Clash Of Clans: The Sucess Story| Case Study
How did Clash Of Clans manage to become the highest-grossing game in the U.S. within 3 months of its launch?
Clash Of Clans was one of the first games that made ‘Mobile video gaming’ this famous throughout the world. It was only three months in and the game became the highest-grossing game in the United States. In 2013, a year after its launch, Clash Of Clans became the most profitable game worldwide. Unlike the team size of other famous game studios, Supercell which started with less than 1000 employees, was able to develop a game that surpassed 500 million downloads on iOS and Android, while also being one of the few to surpass $1 billion yearly revenue.
Clash Of Clans, a free-to-play mobile strategy video game was developed & launched by Finnish game developer Supercell, the creator of other phenomenally famous games like Hay Day, on iOS platforms in 2012 & on Android Google Play stores in 2013. While developing this ultimate game, the CEO & Founder of Supercell wanted to create something with a good shelf life. Ilkka Paananen, the CEO & Founder had World Of Warcraft as his core focus while creating the game.
About the Game.
Clash of Clans, a free-to-play mobile strategy video game is based on a fantasy-themed endless world where the player is a chief of a village. The chief i.e. the player builds up a totally customizable village from the looted resources after destroying other players’ villages. Not only this, but the players also earn rewards & they can get resources by buying them with medals or by producing them at their own village. There are troops that need to be trained on how to use the commonly available resources i.e. gold, elixir, and dark elixir. Supercell has launched four versions of the game to date, namely, Clash Royale, Clash Quest, Clash Minis, and Clash Heroes. Up to fifty players can form up a squad, group, or clan and then participate in the Clan Wars, a great way to engage in fun processes with your friends and family! The players could play & engage in real-time with their closed ones. Once, people come into a clan, they get engaged and don’t want to ever stop playing.
Throughout this blog, we’ll be discussing the strategies used or the actions taken by Supercell, the developers to keep the game at the top even after all these years.
Understanding the importance of Change.
Adapting according to the trends & needs of the gamer becomes extremely important when you’re constantly developing a game. Supercell kept this well in mind. When Clash Of Clans was initially launched, its graphics, characters & features were childlike & cartoon based which were transformed in some time because the developers understood that they’d be alienating the hardcore strata of their audience by keeping the graphics still. So, now the developers needed a theme that wouldn’t be too childish at one time & not too dark or realistic at the other. Within a team of mere 5–6 people, more than 10 different characters were formulated and brought forward before the develops found what they actually wanted!
Building a platform for Everyone.
The developers knew well that they had to satisfy the hardcore players as well as the normal, fun-loving audience. For the hardcore players, to stay at the top of the Leaderboard was the ultimate goal. They’d participate in Clan Wars time & again to stay at the dop & destroy everyone. Meanwhile, the second set of people, who didn’t want to attack others clans were given other mind-blowing features like chatting with the clan members, socializing & building relationships with people in clans.
Free-to-play Game.
Clash Of Clans runs on a free-to-play revenue business model. The game doesn’t make money from people buying it since it’s free but from the in-game purchases-the resources needed to modify the villages & their clans. The free-to-play game strategy attracts the majority of the audience & more audience on the game suggests more in-game purchases. Also, the users could choose to wait for some features to unlock that could take from a few minutes to hours to unlock while the users could also pay to unlock them immediately. The one who could afford chose time & paid to unlock the features. A wise mind is all it takes!
Mobile Game.
Supercell revolutionized the gaming industry by introducing Clash Of Clans as a mobile video game. Not everyone could afford a laptop/desktop and Supercell understood that well. Thus, Clash Of Clans drew the attention of a lot of serious gamers to the mobile platform. The game also gave to the general, non-expertise populace a taste of what console and PC games of that level are like!
Variety of Different Playstyles.
Clash Of Clans unified its audience through diversity. The game has various game modes to offer for various players. For example, there’s a single-player mode that allows you to practice attacking a lot of other bases which is a good mode to practice for beginners. Second, there’s a multiplayer mode where you can attack other bases to win resources. You can also level up to higher leagues by winning one to three stars on each attack. This sense of achievement keeps the players hooked.
Worldwide Approach.
The simplicity of the game with entertaining, fun & exciting game features has established a huge fan base worldwide. Also, the game offers major language options for the gamers like Spanish, French, German, and Italian along with English making the game widely accessible worldwide. The game is so fun to play that millions of players log in each day to participate in clan wars, build bases, practice strategies for attacks & much more. The high accessibility of the game has made its huge fanbase in India, Iran, China, Japan & the United States. Clash Of Clans is the most popular in the United States with 18.92% participation, second, Turkey with 6.17% participation followed by China, Germany & Russia.
Regular Updates without Overwhelming the Players.
Supercell never failed to bring in new updates for the game’s new items, new in-app purchases, new characters, and the like both in Hay Day & Clash Of Clans. But, Supercell wise enough knew well that the updates could mess up the new gamer’s experience. Keeping this in mind, Supercell made the new updates available only to the existing players who knew how everything worked while two weeks later for the new players who were done with their basics then. In this manner, there was a continuous flow of content keeping the game warmed up without overwhelming the newbies!
Clash Of Clans might not be as popular as it was in the mid-2010s but it still remains in the list of the highest-grossing games on iOS and Android. In 2019, Clash Of Clans generated $722 million in revenue, a 27 percent increase year-on-year and its first increase since 2014. Clash Of Clans is accountable for 46% of Supercell’s revenue. Supercell has not updated figures since 2016 when there were an estimated 55 million active players on Clash Of Clans. The game also entered the E-sports industry & gave a boost there.
In all, Clash Of Clans has been a phenomenal free-to-play mobile strategy video game since the time of its launch & it’ll continue to slay. We hope that by reading the blog, you got to learn some things about Clash Of clans, strategies used by Supercell & how the game evolved over time.
‘Live It For Gaming!’
