作者：Mike Rose

无论何时我出国，都有人问我来自哪里，对这个问题我总是作好准备怎么回应“曼彻斯特！”他们就会补充道：“曼联！”在那些日子里，曼城队在这些回应的产生中起了重要作用，但你通常不会记得我们数十年的音乐影响力和糟糕的天气—-足球才是让我们举世闻名的东西。

芬兰的赫尔辛基现在也面临着“被联想”的问题。当我在首都的餐馆里时，有位老先生停下来问我来自哪里。但是，他没有问我支持哪支球队，而是紧接着问：“你为什么来赫尔辛基？”

“我来这里看电子游戏。”我回答。他的双眼放光，兴奋地叫道：“啊，愤怒的小鸟！”之后他跟自己的同伴，开始聊起他玩过的所有手机游戏。

他应该60多岁了，他的家人和朋友遍布所有年龄层次，都在讨论回到我的家乡后最不会被聊起的话题。之后一名出租车司机跟我聊起了游戏，又之后一名飞机乘务员看似好奇我用手机玩什么游戏。

Supercell首席执行官Ilkka Paananen看出了曼彻斯特和赫尔辛基各自的繁荣之间的联系。他解释道：“这就跟为什么孩子们开始玩足球一个道理？因为罗纳尔多等足球英雄。现在，为什么人们开始制作游戏？因为想成就下一个‘愤怒的小鸟’。”

“Rovio的成功大大启发了所有芬兰游戏公司。这些人对芬兰最大的贡献是拔高了整个游戏界的标杆。他们的案例说明，你怀抱哪种雄心就有可能成就哪种事业。”

如果说Rovio拔高了标杆，那么可以说Supercell大大地超越了它。自从于年初转向“平板优先”的商业模式，该公司近日声称其仅通过两款手机游戏每天赢利就超过50万美元—-Paananen透露，这个数字现在是“远远不止如此”。

我采访Supercell的目标是，找到这家公司如何在约四个月内，实现从无人涉足到全面进军手机游戏领域的转变。在今年夏天《Hay Day》和《Clash of Clans》双双发行之前， Supercell从未发行过任何手机游戏，而它以前的网页游戏《Gunshine》却失败了。现在，这家公司的游戏占据iOS游戏榜单前五名中的两个席位，《Clash of Clans》更是榜首的常客。

当我问他Supercell是怎样诞生的，Paananen一边沉思一边说：“我和其他合伙人都有相当长的游戏制作经验，我本人大概从事游戏12年了。现在，我们真的想做点不同凡响的事。”

Paananen在2000时联合创立的Sumea最终出售给社交游戏开发商Digital Chocolate。他担任Digital Chocolate的总裁4年之后，决定是时候从头开始了。

“听起来确实很天真很简单，但Mikko（游戏邦注：即Kodisoja，Supercell的联合创始人兼创意总监）和我吸引的最大教训就是，如果你真的想成立次世代游戏公司，人是最关键的。在此之前，我们总是得与大的国际发行商打交道，所以我们和玩家之间总是隔着中间人。但之后，多亏了有这些民主的应用商店，如Facebook和iOS，我们可以直接接触到玩家了。”

芬兰似乎一直在等候这种应用商店的诞生。这种平台移除了开发工作室与玩家之间不必要的障碍，极大地松绑了开发者自己的创意思维。

“现在，更重要的是产品质量和产品本身。如果我们想创造最好的产品，我们就得有最好的人才。这才是公司诞生的第一步，这才是Supercell之名的来源。我们正在形成一支小型但最有活力的开发团队，各个成员的工作相对独立。尽管团队规模小，但我们有大梦想—-所以才有了Supercell。”

当Supercell决定公司只集合有才能的人时，可没有开玩笑。大多数雇员都具备了平均10年的商业游戏开发经验。Kodisoja之后告诉我：“我们经历过原本需要为一个项目招聘一个人的情况，那时却找不到人。所以再找到人之前我们多少有些损失。”

Paananen表示：“当然，另一方面，就雇员数量而言，我们从来没有像竞争对手那么庞大，我们也无法那么快速地发展。但那正是我们公司理念的核心和视野所在。”

Supercell的视野总是那么清晰。当公司于2011年成立时，它曾有一个很常见的想法，即如何在游戏界中崛起。

Paananen表示：“我们第一个想法是，‘嘿，我们要制作跨平台游戏，可以用网页玩，也可以用手机玩。’后来的《Gunshine》证明了这是一个错误的开始？“是的，我猜你会这么说。我们认为网页是一个大平台，所以为什么不从网页开始？但是当我们开始挖掘平板电脑和智能手机版本的《Gunshine》时，我们开始迷惑了。我们意识到，‘嘿，我们想在这个平台上制作一款最好的游戏。’所以我们开始在这个平台上实验，我觉得我们多少找回自己了，我们集中精神，我认为这是我们做出的最明智的决定。”

大约一年以前，Supercell想到了它的“平板优先”战略—-毫无疑问，这个明确的想法在公司2012年的成功中发挥了重大作用。

“我们认为平板是最终的游戏平台。它结合了所有最大可能性。它有主机般的性能，有Retina技术，有上乘的屏幕。它是第一种三岁小孩都会使用的设备—-这些都是PC或笔记本，甚至是主机也无法达到的。”

Paananen和他的团队很快认识到，如果你不能围绕一个特定平台做游戏，那么你就不是在做最好的游戏。

Paananen谈道：“根据经验，我知道了这一点，因为我们尝试过了！我们从这款在线网页游戏开始，我们真正发现平板的是我们开始制作平板版本游戏的时候。我们意识到，‘嘿，这不会是款好游戏！’除非我们确实从平板开始，否则我们永远不会做出这个平台上最好的游戏。”

专注于单一的平台看似与行业的理念背道而驰—-鉴于iPhone的数量远远超过iPad，这一点看起来就更荒唐了。Paananen解释了Supercell的“平板优先”的发展战略：“我认为这能产生更好的游戏，讽刺的是，产生的却是更好的iPhone游戏。当你为一个更高保真、屏幕更大的设备做设计时，你必须更加注重品质。坦白说，我们认为平板就是最终的游戏平台。我们认为3到5年之后，它会成为最多人消费娱乐内容的设备。”

事实上，该公司的iPad业务收益已经与iPhone持平。可见Supercell的思路确实是正确的。

所以基于平板电脑的开发策略就是Supercell唯一的秘方吗？显然不是。真情确实没这么简单。我对这家公司成功的总结是，部分是经验，部分是专注，部分是文化，小部分是运气。

这名行业老手表示：“我们认为公司最大的优势在于文化。我们想组建一家不同类型的公司。这家公司的核心理念是‘小’—即使是在游戏机行业，或更新的平台如Facebook，他们的发展历程也是，规模小但热情高涨的团队制作出很棒的游戏，然后吸引了大量玩家。”

“之后这些公司在财政上获得成功，于是有了海外投资，再然后又有了必须达到的发展目标。结果是，发展确实飞速，雇员人数激增，公司开始着手更大更昂贵的产品等等，最后公司的规模达到上百人，产品越来越昂贵。然后，公司不想再冒险了—-证据就是，现在的大家都开始做游戏续集了。没人想再冒险了。”

“老实说，在这样的公司工作并不好玩。他们是按流程运作的，有自上而下的管理系统。”Paananen极力避免这种情形，承诺无论Supercell有多成功，保持“小”永远是公司的核心理念的一部分。

“说到规模膨胀，我有一个例子。Zynga就面临着这种威胁。《FarmVille》最初是由5、6个人制作的，每个月都有840万人在玩这款游戏。显然人们是很喜欢这款游戏的。但之后呢？Mark Pincus非常自豪，他们最新产品动员了上百人，耗时18个月，他们正在跻身AAA领域。等等等。”

“好吧，但玩家是怎么想的呢？他们喜欢这款游戏吗？可能并不喜欢。它其实做得没有那么好。真是令人难以置信，游戏界一次又一次地落入这个陷阱。你越大，你就越慢，你的产品就越贵，但你的产品对玩家来说未必就是最好的。”

Supercell的“小即大”的思路有可能帮助Paananen打造自己梦想的公司—-即建立在激情而非指标之上的公司。

“我们雇用员工时不会说，‘好吧，你的工作就是编写游戏的这个部分。’‘你负责游戏的这部分。’等等。我们没有这种专门的游戏设计师—-制作游戏的是整个团队，他们都对终端玩家的体验负责。”

这种管理方法对Valve非常适用，而Supercell则进一步证明了此法的成功。“人们确实不断得到提升，更加负责，更有动力工作，在产品中投入更多热情。这种模式确实管用—-我们不需要在这种设备上动用100号人，我们不会落入雇用100人来制作最有趣的、最逼真的、剧情最丰富的3D游戏的陷阱。我们只想制作确实好玩的游戏，其重点在于游戏玩法。”

另外，与Valve类似的是，Supercell的组织也是扁平式的。没人有专门的办公室，所有人都坐在一起，没有官僚系统。团队独立运作，绝大部分权力下放到个人手中。

“我们认为每个成员都是手艺人—-我们想为玩家手作游戏。自上而下的管理次序对我们完全不管用。我认为让信息流通好得多。这让我们产生一种团结在一起的感觉。这与我们相对快节奏和灵活的环境相适应。让每个人都尽量靠近真是太好了。”

“当然，我们有一些流程，但基本上每个人都讨厌流程—-当需要走流程时，总是有确实充分的理由。”

构成Supercell秘方的另一样佐料是透明度。每天早上，所有雇员—-无论是全职、兼职还是实习生，都会收到一封自动邮件。邮件的内容是各个产品有多少玩家、产生了多少收益以及像留存率之类的关键信息。

“在这里，我们没有任何秘密。即使我想保留秘密也是不可能的，因为我强迫自己每天早上发送所有数据，我无法改变这条规矩！这确实有助于公司管理，因为这让我们的公司文化更加注重结果，我们不搞办公室政治。”

对雇员做到这种程度的公开，甚至在公司出现重大失误时也不例外—-事实上，Supercell乐衷于犯错和失误。这听起来可能有些奇怪。

“我们有庆祝失败的习惯。当游戏进展顺利时，我们当然会开聚会。但当我们确实搞砸了，不得不扼杀产品时——这种事没少发生，我们也会开香槟庆祝。今年我们在全球发行了两款游戏，但扼杀掉了三款。我们组织事后检查，公开地与团队探讨失败和成功的地方。最重要的是，我们从中学到了什么，我们下次要怎么做？”

Paananen甚至认为，相比于成功，团队在失败中学到的东西更多，最好的公司是建立在失败之上的。“那就是为什么我们鼓励失败。当你失败了，你吸引教训了，那就值得庆祝。这么做也会鼓励冒险。如果你惩罚失败，那么你不会鼓励冒险。结果就是，你只能去做续篇，中庸地发展。”

Paananen承认他的商业策略中的某些部分可能与业内其他人的发展和管理方法相冲突，所以当他雇用员工时，总是详尽地告诉应聘者公司的运作模式。

“我们雇用员工时非常关注他们是否能适应这种工作环境。这种环境肯定不适合所有人，因为你必须确实积极主动、对工作怀有激情，对游戏充满热情，这是最最重要的。但这绝对是一种非常有趣的工作环境。”

Supercell秘方的最后一味佐料就是，芬兰本身。据国际游戏开发者协会数据显示，2011年，芬兰的游戏产业增长了57%，估值达到1亿6千5百万欧元。为什么芬兰的游戏业发展如此迅速？

“人们问我‘芬兰这潭水究竟有多深？怎么跑出这么多了不起的手机游戏公司？在芬兰，我们有创意与技术相结合的人才。我们以大量优秀的工程人才闻名，但另一方面，人们总是没想到的是，虽然我们羞涩沉默寡言，但我们其实有着相当长的讲故事传统。”

这种传统是怎么来的呢？这名Supercell首席执行官自有一套说法。“倒回200年前，芬兰是一个非常贫乏的国家，人们住在小小的房子里。秋冬时节，天寒地冻，非常难过。人们在户外无事可做，所以只能聚在屋子里讲故事了。所以会讲故事的人简直就是摇滚明星。”

“讲故事的传统确实历史悠久。但另一部分活动是发明游戏，有点像桌面游戏。这种创意长期植根于我们的文明中。文化与技术人才相结合，我认为这就是芬兰游戏业发展繁荣的原因。”

芬兰的游戏业似乎是突然凭空崛起的。芬兰为至今已健康发展了20年的游戏产业感到自豪，《Max Payne》、《Alan Wake》和《Supreme Snowboarding》这些游戏名称都与这个国家有关。但是，正如之前所说的，正是发行商障碍的消除才真正帮助芬兰游戏产业飞速发展起来。

“我认为有趣的是，自从诺基亚衰落后，芬兰必须重塑自我。我们确实相信平板和手机是游戏的未来。我认为如果我们可以保持地位，我们将成为未来游戏的重心之一。”

“这绝对不只适用于Rovio和Supercell。我向你保证，在接下来的三年或四年，会有许多公司实现突破。在这里，我可以看到游戏的发展视野。几乎每个月都有许多优秀的小公司出现，真令人不敢相信。”

再次致谢Rovio的《愤怒的小鸟》，芬兰政府现在对游戏业也非常上心，这点很有帮助。芬兰的国家技术局对富有前途的新电子游戏公司提供资助。据Paananen所言，现在要进军游戏行业是相当容易的。

总之，Supercell的成功归结于文化、激情、透明度、人才合作和始终专注。据Supercell目前的记录，其两款游戏的每天平均访问量达到12每人次，而《Clash of Clans》中每天都有百万名玩家在游戏。

局势乐观，但今年两次发行两次成功后，Supercell还有下一步计划，就是看看这个配方能否运用到以后的游戏中，或者它只是运气还是战略定位。Paananen表示，公司已经在考虑第二波游戏，他认为将成为次世代社交游戏“具有真正的社交性。”

“人们会在一起玩，而不只是互相发垃圾信息。 我们其实借鉴了很多MMO的特点，特别是中国和韩国的MMO，但也借鉴了德国的老式经典网页游戏—-我想到了《Travian》。”

“我认为业界在Facebook大势的日子里走错了几步。所以，一夜之间，社交的含义变成，‘一个玩家平均每天发出多少封邀请？’当然，这肯定是错误的。如果你问任何传统的MMO玩家，特别是来自韩国的，他们会说社交不等于滥发邮件给好友；而是让人们在游戏中形成社交纽带，产生新友谊，真正地将玩家凝聚在一起。”

Supercell没打算放进游戏中的另一些元素—-时时刻刻的电影级动画、线性游戏玩法、“鼠标点击赛”、菜单式游戏。这家公司清楚地知道什么对自己管用，什么不管用。考虑到它前几个月中创造的成功，你可以肯定短时间内它不会突然改变前进方向。

“坦率地说，游戏是一种成功导向型事业，是一种艺术，而不是科学。任何人说‘我早知道这款游戏会成功’，都是撒谎。我们的观念是，不要安全稳妥的游戏，但是要信任自己的直觉、信任让我们首战告捷的东西。我们绝对不想安安稳稳的—-我们就是要创意，要冒险。”

他补充道：“对于我们最近的成功，它最大的好处是让我们组建了一家自己梦想中的公司。它给我们创造了某种影响力和灵活性，也让我们能够以长远的角度思考。我们对下一季度并不觉得有压力。我们可以考虑玩家，考虑玩家体验的质量。”

当然，处在这么一个不停变动的行业中，为以后几年树立单个稳定的目标并不总是好策略。那就是为什么Supercell始终关注手机领域的其他平台，尽管它很明确公司的下一波游戏仍着重于iOS。

Paananen提及Android和Windows系统的手机时表示： “我们一直密切关注其他相关的平台，我认为我们的主要驱动力是终端玩家的体验质量。当我们觉得其他设备提供的体验质量达到iOS设备的水平时，那它就是第一选择。第二个方面是，这种系统必须具有商业价值。也就是要有足够的设备和以这种设备作为游戏平台的忠实玩家。”

“我们把变化当成朋友，而不是敌人。因为我们团队的组建方式、独立、小型、灵活、迅速，我们可以应对快速变化的环境。所以我们欢迎市场上的任何变化，因为我们认为自己就是朝着正确方向最快发展的公司之一。”

关于免费游戏的道德，这是一个被火热探讨的话题，许多工作室为了捕捞“鲸鱼”玩家（游戏邦注：这里指的是在免费游戏中大量消费的玩家）的钱，各种阴险手段无所不用。你对此有什么看法呢？

“我认为免费模式可以克服弊端，原因是这些游戏像病毒一样广泛传播，其精华部分最终会升至顶端。事实上，人们讨论这些事时，如果有人以正确的方法做出了好游戏，其他人就会发现它。这类游戏的强大之处在于，一旦人们发现这正是他们喜爱的游戏，就往往成为其忠实追随者，会在它上面花钱好几年。”

他强调Supercell正在开发成为自己的平台的游戏，而不只是游戏—-也就是，公司的发展应归结于那些忠实的玩家，而不是新玩家。“我们的关注焦点是留住现存的玩家，因为这些游戏太有粘性了，玩家的沉浸度很高，最终使游戏不断壮大。”

当你回头查看Supercell的整个商业规划，你会发现，留住当前玩家而不是引诱他们，把他们当作赢利的工具，这大概是该公司秘方中最重要的一味佐料。当游戏的达到每名玩家每天12次的访问量时，其中必然存在让他们不断返回的原因。

Paananen表示：“我认为我们的秘方是—-很简单，我们只想做出好游戏。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Supercell’s Secret Sauce

by Mike Rose

Whenever I’m abroad and people ask me where I’m from, I always prepare myself for the same response. “Ah, Manchester!” they say. “Manchester United!” they add. These days Manchester City also features in these responses, but in general you can forget our decades of musical influence and terrible weather — soccer is what we’re really known for around the world.

Finland’s Helsinki is currently experiencing a similar connection. I was in a restaurant in the capital when an older gentleman stopped me to ask where I was from. But rather than ask me which team I support, he followed up, “and why are you here in Helsinki?”

“I’m here to see some video games,” I replied. His eyes lit up, and he said excitedly, “Ahh! Angry Birds!” before turning to his group and starting a conversation about all the mobile games he had played.

He must have been well into his 60s, and his family and friends were a good spread of ages, all discussing what back in my own hometown would be considered a non-talking point to most. Later on a cab driver strikes up a conversation with me about games, and later still a flight attendant wants to know what I’m playing on my smartphone.

Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen sees a direct correlation between Manchester and Helsinki’s separate booms. “It’s the same thing as why do kids start playing football?” he tells me. “It’s Cristiano Ronaldo, all these sorts of heroes. And now, why do people start making games? Because we want to be the next Angry Birds.”

“The success of Rovio has been a huge source of inspiration for all Finnish gaming companies,” he continues. “The biggest favor that those guys have done for the entirety of Finland is that they’ve raised the bar for everybody. They have shown where you can get to when you have the right level of ambition.”

If Rovio has raised the bar, Supercell is doing a damn good job of vaulting over it. Since switching to a “tablet-first” business model earlier this year, the company said recently that it grosses over $500,000 a day from just two mobile releases — a figure which is now “well above that,” according to Paananen.

I visited Supercell with one goal in mind — to find out the secret to how a company can go from an absolute nobody on mobile, to a huge somebody in the space of around four months. When both Hay Day and Clash of Clans launched this summer, Supercell had never released a mobile game before, and its previous title Gunshine for browser had been a bit of a false start. Now the company own two spots in the top five grossing games charts on iOS, with Clash of Clans in particular regularly parked at number one.

“Me and the other co-founders, we have a relatively long history in creating games,” muses Paananen, as I question him on how Supercell began. “For me personally, it’s 12 years or so. This time, we really want to do things differently.”

Paananen co-founded Sumea back in 2000, which was eventually sold to social game developer Digital Chocolate. After holding his role as president of Digital Chocolate for four years, the serial entrepreneur decided that it was time to start over again.

“It’s going to sound really naive and simple, but the single biggest lesson that Mikko [Kodisoja, Supercell co-founder and creative director] and I have learned is that if you really want to build the next generation of games company, it’s actually all about the people,” he says. “Before now, we usually always had to go with a big international publisher or someone like that, so there was always a middleman between us and the consumer. But then these democratic app stores, like Facebook and iOS, and all of a sudden it was possible to directly access the consumer.”

Finland has been waiting for the App Store, it would seem. Removing those extra steps between the development studio and the consumer has helped in spades, while allowing devs truly set their creativity free.

“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.”

Supercell isn’t kidding around when it comes to making sure the company is stuffed full of talented individuals. Most of its employees have around 10 years of experience in shipping commercial games, on average. “We have already been in a situation where we’ve needed to recruit one person for a project, and we couldn’t find him or her at that point,” Kodisoja later tells me. “So we suffered for a bit until we found them.”

“Of course, the flipside of the coin is that we’ll never be as big as many of our competitors when measured by employee count, and we can’t grow as quickly,” says Paananen. “But that’s a core part of our philosophy and vision for the company.”

Supercell’s vision wasn’t always so crystal clear. When the company launched at the start of 2011, it had a very familiar idea of how to make it big in the games industry.

“Our first thought was, ‘Hey, we’re going to create these cross-platform games that you can access both from a web browser and from mobile devices,’” says Paananen. Was Gunshine a false start, then? “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he admits. “We thought web was a huge platform, so why don’t we start with that? But when we started to dig into the tablet and smartphone versions of Gunshine, we started to confound ourselves. We realized, ‘Hey, we want to make the best possible games we can for this platform. So we started to experiment with all kinds of things on this platform, and I guess we kind of found ourselves, and we tightened our focus, which I think is the best decision we’ve ever made.”

It was around a year ago that Supercell came upon its “tablet-first” strategy — a sharpening initiative that has no doubt played a huge part in the company’s raging 2012 success.

“We think that tablet is the ultimate game platform,” says the CEO. “It combines the best of all the possible worlds. It has a console-like performance; With Retina display, the screen is really as good as it gets; It’s the first device that three to four year old kids can use and get started on — that wouldn’t be possible with PCs or laptops, or even gaming consoles.”

What Paananen and his team realized ever so quickly was that if you don’t build your games from the ground-up for a specific platform, you’re not going to build the best games.

“I know from experience, because that’s what we tried!” he laughs. “We started from this online web product, and how we actually discovered tablet was when we started to create a version of the game for the tablet, and we realized, ‘Hey, it’s not going to be a good game!’ Unless we actually start from the tablet, we’ve never going to create the best games for this platform.”

Focusing on a single platform seems to go against the grain of what works in our industry — it especially seems absurd given that there are far more iPhones out there than iPads. Yet Paananen notes of Supercell’s tablet-focused development, “I think it results in better games and, ironically, results in better games for the iPhone. When you design for a highly fidelity platform and a bigger screen and so on, you need to put even more emphasis on the quality. And honestly, we think that the tablet is the ultimate game platform. We think that in three to five years ahead, it’s going to be the device that most people consume entertainment from.”

In fact, the company’s iPad revenue already equals its iPhone revenue — proof, if any was needed, that Supercell’s approach is definitely working.

So is this tablet-orientated development the sole ingredient in Supercell’s secret sauce? It would appear not. In fact, it’s far from this simple, as I slowly but surely gathered that the company’s success is part experience, part focus, part culture, and a splash of happy accident.

“We think that the biggest advantage we have in this company is culture,” offers the industry veteran. “We want to build a very different type of company. At the center of it is this idea of small — if you think around the console industry, or even if you look at newer platforms like Facebook, what happens is that somebody comes in, and they have this small and very passionate team, and they make a great game, and consumers pick it up.”

He continues, “That company then becomes financially very successful, and investors come onboard, and there are growth targets you need to hit. What happens is you end up growing really, really quickly with employees, and you start to build these bigger and more expensive products and so on, and at some point the company grows to hundreds of people in size, and the products become more and more expensive. And then you don’t want to take risks anymore — you can see that evidence by all the sequels that are being built. Nobody wants to take any risks anymore.”

“Quite frankly, it’s not fun to work in those sorts of companies. They’re run by process, and top-down management,” he says. Paananen is keen to avoid such a situation this time around, promising himself that no matter how success Supercell gets, the idea of keeping small will always be a core part of the company’s ideology.

“I have this thing about becoming too big,” he notes. “Zynga is an example of that kind of threat. The original FarmVille was built by five or six guys, and 84 million people played it on a monthly basis. Clearly people really loved the game. But since then what has happened is, Mark Pincus was quite proud that their latest product was made in 18 months by 100 people, and they are getting to this triple-A scale, blah blah blah.

“Okay, but what did the users think? Did they love the game? Well, maybe not. It really hasn’t done that well. It’s unbelievable that time after time after time, this industry falls into this same trap. You get bigger, you get slower, you build more expensive products, but they might not be the best products for the consumers.”

Say Paananen, what really clicks with him about Supercell’s “small is big” approach is the possibility of building a company he’s always dreamed of — a company built on passion rather than metrics.

“We don’t hire people and say ‘Okay, your job is to code this part of the game’, ‘you are responsible for these art assets’, etcetera,” he adds. “We don’t have dedicated game designers as such — it’s the team that is going to build the game, and they are all responsible for the end-user experience.”

It’s an approach to management that has worked well for Valve, and Supercell is further evidence that it can result in huge success. “People really step up and take more responsibilities,” adds Paananen. “It’s a lot more motivating to do that, and a lot more passion gets thrown into the product. And the beauty of all of this is this is a model that really makes sense — you don’t need 100 people to build a game for this device, and we’re not going to fall into this trap of hiring 100 people to build the best 3D experience, high-fidelity graphics, this massive storyline and loads of content. We just want to build games that are really fun to play, where the focus is on gameplay.”

Also echoing Valve’s methods, Supercell is a very flat organization. No one has an office, and everyone sits together, reveling in zero bureaucracy. Teams operate independently, such that the majority of the power is in the hands of the individuals.

“We like to think of our guys as craftsmen — we want to hand-craft these games for our users,” says the Supercell CEO. “Giving orders like a top-down management just doesn’t work at all. I think the information just flows so much better. There’s the feeling that we’re all in this together. It makes sense in our relatively fast-moving and dynamic environment too. It’s just good to have everyone as close by as possible.”

“Of course we have some processes,” he adds, “but basically everybody hates processes here — for there to be a process of any kind, there has to be a really good reason.”

The next spice thrown into Supercell’s sauce is transparency. Every single morning an automatic email is sent out to every single employee — no matter if they are full-time, part-time, or trainee. Said email displays how many users each product has, how much revenue was generated, and various other key performance indicators like retention rates.

“We don’t have any secrets here,” explains Paananen. “Even if I wanted to keep something secret I can’t, because I force myself to send all the data every single morning, and there’s nothing I can do about it! It actually helps the management of the company, because it makes our culture very results-driven, and there’s no politics.”

This level of openness with its employees even extends to those moments when things go horribly wrong — in fact, as strange as it may sound, Supercell actually revels in flops and misadventures.

“We have this culture of celebrating failure,” explains Paananen. “When a game does well, of course we have a party. But when we really screw up, for example when we need to kill a product — and that happens often by the way, this year we’ve launched two products globally, and killed three — when we really screw up, we celebrate with champagne. We organize events that are sort of postmortems, and we can discuss it very openly with the team, asking what went wrong, what went right. What did we learn, most importantly, and what are we going to do differently next time?”

Paananen goes even further — he believes that teams learn more from failures than from successes, and that the best companies are built on top of these failures. “That’s why we encourage failure,” he adds. “When you fail you learn, and that’s worth celebrating. This will also encourage risk-taking. If you punish failure, that doesn’t encourage you to take risks. You’ll end up just doing sequels and playing safe.”

The Supercell man acknowledges that certain parts of his business strategy may well clash with how others in the industry approach development and management, and so when it comes to hiring time, applicants are made fully aware of how the company operates.

“We pay very close attention when we hire people that they are okay with this working environment,” Paananen says. “It’s definitely not for everybody, absolutely not, because you have to be really proactive, very passionate about this stuff, and passionate about games, first and foremost. But it’s definitely a very fun environment to work with.”

The final addition to Supercell’s secret sauce is quite simply Finland itself. In 2011, the Finnish games industry grew by 57 percent, to a value of 165 million euros, according to the International Game Developers Association. Why is Finland booming?

“People ask me ‘What’s in the water in Finland? Where did all these great mobile games companies come from?’” laughs Paananen. “In Finland, we have this unique combination of creativity and technology talent. We’re known for a lot of great engineering talent, but the other side that people constantly miss because we’re shy and silent and not very outspoken, is that we actually have this long tradition in storytelling.”

And the Supercell CEO has his own theories as to where this tradition came from. “200 years back, it was a very poor country, and people were living in very small houses. During the Fall and Winter time it was cold, it was miserable. There was nothing you could do outside, so what people would do is, they would gather in their houses and tell stories. There were storytellers who were almost like rock stars.”

“So there’s this really long tradition of storytelling,” he continues. “But the other part is that people would just then invent games, kind of like board games, just on their own. And this kind of creativity has been in our culture for a very long time. It’s a combination of that, plus the engineering talent, which I think makes the games industry so great here.”

It’s not like the Finnish games industry has suddenly come out of nowhere, either. Finland has boasted a healthy games industry for two decades now, with names like Max Payne, Alan Wake and Supreme Snowboarding associated with the country. But, as mentioned previously, it is the falling of the publisher barriers that has really helped Finland’s games industry to evolve at an alarming rate.

“I think it’s interesting that, after the collapse of Nokia, Finland sort of needs to reinvent itself,” remarks Paananen. “We truly believe that tablets and mobile are the future of games, and I’d argue that if we can keep our position, we’re going to be one of these centers of gravity for the future of gaming.”

“It definitely doesn’t just apply to Rovio and Supercell either,” he adds. “I guarantee you that in the next three or four years, there’s going to be a lot of other companies that break through. I can see what’s going on here in the game scene, and it’s unbelievable how many great small companies are being started almost every month.”

It helps that the Finnish government is rather excited about games at the moment, once again thanks to Rovio and Angry Birds. The country’s National Technology Agency hands out subsidies to new video game business that look promising, and according to Paananen, it’s pretty easy to get a games business started as a result, at this moment in time.

In conclusion, then, Supercell puts its rapid success down to culture, passion, transparency, working with the best people, and remaining focused at all times. Supercell currently records, on average, 12 sessions per user every day across its two titles, while Clash of Clans sees several million unique battles between users every day.

This is all very well, but with two out of two successes this year, Supercell’s next step will be to see whether this formula will carry over to future releases, or whether it was all more happy accident than strategic positioning. Say Paananen, the company is already looking to its second wave of titles, and what he believes will be the next generation of social games — namely, “those games are going to be truly social.”

“People will be playing together, not just spamming each other,” he adds. “We actually draw a lot of references from MMOs, especially from countries like China and Korea, but also from old browser classics that were built in Germany — Travian comes to mind.”

“I think this industry took some missteps during the crazy days of Facebook. So all of sudden social started to mean, ‘Okay, how many invites per day on average does one user send?’ And of course, that was dead wrong. If you were to ask any of these traditional MMO guys, especially from Korea, they say that social does not equal spamming your friends. It’s enabling people to create social ties in your game, and make sure these new friendships emerge, and that actually becomes the glue that ties these gamers together.”

Other elements that Supercell isn’t planning to pile into its games any time soon — hours and hours of cinema-quality animations; linear gameplay; “click-fests”; menu-based games. This is a company with a clear vision of what works for it and what doesn’t, and given the success it has had in prior months, you can expect it won’t be hugely shifting gear anytime soon.

“If we’re really honest with ourselves, this is a hit-driven business, and it’s a form of art, not science,” says Paananen. “Whoever says ‘I always knew beforehand that this game was going to be a hit’ is lying. The key for us is to, not to play it safe, but to trust our instincts and trust all the things that made us successful in the first place. We definitely don’t want to play it safe — we are about innovation and risk-taking.”

He adds, “The best thing for us about our recent success is that it enables us to build the company that we always dreamed of. It gives us certain leverage and flexibility — also the ability to think long-term. We don’t feel pressure to think about the next quarter. We can think about the users, think about the quality of the user experience.”

Of course, with an ever-changing industry that is constantly in flux, having a single firm target for the next few years simply isn’t a good strategy. That’s why Supercell stays ever vigilant of other platforms in the mobile space, although it’s clear that the company’s next batch of games will be focusing on iOS too.

“We are keeping a close eye on all relevant platforms,” says Paananen of Android and Windows Phone. “I think the primary driver for us is the quality of the end-user experience. Once we feel that the quality is as high as it is on iOS devices, that’s the number one thing. The number two thing is that it has to make business sense. So there has to be enough devices out there, and the users who have these devices have to be the kind of users that play these games, and get engaged.”

“We view change as our friend, not as our enemy,” he adds. “The way we’re set up, having our independent, small, very agile, quickly-moving teams, we can react to the fast-changing environment. So we welcome any change in the market, because we think we are one of the quickest companies to move in the right direction anyway.”

And what of the ethics of free-to-play, a hotly-debated topic thanks to the numerous studios that deploy underhand tactics in order to wring as much cash out of “whales” as they can?

“I think free-to-play can overcome these issues, and I think the reason is that these games are so viral, the cream will definitely rise to the top,” answers Paananen. “The fact is that people talk about this stuff with each other, and if someone has a great game and they’re doing things the right way, people will discover it. A great thing about these kinds of games is that people tend to be really loyal as they find a game that they like, and they’ll play it for years.”

He notes that Supercell is building games to be their own platforms, rather than just games — that is, the company’s growth is thanks to its loyal users, rather than new user growth. “The focus is to keep the existing users,” he adds, “and because these games are so sticky, and the engagement is so high, and the end result is that these games grow.”

And when you step back and look at Supercell’s business plan as a whole, this desire to keep its current users entertained, rather than pull them in, take their money and then find more prey, is perhaps the strongest element of the secret sauce — the chilli powder dashed in for good measure. When a game is recording 12 sessions per user every day, there must be a reason why those users are coming back.

Says Paananen, “What I think is our secret sauce — it’s simple, we just build great games.”（source：gamasutra)