I know, you must say that Supercell's case is too special. Since the advent of mobile games, there has only been such a Supercell in the world. Its experience, philosophy, and corporate structure cannot be learned by other companies. There is no practical reference for Chinese companies or overseas companies.
But is Supercell really so "special"?
For example, their emphasis on retention data, especially retention during the test period, is not significantly different from the attitude of China—and any conventional game company that values retention.
They will also try to set up annual indicators similar to KPIs, which all game companies will do.
For example, when the project development encounters resistance, the boss and the producer have different opinions. This kind of thing is common in many game companies, right? Stronger than Supercell can't avoid this situation at all.
Recently, Supercell ushered in its tenth anniversary. Ilkka Paananen, the famous CEO with the least power in the entire gaming industry, sent a long letter on the official website. The letter recalled the achievements of Supercell since its establishment ten years ago. The trial and error experienced behind one billion players, and the lessons learned from it. In addition to the CEO's own records, there are also some common employees' opinions.
If you read these reviews carefully, you may find that this company that has been "deified" by us may not be so unique. Every difficulty and challenge Supercell has faced has been encountered by other game companies, and they will be as confused and confused as our practitioners. Although the specific methods will be different, their solutions to these problems may be worth seeing for every company decision maker.
The following is the original text of Ilkka Paananen's open letter compiled by us, slightly abridged.
To be honest, I can't believe it at all. To this day, Supercell has been established for its tenth anniversary. I want to thank all the members of the Supercell family, partners and players who have supported us all the way.
When we started the company, we wanted to become companies like Blizzard, Nintendo, and Pixar. These companies have successfully launched entertainment products that millions of people love, and have been able to continuously produce works in the past few decades for ten years.
This is our first ten years, so we still have a long way to go. But our goal when we founded it hasn't changed: we want to make a game product that players can play for many years and can be remembered forever.
With the tenth anniversary approaching, we are also thinking about everything we have done in the past ten years: impressive moments, successes, failures and reflections. To commemorate this milestone, we want to share everything we have learned with everyone. We also try our best to give back to the game community that has always supported us, so we hope that these experiences and reflections can help colleagues who work hard in the game industry, as well as inspire company management and team building in other fields.
I think these thoughts should come from all of us, not just myself. So I asked our employees for their years of experience and suggestions. In addition, before we start, I would like to make one point: These experiences and thoughts come from the corporate culture we have established, and it does not mean that they will be suitable for other companies. Our success is largely due to luck. So if you are building your own company and culture, don’t try to copy Supercell’s culture. But to establish a corporate culture that suits you. That being said, I still hope that our thoughts can bring you a different perspective and serve as a starting point to help you find your own corporate culture.
1. Endless game
Like I said, our dream is to make a game product that can be played by players for many years and can be remembered forever. Simon Sinek has a view called "infinite game" (infinite game), and our company is built around this concept.
If the development team does not really believe that a game can become the product of our dreams, then this game will not be on the market. When testing games, our team measures the most critical factor of a game, which is how long the player can play. This is what we care about. Our employees told me: "Retain, retain, retain. Not only early retention (although necessary), but always pay attention to long-term retention when developing new features."
This means that when we test, we don't just cut down game items-we will cut down good game items. Both "Smash Land" and "Rush Wars" are good examples: these two very well-made and interesting games have received good feedback in the early stages, but they are not games that people can play forever. In this way, the development teams of these two games cut off these two projects themselves. They think they can do better and polish a better game.
But we will not stop here. Our team is always thinking about how to make long-term plans for player and community building. This can be reflected in version updates, content creation and community activities. Our team does its best to focus on the next decade, not the next quarter or the next year.
A good example is the team of Clash of Clans. They feel that the team is obligated to solve the old debts owed due to early design and technical deficiencies, so the team has always put the solution of these fundamental problems in the first place. This strategy did not pay off until two years later-but in a corporate culture that targets short-term benefits, this is impossible to achieve.
2. An excellent team can make an excellent game. But a group of excellent individuals may not form an excellent team.
In 2010, we established Supercell with the concept of establishing the best environment and culture for game development. Our argument is "the best people can make the best games." This sentence is also the first page of the PPT when we give a presentation to investors.
But after a few years, we realized that to make the best game, we don't need to have the best individual, but the best team. So we made some changes to this sentence.
For myself, the most unexpected thing in the past ten years is how difficult it is to build a development team that can produce explosive games.
-Your game should be able to capture the trend of player interest at the moment of release.
-You need creative and executive employees who can perform different responsibilities and have different ways of thinking.
-Most importantly, they must be able to fit into the team perfectly and work together.
These points are almost the cornerstone of our company's corporate culture. We are still learning how to build the best team. Unfortunately, we did not find the secret to building these teams. At least for us, these teams are established after constant experimentation and fine-tuning.
When building a team, we have a very practical suggestion: first establish a close-knit team composed of 2-4 people. In the early days of building a team, what we often said was to find two people who can work together efficiently. There is complete trust between them, and they can bring different perspectives and insights to each other-to make each other better. After you have a solid team core, it is much easier to extend and expand the team. If your core is not clear yet, don't add new members to the team!
3. Slowly recruit people and keep raising the threshold
We are lucky: in the gaming industry, the number of employees is not directly related to product quality. In fact, sometimes a small team can achieve better results.
Our first chairman of the board, Petteri Koponen, gave me a suggestion: When you are deciding whether to hire someone, try to imagine the average level of the company’s employees. Then ask yourself if the newly recruited person can improve the overall level. If you can, hire him in.
Our employees said this:
"Working with great people makes everything smoother. If a team is passionate about their game and understands what they are doing, it will be easy to work."
"For me, my standard is to recruit people who have a quality-first mentality and focus on a quality-first work environment. When I joined Supercell, I was most surprised that everyone regarded the responsible product as their own The same. When you really care about this game, you will consider the overall quality of the game, and thus push yourself to pay attention to details and keep polishing."
So what I want to say to other developers is: to recruit those who focus on product quality, and set a relatively high threshold for yourself. When employees go to and from get off work every day, they can see that their colleagues really love the games they make. This enthusiasm is contagious. This will establish a positive work dynamics, so that employees can motivate each other and become better.
4. Streamline the team, the smaller the better
We realize that a small team has unexpected benefits. At least for us, the quality of content produced by small teams is much higher than that of large teams.
"When a team is small, everyone can focus on the most important things. In contrast, when a team has too many people, it often leads to more messy work content for employees-they seem useful , But it just seems useful."
"Obviously, a small team can more accurately locate the elements that make the game successful. Whenever we develop a new game, we will emphasize the word'gameplay first' because it allows us to find the focus of development again. Especially. This is when we have a new game, doing this allows us to prioritize things. Take a simple example: if there is no excellent core gameplay, then don’t waste time and energy on fancy tools or techniques. If you The gameplay is not mature enough, and doing other things is a waste of time."
We are also aware that expansion when the time is not ripe will complicate the work environment and make it more difficult to change the direction of development. In fact, many times we have been back on track by streamlining the team.
5. Corporate culture is the work of all employees, not a slogan
As I mentioned before, my favorite book last year was "What You Do Is Who You Are" by Ben Horowitz. In this book, it is said that culture is defined by behavior, not what you say or whatever-I agree with this point of view. In addition, I want to say that corporate culture is also defined by the toughest decisions. For us, the most difficult decisions are these:
-Cut out those excellent but not outstanding game items.
-Say no to those extremely interesting new ideas, because we need to focus on a certain project.
-Make adjustments to the team configuration when the progress is not going well.
Supercell is very special in that most of these decisions are made by the team itself and are not subject to interference from the outside world and senior management.
"Game development relies on a team, and everyone has a very important role. Even if only one person fails to fulfill their duties and interferes with the morale of the entire team, the overall efficiency of the team will decline. Put this without focusing on the team. The removal of cooperating people from the team can often free the team from the potential that it had not shown before."
We also have a unique corporate culture: when the team leader thinks that someone is more suitable than himself, he often gives up his seat to others. This happened in the early stages of the development of "Clash Royale". No one asked them to do this. They made this decision on their own because they thought it was for the benefit of the company. There are many times our team specifically cut off their own projects to help other teams release their games. These bits and pieces all represent the sacrifices our employees have made for Supercell. These moments are far more important than slogans written on a piece of paper.
6. Trust the team, not control the team
We believe that decision-making should be made by those who have the ability. At Supercell, we firmly believe that these decisions should be made by the game development team. There are two reasons:
The team is the group of people closest to game development, so from their perspective, the best solution can be found.
If the team can reach agreement and make decisions without waiting for approval from their superiors, they will execute faster and happier.
For me, my favorite moment is when our team made great content, and it has nothing to do with me. Not only that, but I was the last person to know the news. This is my ideal Supercell mode of operation: the team makes all the decisions by themselves, and I don't have to do anything.
When talking about the importance of trust, our employees said this:
"Most companies have a set of subordinate systems and processes, which cannot fully stimulate the potential of employees. Supercell's success shows that when you remove the approval, subordinate relationship and bureaucracy in the company process, everyone can do Excellent stuff. This is the important reason why we have five explosive games."
Several employees also talked about not only trusting people in the company, but also trusting people outside the company.
"I think the concept of ownership is very important, especially since everyone in a small team like ours thinks this game is their own thing. But I also realize that ownership is not only important for the team, but it is worth it. Trusted partners are also very important. For example, for work such as game original painting, you need to make the outsourcing team feel this sense of belonging, and they will become better because of it. Therefore, sometimes it is also necessary to share ownership with others Very important."
Mutual trust does not mean that you cannot give constructive criticism. On the contrary-everyone should take the initiative to advise others, and everyone should take the initiative to seek feedback from others. In addition, after getting the feedback, the team can decide whether to adopt it or not. Doing so makes the whole process simple.
When things went smoothly, letting the team decide for themselves naturally saved a lot of trouble. But when things get tricky, it's not that simple.
We have fallen into this situation many times. For example, nearly 5 months after the development of "Battle of the Sea", many senior leaders and team creators believed that the game should be cut. We were also wondering what to do. We were at a difficult crossroads. On the one hand, we should cut this game from a business perspective. But on the other hand, if this is ours, then our corporate culture will no longer exist. We believe that corporate culture is more important than short-term benefits, so we still give the decision-making power to the development team. Fortunately, the development team insisted on its decision-they were right, everyone else was wrong.
Interestingly, when developing "Royal Clash" and "Wild Brawl", many employees outside the team also expressed doubts. But our corporate culture ensures that these games can still be released normally, and I am proud of this.
The last point I want to say is that we don’t want to be a company with a “reporting culture”. In a reporting culture, people do two things: one, they record what they are doing, and then write a report; second, they read a report written by others. Doing so will result in no time and energy to really invest in work. Usually if the team trusts each other, then this kind of report does not need to exist. So in many cases, if the two teams do not have much connection, we hope they treat themselves as independent studios. It is important to communicate with each other and share new developments, but it is also a double-edged sword-more communication is not necessarily better.
7. Don't be afraid of failure, try it boldly
In the early days of game development, we never thought about whether this game could be successful. I still remember that a member of the "Clash of Clans" team told me the day before the release that this game would never be as successful as "Cartoon Farm". At the same time, our latest three games have also received a lot of internal doubts in the early days. For example, "Wild Brawl" took a long time in the development phase. Many employees have opinions on its art style and control interaction; some people even think that it is not a real Supercell game. But the development team continued to improve the game, made huge adjustments during the testing phase, and finally released it after receiving positive feedback from the community.
Simply put, what all these years of experience tell us is-we don't actually have much experience. Most of the things we do are based on guesses and constant attempts.
"We don’t know anything. The players are changing, the company is changing, and we are changing. Life is like a moving target that is always moving. When I first came to Supercell, I thought our success came from the employees knowing the production. The secret of the explosive game. In fact, Supercell employees just love their work very much. Coupled with the freedom the company gives us, we have the greatest possibility to make good games."
It's difficult to make new things, and it often requires taking risks. The definition of taking huge risks is that you will fail more often than you succeed. If you are afraid of failure, then you will not take risks, you will not innovate, and you will not make explosive games. In order to encourage our employees to take risks, we have been working hard to build a unique corporate culture: we not only allow failure, but also expect failure. In fact, we try not to think of them as failures, but to treat them as experiences and lessons.
One thing we do is to celebrate these lessons learned from our failures. A few years ago, all the game team leaders got together to talk about the experience gained in cutting off the game project. Our operations and marketing teams also reflect on failed event planning. I am proud of the honesty of these people-their openness has allowed the entire company to learn a lot from their experience. These things can make the corporate culture stronger.
8. Try to avoid setting up procedures and rules
Human inertia is to control the situation. Most people feel safe in an environment they can control. In enterprises, in order to feel safe, we often set up various rules and regulations, especially after someone makes a mistake.
We think this approach is very undesirable. First of all, the previously established rules are often not time-sensitive, because many things will change. Secondly, sometimes people tend to do things according to the process, rather than analyzing the situation according to reason.
For example, many years ago, we established a rule: all new games need to be made playable content within three months, because we want to verify the feasibility of the core gameplay of the game faster. Developers then began to take advantage of the loopholes-they secretly began to make games ahead of time in order to be able to deliver the work on time. This creates an unhealthy working environment, and everyone thinks about how to bypass the rules and processes instead of focusing on the best games. Moreover, the situation is different for each game. Some games require 6 weeks, some require 6 months.
After some time, we finally abolished this regulation and returned to our original intention: I believe that every team can make the best decision for Supercell.
9. Traditional KPI settings are not applicable to Supercell
Another lesson is the way we set goals. Many years ago, we thought we should set annual goals, because all companies would do it. So we called all the leaders, and then spent a few weeks to study the five annual goals. When we figured it out, it was released at the beginning of the year.
Six months later, I asked everyone at a staff meeting: How are we doing compared to the goals we set. It turns out that most people don't remember what these goals are. At the same time, these set goals either have nothing to do with a certain team, or have nothing to do with the entire Supercell.
Then someone asked me, "Hi, isn't our goal to make a game that everyone can play for a long time?"
I said "Indeed."
"Then when the best team in the world works in the best environment and corporate culture, shouldn't we believe that we can achieve this goal?"
I said "Indeed."
"Then why do we need other goals?"
I said "I don't know either."
So the inspiration for me is that in a team-centric culture, we need to break the traditional way of thinking when setting goals. Now we have one and only one goal: we want to make a game product that can be played by players for years and can be remembered forever. This is a long-term plan, and every year we will try to take this ideal one step further. Now we all let the team set their own goals, and then they will show these goals to everyone in the all-hands meeting.
10. Write down your values and define your corporate culture
Over the years, I have been emphasizing the importance of corporate culture. And one of my biggest mistakes is that it took too long to actually write down our values and culture.
Supercell has six founders, and I think the six of us are very clear about the corporate culture we want to build. But it took me almost two years, after a team of more than 40 people, to write down our corporate culture. The reason I didn't do it before was because it sounded a bit too solid to write corporate culture as a memo, and also because I was busy doing other things (which seemed more important at the time).
At a meeting, someone talked about the core value of "responsibility", Supercell, but his understanding is almost completely different from the "responsibility" we understood when we founded the company. I suddenly woke up and realized that this matter should be implemented. So I met with each employee individually to try to understand the values of Supercell in their eyes. I summarized everyone's answers into a few pages of PPT, and then repeatedly confirmed that they are consistent with the values set when the company was founded. It’s worth doing, but I hope I can do it when there are only six people in the company.
Since then, we will reconsider our culture and values every 1-2 years. The leadership will meet with each team to discuss corporate culture and values.
An additional suggestion
"Life is short, enjoy every minute and every second. Find people who can inspire you, they can make you a better person. We don’t know what we’re doing, so the best thing to do is to build a An excellent team will try to create the best environment for it to succeed."
So that's it. If you finish reading, congratulations. We don't know what the future will look like, but we are very excited about the arrival of the next decade. The only thing we know is to focus on creating the best game development environment. Specifically, it is to continue the journey to build a better team and create a better development environment for the team.
Finally, I want to thank all Supercell employees, partners, and all players. You continue to inspire us every day, thank you for allowing us to persist in doing what we really love.
On behalf of all Supercell employees,