercell held its Free Your Play 2013 festival.

We dropped in and managed to grab Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen for five minutes to talk about the event and what's going on in the world of Clash of Clans and Hay Day.

Obviously, given the company's massive success over the past 12 months, Paananen is a very happy man.

But as a relative small company - around 100 staff - and situated in Helsinki, which has a very strong development community, Supercell isn't getting corporate.

"We're got so much from the community. We've been incredibly lucky with these two games at Supercell that now it's our time to pay back.

"And most of all, it's a lot of fun," Paananen said, about its decision to organise the Free Your Play event.

Pie for all

And more generally, he thinks the mobile games business is about cooperation that competition.

"What I love about games is you're competing against the smartest guys on the planet, and it is very competitive, but at the same time, everyone gets along super-well and is friendly," he explained.

"And I think the market is so big, there is success for everybody."

This thinking has lead to Supercell's collaboration with Japanese company GungHo Online, with cross-promotions now live in Clash of Clans and Hay Day, and Puzzle & Dragons.

The future

As for the question of when will Supercell release a new game, Paananen said it's more focused on building on current success.

"The first priority for us is, and always has been, the existing players, so the most of the investment goes to existing games and making them better," he said.

"But, of course, we are prototyping a lot of stuff and killing a lot of stuff too."

Famously, Supercell has canned four games and released two, a ratio Paananen reckoned it's maintaining.

Still, at least, that suggests we can hope for a new game before the end of 2013.

You can check out the full interview below, or check out our complete listing of Free Your play video interviews here





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.