作者：Stuart Dredge

芬兰开发商Supercell于2012年夏季才发布了两款手机游戏《Hay Day》和《Clash of Clans》，在2013年第一季度，这两款游戏收益就达到1.79亿美元（1.167亿英磅）。

这正是手机游戏迅速变成一个炙手可热的行业的原因，要知道Supercell还不是这一行吸金能力最高的公司。日本开发商GungHo Online在今年第一季度收益达3.03亿美元，其中多数来自《Puzzle & Dragons》这款游戏。

现在这两家公司已经进行交叉推广合作，令《Clash of Clans》中的角色出现在《Puzzle & Dragons》中，Supercell的游戏也可能有此安排。

一方面，Supercell和GungHo算是竞争对手，但也是合作伙伴，这种关系可能会令EA、动视和Zynga等大型游戏公司头疼。

Supercell的崛起尤为神速，在2012年6月21日发布了《Hay Day》，并在同年8月2日发布了《Clash of Clans》。在2013年8月中旬，Supercell通过850万日活跃用户创造了240万美元日常收益，并融资1.3亿美元，使公司身价上升至7.7亿美元。

Supercell首席执行官Ilkka Paananen表示，“我们都很意外，没有人想象到这一切发生得如此迅速。”

这同他之前参与创办的手机游戏公司相比，确实是天壤之别。苏兰工作室Sumea（于2004年被Digital Chocolate收购）擅长制作、角色丰富，并且有望在苹果App Store绽放异彩的自有IP游戏。

但它生不逢时，当时手机游戏市场为移动运营商所主宰，这类游戏如果囤积在一起，销量一般都很差。

Digital Chocolate当时在iOS已经小有成就，之后在Facebook同样有所斩获，但Paananen却在2010年离开这家公司，并于2011年创立了Supercell面向Facebook制作社交游戏，最初的作品是《Gunshine》。但这款游戏从未真正走红，但奉行“平板优先”这一政策之后一年，《Hay Day》和《Clash of Clans》诞生了。

“我们的发展历程很能说明我们所在的平台状况，以及游戏的自然传播有多迅速。对我个人来说，看到这一项目走向全球化也是一大快事：我们的游戏已经在西方市场前列，在中国排名第二，在日本位居前五名。这真是令人振奋。”

免费模式

Supercell的成长与智能手机和平板电脑上免费游戏（F2P）的爆炸式发展相互交织：这也是令游戏行业颇为紧张的一个趋势。

大家主要的争议在于多数成功的F2P手机游戏究竟是不是一种吸金的“盈利机器”，其设计目标是否只是迫使玩家花钱。

多数情况来看，Supercell游戏回避了这种批评，但却仍然可以成功创收，原因何在？Paananen认为“这里的讽刺就在于，如果你的首要目标并非盈利性，最后反而更容易实现收益。”

“如果你将粘性和留存率视为重中之重——制作人们愿意经常玩，长时间体验的出色游戏，他们就会愿意花钱。我们希望设计人们可以玩上数年的游戏。”

他随即强调Supercell只是怀抱这种目标的众多游戏公司之一，称《魔兽世界》和《英雄联盟》长盛不衰的生命力正是Supercell有意效仿的对象。

他还犀利指出了社交和手机、F2P游戏领域的一些倾向，以及许多公司过于依赖用分析工具来引导设计决策的问题。

Paananen表示，“曾经有一段时间，尤其是社交游戏行业，许多人认为你可以根据一张电子表格创造出色的游戏——创意和设计并不重要，因为这全部是一些数学计算的结果。”

“但游戏仍然是一种艺术形式，并非科学形式。你无法在电子表格上设计出趣味性。如果你想在一个行业中长期立足，但却无法制作出有趣的游戏，那么你就不会有未来。”

我相信分析工具在Supercell项目中仍然发挥重要作用，有助于该公司观察用户如何体验《Hay Day》和《Clash of Clans》，并至少据此制定了一些设计决策。

换句话说，Paananen批评的并非分析工具本身，而是不讲究艺术的分析形式。

Supercell经常公开谈论其公司文化：由“细胞”组成的小型团队，自由开发新游戏理念，测试游戏，并自主决定是否继续或放弃项目，用香槟庆祝团队失败所汲取的经验和教训。

与GungHo的合作伙伴关系

Supercell目前员工超过100人，Paananen称公司打算“尽量保持小型团队规模”，因为“小型公司更有趣，而更快乐的员工可以创造更优秀的游戏”。

“主机游戏领域很难找到小型团队。当然，《Minecraft》团队是一个例外，但如果你的目标针对下一代主机制作具有电影动作效果的大型游戏，小团队很显然无法胜任。”

“但在移动领域，用户并不追求电影般的超级体验。用户真正重视的是玩法和游戏的社交层面，专注于这些方面可保持团队的小规模形态，更灵活快速地采取行动。”

关于快速行动的一个例子是Supercell与GungHo的合作。鉴于后者旗下热门游戏《Puzzle & Dragons》快速崛起的情况，Paananen自称在一次行业会议上看到GungHo掌门人Kazuki Morishita的演讲之后，“我深深为他谦逊对待一切事物的态度所折服”，并认为这两家公司的文化或许能够完美兼容。

“我们对日本市场很感兴趣，所以就同他们私下进行联系，也针对游戏设计进行了直接交流。所以我们决定进行交叉推广。”

这种合作在独立游戏领域非常普遍。例如，《涂鸦跳跃》和《口袋上帝》在2009年就进行了交叉合作，《Minigore》和《Sway》也是这方面的典型，《时空幻镜》中的角色Tim也在《超级食肉男孩》中友情客串了一回。

《Clash of Clans》和《Puzzle & Dragons》合作的特别之处在于，二者都是当今最具盈利性的手机游戏，后者为前者进入日本玩家市场提供了宝贵的机遇。

传统大型发行商很少做这种事情——尽管《马里奥》和《Sonic》游戏已经证明了这种可行性，Paananen认为这种现象应归咎于同财政目标相关的“短视思维”。

他称“这些公司都是围绕必须实现的季度目标来运营，但这会给它们造成巨大压力和短视思维。”

“但如果你从长远来思考，为何不与GungHo这种开发商合作呢？两家公司的玩家都会乐见这种情况，它表明有时候1+1不仅仅等于3。我不理解为何其他有些公司却做不到这一点。”

亚洲扩张策略

日本市场是Supercell的战略重点，自从交叉推广合作之后，《Clash of Clans》仅通过支持日语的更新版本，就使游戏收益增长了3倍。

Paananen称“这对我们来说是一个非常有趣的机遇。如果你提前想想今后5年最具价值的游戏公司应该是什么情况，你会觉得它们不但要在西方市场占据重要地位，还要在日本、韩国和中国中的一两个市场拥有立足之地。”

“我们的目标之一就是打造一个彻底全球化的游戏公司，在西方和亚洲市场都有玩家群体。我们还有很长的路要走，但前景十分光明。”

要在亚洲称雄是否意味着必须在Android平台称霸？Supercell现在仍是一家仅面向iOS平台的开发商，而Android平台在中国和韩国极有市场。这家公司希望向亚洲扩张是否意味着西方Android用户很快就能玩上Supercell的游戏？

Paananen对此直接回答，“没错，Android在亚洲的市场份额十分庞大，但我们现在还没有可以公布的计划。”

“我们当然会关注不同平台的情况，但就我们的经验来看，iOS在日本和中国也是一个极大的平台。”

Supercell正着力思考如何将当前两个游戏品牌推向其他领域。《愤怒的小鸟》、《Talking Friends》和《割绳子》等移动品牌都在探索动画、玩具和其他授权领域。

我们何时可看到《Hay Day》毛绒玩具或《Clash of Clans》动画片或漫画书？Paananen称Supercell对授权和周边产品项目“尤为谨慎”，他们要仔细考虑这些选择。

他表示“我们已经收到了很多授权请求，但回绝了大部分人。希望今年我们可以在这一领域进行一些尝试。”

“我们将会非常挑剔，会尽量挑选高质量的产品，会选择让玩家觉得正宗，并且含有部分游戏体验的项目。我们想做一些很棒的东西，而不仅仅局限于游戏。”

在采访即将结束时，大家转向了常被热议的F2P游戏领域，以及多数游戏公司究间是试图借F2P利用玩家，还是以此取悦玩家等话题。这些争议还包括运用于儿童游戏中的IAP功能。

Paananen认为针对这些批评，开发者责无旁贷“这是一个新兴行业，你得为玩家负责。有些围绕F2P的消极PR手段令人蒙羞。”

“我们游戏行业应该积极采取预防措施，为玩家提供合理的游戏体验。否则其他部门介入后，我们可能面临一些棘手的法律问题。”

不过他对此依然乐观，并认为随着游戏质量的提升，优秀游戏公司的问世，那些短视的“吸金机器”终会被淘汰出局。

“F2P模式应该创造用户和开发者双赢的局面。我们之前从未见过如此多高质量而免费的游戏。”

“如果执行得当，F2P不失为一种有效的商业模式，正如King、GungHo和我们一样。这要取决于开发者清楚对错的界限，并积极采取应对措施。”（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）

Clash of Clans maker Supercell: ‘You can’t design fun on a spreadsheet’

Ilkka Paananen talks freemium games, player happiness and Puzzle & Dragons partnership

Clash of Clans has become a lucrative success since its launch in 2012

Finnish developer Supercell launched its first two mobile games – Hay Day and Clash of Clans – in the summer of 2012. In the first three months of 2013, those two games alone made the company $179m (£116.7m) in revenues.

That’s why mobile gaming is such a simultaneously exciting and terrifying industry to operate in right now, and Supercell isn’t even making the most money. Japanese firm GungHo Online made $303m in revenues in the first quarter of 2013, with the majority of them coming from a single mobile game: Puzzle & Dragons.

Now these two companies are working together, with a cross-promotional campaign with Clash of Clans characters appearing in Puzzle & Dragons, and potentially a reciprocal arrangement within Supercell’s game.

On one level, Supercell and GungHo are rivals, but they’re also partners, which should be causing the odd headache within big games companies from EA and Activision to Zynga.

The rise of Supercell in particular has been meteoric. Hay Day was released on 21 June 2012, then Clash of Clans on 2 August. By mid-April 2013, Supercell was pulling in $2.4m of daily revenues from its 8.5m daily active players, and raising a $130m funding round that valued the company at $770m.

“We’ve been surprised. None of us could have imagined how quickly this would happen,” says Ilkka Paananen, Supercell’s chief executive.

It’s a far cry from his previous mobile games companies. Finnish studio Sumea, which was bought by US publisher Digital Chocolate in 2004, specialised in quirky, characterful own-IP games of the kind that would later prosper on Apple’s App Store.

Yet it was making them at a time when the dominant mobile games stores were those run by mobile operators, where quirky, characterful own-IP games tended to sell badly – if they were stocked at all.

Digital Chocolate had some success on iOS and then Facebook, but Paananen left in 2010, then launched Supercell in 2011 to make social games on Facebook, starting with a game named Gunshine. It never quite took off, but one year and a “tablet-first” pivot later, Hay Day and Clash of Clans launched.

“Our growth speaks a lot about the platform that we’re on, and how quickly games can spread organically,” says Paananen. “It’s also been exciting for me personally to see how global this business has become: we’ve been at the top spots in Western countries, but also number two in China, and in the top five in Japan. That’s really exciting.”

Hay Day Supercell’s Hay Day game

Free-to-play gaming

Supercell’s rise has been interwoven with the explosion in free-to-play (F2P) games on smartphones and tablets: a trend that’s caused plenty of tension within the games industry.

The key argument is over whether many of the most successful F2P mobile games are little more than money-sucking “monetisation machines”, where the design is almost entirely geared towards forcing players to spend money. Gambling-style addiction, without even the prospect of a payout.

For the most part, Supercell’s games have swerved this criticism, yet still managed to make lots of money. How? “The huge irony here is that if the monetisation is not your number one priority, that actually leads to better monetisation,” says Paananen.

“When you prioritise engagement and retention – making a great game that people play often and want to play for a long time – they are happy to pay. We want to design games that people can theoretically play for years.”

Paananen is quick to stress that Supercell is just the latest in a long line of games firms with this objective, and mentions World of Warcraft and League of Legends as two franchises whose longevity his company is keen to emulate.

He also has some sharp words for some of the trends in social and mobile/F2P games that have hinted at other motivations, as well as companies focusing too much on analytics as a guide for their design choices.

“There was a time, especially in the social games industry, where people thought you could create great games based on a spreadsheet: that creativity and design wouldn’t really matter, because it was all about some maths,” says Paananen.

“Games are still a form of art, not a form of science. You can’t design fun on a spreadsheet. And if you want to make an industry for the long-term, if you can’t create fun games, there’s no future.”

I’m sure analytics still play a significant role in Supercell’s business, in terms of watching closely how people play Hay Day and Clash of Clans, and taking design decisions at least partly based on that.

In other words, Paananen’s criticism isn’t of analytics per se, but of the trend he saw for analytics without the art.

Supercell has talked publicly and regularly about its company culture: small teams organised in “cells”, with the freedom to work on new game ideas, test them and – if the team decides they’re not worth pursuing – gathering the company together to toast the lessons learned with champagne.

Clash of Clans Puzzle & Dragons Spot the Clash of Clans character in Puzzle & Dragons

GungHo partnership

Supercell currently has just over 100 employees, and Paananen says it’s determined to “stay as small as possible” on the grounds that “smaller companies are more fun, and happier people create better games”.

“Having small teams in the console space is hard. The Minecraft guys are an exception, of course, but it’s tough to have small teams if your goal is to do cinematic action titles for next-generation consoles,” he adds.

“But those movie-like experiences aren’t what people are looking for in mobile. What users really value is the gameplay and social aspects of the games, and that enables you to keep the team smaller, and move quicker.”

One example of moving quickly is Supercell’s GungHo partnership, given the rapid rise of the latter’s Puzzle & Dragons (even if GungHo itself is a well-established publicly-listed company in Japan thanks to its online gaming business).

Paananen says that the partnership came about through seeing GungHo boss Kazuki Morishita speak at industry conferences – “I really admired how humble he was about everything” – and the sense that the two companies’ cultures might mesh well.

“We were interested in the Japanese market, so we got in touch with them, and there was an immediate connection on a personal level, but also on how we both think about game design. So we decided to do some cross-promotion,” he says.

Such collaboration has been quite common in the independent games world. Doodle Jump and Pocket God crossed their streams in 2009, for example, as did Minigore and Sway, while Braid character Tim made a cameo appearance in Super Meat Boy.

The difference with Clash of Clans and Puzzle & Dragons is that they’re two of the most lucrative mobile games in the world right now, with the latter providing the former with a valuable introduction to gamers in Japan.

Big traditional publishers rarely do this kind of thing – although the Mario and Sonic games show it’s absolutely possible – which Paananen suggests is often due to “short-term thinking” relating to financial goals.

“Companies run on these quarterly goals which they absolutely have to meet, but that creates a lot of pressure and short-term thinking,” he says.

“But when you think a bit more in the long-term, why wouldn’t you co-operate with guys like GungHo? Players of both companies have really appreciated it. It shows that sometimes one plus one can be greater than two. I don’t realise why some other companies don’t do it.”

Clash of Clans Clash of Clans was localised for Japan, and tripled its revenues

Asian expansion

Japan is high on Supercell’s strategic priorities, too, with Clash of Clans having reportedly tripled its revenue there since the cross-promotion started, which in turn came just after an update to the game with support for Japanese language.

“It’s a very interesting opportunity for us. If you think five years ahead about what the most valuable games companies will look like, they’ll need to have a strong foothold not only in the Western markets, but in one or two of the big Asian markets: Japan, Korea and China,” says Paananen.

“One of our goals is to create the first fully-global games company, which has players both in the West and in the big Asian markets. We still have a very long way to go, but the signs have been very promising.”

Does being big in Asia mean also being big on Android? Supercell is still an iOS-only developer, but Android is huge in China and South Korea in particular. Will the company’s desire for Asian expansion mean Western Android users get to play its games soon?

Paananen plays the straightest of straight bats. “You are quite right in saying Android is pretty big in Asia, but right now we don’t have anything to say on that front,” he says.

“We are, of course, keeping our eyes and ears open for different platforms, but I would say also that iOS is a pretty big platform in our experience in both Japan and China.”

Supercell is thinking hard about how its two current game franchises can expand in other ways, though. Mobile brands like Angry Birds, Talking Friends and Cut the Rope have all explored animation, toys and other merchandise.

When might we see Hay Day plush toys or Clash of Clans cartoons or comics to match? Paananen says Supercell will be “pretty cautious” when it comes to licensing and merchandising, but the company is clearly mulling its options.

“We’ve had lots of requests coming in, and we’ve said no to the vast majority of them. But hopefully this year we will try something on that front,” he says.

“We’re going to be very, very choosy, and it’ll be as high-quality as possible: something our players will feel is authentic and part of the game experience. We want to do something cool though: not just the games, but something extra.”

At the end of the interview, conversation turns back to the often-heated debate around F2P games, and whether too many are trying to take advantage of their players rather than delight them. This, alongside the separate-but-related debate about the way in-app purchases are used in children’s games.

Paananen thinks developers can’t afford to shrug off the criticisms. “It’s such a new industry, you have to do what’s right for players. Some of the negative PR around free-to-play stuff has been a shame,” he says.

“It’s really up to us as an industry to get pro-active about this stuff and do things that are right for our players. If we don’t, someone else will come in, and there’s going to be legislation.”

The Supercell boss is broadly optimistic though, and thinks that as better games continue to be released, the good companies will prosper, and the short-term moneygrabbers will fall away.

“The irony here is that the free-to-play model should be a win-win situation for consumers and developers. There have never been such high-quality games available for users to enjoy and try out for free,” he says.

“And it’s an efficient business model when done right, as you can see from guys like King, GungHo and us. It’s just a case of knowing what’s right and what’s wrong, and being more pro-active about it.”（source：theguardian）