Think Like A Game Designer - Stefan Engblom — Designing games for millions of people and billions of dollars, Secrets of building game communities, The 2AM Party Principle, Reacting to player feedback (#51)

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

Stefan’s journey in game design has been nothing short of exceptional. Hailing from Supercell, the creative force behind hits like Hay Day and Clash of Clans, Stefan’s career has defied genre boundaries. As a Game Designer on the Clash Royale team at Supercell, Stefan immerses himself in every facet of game design. His primary focus revolves around gameplay balancing, crafting the intricate game economy, and shaping the game’s systems to perfection. With a passion for creating unforgettable gaming experiences, Stefan Engblom brings his unique insights and expertise to the table. Join us for an awesome discussion with Stefan Engblom on this episode of Think Like A Game Designer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Stefan Enginblum. Stefan works at Supercell, a company that has made games that have had hundreds of millions of downloads, sometimes 100 million downloads in a single day. They make billions of dollars with their games every year, and Stefan has worked on some of the biggest ones, including Clash Royale and Hayday. This is an incredible episode where we unpack what it means to build

games at this scale. What's the process in Supercell for how games get greenlit, how games get destroyed, even when they're going to make tens of millions of dollars or more, and the process of going to get a job like this. We talk about the 2 a.m. party principle, which can tell you how to find the career that you need. We talk about how to build a community. And Stefan builds a community in Finland and creates an entire national board game community.

And we show how he does that and talk about how you might do that for your own communities. We talk about how to react and analyze player feedback and tons more. I knew Stefan was going to be a great guest when I had a conversation with him that I talk about at GDC. But I think he over-delivered with an incredible,

detailed view of how these massive games get made and the kinds of trade-offs and thinking that goes into it. So I know I loved this conversation and I know that you will. So without further do, here is Stefan Engenblum. Hello and welcome. I am here with Stefan Engenblum. I'm hoping I got the name right. But Stefan, it's great to have you here. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, so this is actually, in many ways, me returning the favor. We get to meet. I got invited to a Supercell event that was at GDC just this year. And it was by far my favorite event of the entire convention.

GDC is Game Developers Conference, kind of the heart of a, you know, the game industry getting together and really kind of deep diving on a lot of subjects. And it was really just a, Supercell didn't have anything they were trying to sell. they didn't have anything they were trying to promote. It was just a bunch of people interested in game design getting together to talk about game design, the art of game design. And you and I end up having a really great extended conversation there. And I was like, okay, we got to share this with the audience. So I guess I just want to, you know, one, say thanks for that. And two, kind of get a sense.

What is it like working at Supercell? Is it really a, that kind of vibe permeates through the whole community? Because it really felt like quite a, quite a refreshing thing for a company like that. Oh, yeah, I think it was like a very supercell thing, actually, like that whole event. Like it was very true to our like vibe in a way. And super unhappy to hear actually. That was our first time we organized something like that. And we definitely wanted to keep it like very, very casual, very like,

hey, let's get together. Let's get senior people together. Let's not like have any fast. Let's not have the like any kind of marketing talk. Any let's not try to sell. Let's just like talk about. games, talk about game design and like get to know each other and nothing, nothing else. And so it's super happy to hear that like you, you enjoyed it.

Yeah. Yeah. Please, please do. And so this was another thing that was great for me because it was partially because of this podcast. I kind of got invited. And I get to, you know, there's a, I've known this for a while, but I haven't really had a chance to deep dive.

There's such a huge game community, a Finnish game community. And, you know, Helsinki in particular, there's just. There's a ton of companies. There's a ton of designers out there. And I haven't really had an opportunity to speak with many of them. And so I'd love to kind of dig in a little bit to your origin story. You know, for a lot of the stories I tell and that people tell in this podcast, it's very, very American-centric, just because that's where, you know, I spend most of my time.

And so what is it like to kind of start a game design career and how did you get started out there? I think a lot of people be really interested so they can know that it's not just, not just the people who I happen to know from California that could become great game designers. Yeah, I mean, yeah, Finland has a really bustling like game industry and a game community and it's actually like gotten a bit more known also like around the world through some big companies

like unknown companies like Supercell and Robio who's known for Angry Birds and Remedy Entertainment known for, for example, Alan Wake and Max Payne. And oddly, like, listening to, like, your podcast, like, many of the origin stories on personal level are actually, like, fairly similar also in the Finnish, like, the origins of, like, what games we played as kids and stuff like that, that's, like, very similar. But, like, yeah, Finland has its own, own, like, peculiarity. So let's start with...

my origin story then. So I have played games, of course, my entire life. I really, for me, started with, like, traditional card games and then also, like, just with a 52 card deck. And then also, like, computer games with the early computers. We had an MSX spectra video, which was like at the same era as the Commander 64. The Commodore 64 was like super popular in Finland but like we we ended up having an MSX spectra video and I loved it.

I think it's better. That's my hope they. And we had that. I was like six years old or something, four years old when we got that. My brother was like five years older than me. He was more focused on the on kind of the hardware stuff and like making things work. And I just played the games. and yeah and then we then we got an amiga after that and we were also like playing board games

and we had this like small group of like six people and we were then also playing like started playing table top role playing games first it was my brother and his friends but they got me in like I was the I was the young annoying little brother who had to be taken in but like yeah we kept on playing like tabletop RPGs and then also some of us started playing Magic the Gathering. And yeah, we had from Tabletop Arbages, we had like Rune Quest and Dungeons and Dragons. Those were like certainly the ones that we played most.

Also some cyberpunk. Nicole of Thulhu. Yeah. Then we then eventually like, yeah, Magic the Gathering I played quite a lot. Like I went really deep. Like I ended up playing like in tournaments and stuff. Like I didn't go to like pro level as I know you've been.

But I did play in some proto qualifiers that we had in Finland. There was like a very active and still is like an active like kind of magic gathering community in Finland. There was even a couple of, I think there's been like two or three world champions also like coming from Finland in magic together. Yes. No, it's a strong game community and design community. And yeah, a lot of as as you've echoed already, a lot of the origin stories. of a Pivalence industry tend to come through, through RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons and through TCGs like Match Together.

Yeah, absolutely. And like there's this, it's kind of a, specifically with Dungeons and Dragons and Magic, the Gathering, there's this very strong. When it comes to game design, there's a very strong thing that like in both those games, like you are also a game designer. Whether you're a player or you are a dungeon master,

you are in some parts, like a game designer, you are partially responsible for the experience that's happening at the table. Even in like magic together, you build decks and stuff, and you also like kind of you want to, you want to like build decks that are similar to the decks that your opponents have in terms of power level.

That's what you see often when you now read online about like commander games and stuff like that. People are like, have a lot of these social conflicts about like, oh, he came with this power level and I came with that power level and whatnot. And like the experience weren't great. So like everybody is actually kind of responsible for that experience. But that's like it's not like super evident.

In tabletop RPGs, it's more evident. But anyway, I'm, no, I find there's a really interesting little tangent there, right? When it comes to, I mean, we've, you know, I've definitely dove into that subject before when it comes to, you know, these games force you to design and create. but there's a nuance there that we haven't talked about as much when it comes to like these kinds of multiplayer social games

like Commander and Magic where you're playing and I remember even during my earliest days playing Magic before I got really super competitive with it it would just be these massive multiplayer games there wasn't a concept of Commander but we'd all just kind of be playing and you know you didn't want to be the guy that brought like this super competitive like Stasis deck which locked down everybody's resources and made it the game not fun everybody hated that guy right

So, like, there was no explicit role per se, but there was a kind of social norm and you're, you know, more, even more recognizing like, yeah, everybody kind of wanted to win, but what you're really trying to do is craft this experience. And we're all responsible for co-creating that experience, which is, of course, what you do in a role-playing game, we're co-creating a story, we're co-creating experience. And then in many of these kinds of games of magic where you're not, not just the hyper-competitive level, there's a lot going on. And people express themselves through those things, right? you want to build your elf deck or your angel deck or some cool combo thing, right? It just gives you an opportunity to kind of get your feet wet in game design, even though you're playing in somebody else's sandbox.

And there's now, I imagine when I do this podcast five years from now or 10 years from now, I'm going to get a lot of people who are like, oh, I started with Minecraft and I started with, you know, Roblox and these other things. Roblox is more explicit about it, but there's a lot of these things that give you this freedom to create that I think is the precursor. So I think it's a nice way for people to kind of get there.

People want to start with design, don't necessarily want to have a, you know, have to go all the way to making their own games, make games within other people's games, right? Using modding communities, using tools like building Jackson and magic or, you know, it's a great way to get started. I have so many questions I want to ask about your time at Supercell because there's a lot of fascinating things there. But so then this jump, let's just cover. I just want to cover the link here. Yeah, I'll try to, I'll try to like make, I don't know.

I don't know if there's a short version, but I'll try. Okay, so then, then, uh, in my like teenage years and late teenage years, like it was it was harder to get together to play like tabletop RPGs, you have like this campaign, have the same group, get together and stuff like. So I started getting into board games and, uh, because that was more agnostic of like the the kind of the group so I could play with different people at different times

and different amounts of people and I got like very deep I got into the into the kind of the Finnish board game scene and ended up co-creating co-founding the Finnish board game society in Finland

and really kind of like be part of like driving this kind of new Euro game Renaissance like in in Finland. So I was like, I feel that I played... What timeline was this?

This was like early 2000. There was like... So I think one of those like cool, like I remember like two games that were like really influential like mind blowing for me. Those were like Carcassonne and, and Tikal and then also like Puerto Rico. So it was that time like 2001 Carcassone was launched,

if I remember correctly. So that was like, that's also when this like, kind of the whole boom. So it's kind of like happened simultaneously elsewhere as well. So there was also like Rio Grande games was founded in US and. Yeah, there's definitely a time where Euro games were kind of, were kind of taking off.

And I don't know, maybe it's maybe worth defining Euro games for those that don't know what that means. It's not necessarily that easy to define. But do you have a short definition you give for people that can follow along with the types of games we're talking about? Okay, yeah. So there's kind of like two, two schools of games generally.

Like when it comes to board games, there's the American style games and then there's Euro games. And of course there's lots of blend and stuff. But first, the American style games, that's your like war games and very thematic games. Nowadays, like typical examples are also like fantasy flight games and stuff. And then there's Euro games and those

kind of originate more from like Germany and German games. and they are a bit more abstract. So they kind of feel more abstract. There's like a theme that is based on like the classic Mediterranean trade. We are farming most of the time. Yeah, or farming or something. But they're also like one one description.

It's often like very peaceful themes, like trading and farming rather than like war and conflict and direct confrontation. And it's a lot about like being efficient, being like the most efficient farmer or being the, gaining victory points or getting most money or something rather than like eliminating the other players. Yeah, that's great.

They are also like often quite, yeah, and they're often also a bit shorter in length and a bit like more tight rules-wise. Yeah, much more, much more tight mechanics and less theme-focused, more mechanics focused is the simplest way I've heard that, but actually there's a lot of really great threads you pulled out of there. So I just wanted to kind of give it people enough, you know,

so they could understand where we're at. But what I actually want to dig into is you founded the Finnish, what was it was the Finnish board game society? Yeah, the Finnish board game society. So this is one of the things I often talk about for you, right? You know, for people who are a lot of times, I say you want to get in the game industry, you know, start going to convention, start going to finding a community near you,

start getting involved with people, but for people who are in communities where they don't exist, or there may be not as much of that formal structure, you can create that structure. And so that's something that you did. And I think it's a really underappreciated part of the process. If you serve that purpose of building those communities, you are immediately going to get, you're adding value already. So you're already going to build relationships. You're going to start to get more opportunity to try things and learn games and learn from other people. And so it's a really powerful tool. So maybe if you have a couple of tips, for people, I know this was a little while ago now,

either how you would recommend people go about it or maybe some of the things that worked or lessons you learned as you were building a community like that. I think things have also changed on that front a bit because now online communities are way more vibrant. I think it's like a bit easier to like get in. But it requires work and it's and requires you to be like active.

But yeah, I don't know what would be like, I think there are a lot of resources and a lot of good tips around there for like organize. I think you can like start very like don't. I think you shouldn't think too big. Like think of things like, oh, there's this cool convention like local convention or maybe the local game store. Like maybe I could like organize a little tournament there.

Like that would be fun. Like I really like this game of mine. Let's say it would be Solforge fusion like. Good choice. like hey, good shows, exactly. So, like, hey, I could like organize like a game of like tournament of Soulford Fusion. That would be cool. Like I'll go and suggest this to my local game store and then you can go.

And then like, you know, start with something like that. And I think one important aspect, I think is like for something. Because I mean, this whole topic has actually resonated with me quite a lot when you, when you have talked about it in your podcast. But I think one thing for me was that I never did it because I specifically thought that like it's going to lead to the game industry. It's going to lead for me to get a profession. I did it because I really just wanted to do it. I loved it.

I wanted to organize an event because like I love it. I wanted to organize a tournament for some game or whatever. And I think that's like kind of important because like even if it doesn't. You gotta enjoy the journey, in other words. Like, do it because you want to do it. Don't do it because there's an end goal in mind because that's very likely going to end up in a disappointment. And also, like, you might not enjoy the ride.

Yes. No, this is great advice in my experience for everything you want to do in life as a general rule. Like, if you want to find your ways to enjoy what you're doing, I think trying to get into the game industry just because you want some kind of end goal is usually a mistake. You've got to really be passionate about it. and love what you're doing. I think it's great. And then your advice to start small, right?

Just start with a local, something at your local game store, local convention, just starting to build things if it's online communities and, you know, starting to contribute in online communities, right? You mentioned SoulForge Fusion. So we have a online Discord channel where people can chat and communicate. And those that were most helpful and answering questions and participating, we as our company now elevated them to Forge Guardians and gave them a bunch of status and cool updates and so it just sort of happened organically for these people and we saw them

engaging and so we said hey we i want to find a way to reward them and they didn't do it because they thought they were going to get something out of it they did it because they were passionate members of the community and i think that that is always been the recipe for every aspect of what you're doing here so i think it's great yeah and this certainly has happened like at supercell as well that there are like that we actually have employed some people who have been like very active in the community and there are like there are people also like lots of people of course who are like happy to be in the community and like kind of be active there they are might be moderators in our reddit pages or they might be moderators in discord they might be twitch streamers uh

youtubeers whatever like there's there's a lot of uh a lot of like options yeah yeah so so so finding doing a thing you're passionate about finding an area they're so many different ways to contribute now, you know, whether it's, and you just mentioned a bunch of them. And so finding the things where your kind of combination of your skill set, your interests and your passion and something that's going to be valuable to the world can all overlap. And that's a great, it's just a great way to think about pursuing a career of any kind, just doing things you're passionate about and adding value to the world. Great.

And it's also good to know that like it's not necessarily like kind of, you might even be just like being on that level where you're like organizing stuff and being in the community and being a passionate player rather than being someone like on the other side being like in the industry. So like that's that's a that's that's that was a place where that I have to like kind of contemplate a lot than like eventually that like what would it actually be to like kind of work in the game industry rather than just have it as a hobby. Sure. Yeah. So. So. So. Then continued, so I was like, yeah, I think I was like 10 years or something like very active with the board game society stuff, organized a game club, organized events, etc.

And meanwhile, I actually studied finance. So I didn't like study anything related to games. I studied finance and I ended up working in accounting and finance reporting and finance reporting. stuff like that. So I actually worked like, I think I worked eight years on in the finance industry. With with like with a lot of yeah, with like finance reporting, accounting topics like that. I think it was like it was interesting, but I definitely wasn't passionate about it. And I have a story of this like particular moment when I felt that like I want to actually pursue the game industry. I don't know if it's, if it's.

Yeah, no, you've got my attention. I'm hooked. Let's go. Tell me the story. Yeah. So it was, it was a party. So there was a, there was party. Like when you work in places, there are parties every now and then.

So it was one party. We were at the after party and I think it was like 2 a.m. And we were at a club and I saw two, like one of my colleagues and then one representative of one of the banks who were like hosting the party that they were discussing about foreign trade. So they were sitting at the couch at 2 a.m. A little bit tipsy and they were passionately talking about foreign trade. And I was like, hey, dude, so what the heck?

Like, it's like, we're parting here that like, why are you talking about foreign trade? And, but then it dawned on me that they, they weren't, they were talking about foreign trade because they were so passionate about it. They were like, they really loved their craft and they wanted to improve their craft and they wanted to talk about it. And then I realized that like, I want to, I want to work with something that like, like, I want to like at two a.m. be talking. about that topic. And it was very clear that that's games for me. Like that would be games for me. So that was like this one particular moment when, even if it had been like kind of brewing, brewing in my mind for a long time. But that particular moment I remember that like this thought crossed me and this particular example that's like that I want to be at a party at 2 a.m.

And I want to be talking about my profession. And it has. happened multiple times after that and I've always been happy to talk about game design at 2 a.m. And the 2 a.m. party principle. I like it. I like it a lot. That's a great story. Yeah. Okay. So now we've so then so then so then. So now have like now I'm like okay yeah now I'm like okay I want to work at the game industry. What do I do next? Okay. So it was like actually a two year like a a two-year process. Like I started thinking that like, okay,

how would it actually be to work in the game industry? It was like first, like, do I actually want this? Will it kill my passion for games if I, if I make it into a profession? And then also like, okay,

how do I go about this? So, well, because now we get back to the like, why it was good to like be active in the community. I, of course, knew a couple of people who work in the game industry. at that point because I had been active because there were like several board gamers in the

in the industry so so I contacted them and I was asking asking for like hey let's have coffee let's have a chat like about this topic and all that and and they recommended me to this one thing that is like also like a very big thing in Finland which is this IGDA meetups international Game Developers Association. I'm not sure in how international they are. I think they're at least in Europe, but I think maybe in the US as well. So IGDA International Game Developers Association,

they have like monthly meetups here in Helsinki. And so I was recommended that, hey, like join one of those and go check it out. And you can like meet people who work in the industry. And so I did. And so I got to learn like, and get to know, like, more people who work. And I actually, like, ended up meeting more people there who were like, oh, you're in the game industry as well and who I kind of knew from,

from the board game scene and all that. So that helped me get again, like more to know people, et cetera. And then what ultimately then helped me was like one of my colleagues, yeah, one of my colleagues showed that, hey, there's this like there's this like focus test group happening for a game company that she thought that maybe I would be interested in that kind of stuff because I was like vocal about being a gamer at work and stuff like that so so I ended up going there and it was this company called digital chocolate that they made mobile games and they

their head office was in San Mateo but one of the dev studios was in health The Helsinki studio was originally called Sumaya and it was founded by a couple of the same people who also ended up founding Supercell later. And so digital chocolate was looking for some focus testers and I joined. And then as a happy accident, I went there and the guy who was the lead game designer for that game was my friend from the board game scene. And so we, of course, I tested, I did the thing. And then I stayed and chatted with him more after the session. And I offered then that, hey, like, I could do more of these kind of testing if they would be interested, you know, that I could like, if they have some other, other like alpha builds.

Like, I would be happy to test and give some feedback on them. And then that kind of like led to then me, me getting. like the foot between the door and and their like design director becoming like a bit interested in me and I was doing a couple of like alpha tests for them and then eventually like we had a discussion with him and and like he actually straight on said that like he's not actually that interested in my like test reports he's more interested in like having a very potential like game designer like kind of close by and that was of course made me quite quite happy and And I think it was like one year later after that that I then landed a job as a junior game designer at Digital Chocolate then.

Yeah. So this is just a wonderful story because it's, you know, this is, you know, in some sense, a decade of progress and at least two years of focused energy towards this. Building relationships, trying, you know, doing these things, starting to get involved in the communities that are that are there. getting to turn that and an opportunity to demonstrate your skill and then get the job. So it's just a great kind of a classic narrative of how you do these sorts of things. And so it's great to get to share it. And so digital chocolate now, it's pretty obvious how that leads to Supercells and the same founders bring over there. I want to paint the picture a little bit of Supercell because I think most people have probably

heard of Supercell and heard of some of the games. you know, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, what you worked on. The numbers are so staggering that I remember what struck me is we were having this conversation at the event and you were talking about a project that you'd worked on. And I don't remember the details of it or what I've even allowed to share, but it was basically the gist of it was, we made this project, it was pretty good, it was going to make tens of millions of dollars a year and it was not worth our time to finish it, that we handed it off. because the scale of the games that you make,

if it's not going to make hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars, you're not even interested. Like, that blew my mind. So maybe you can flesh out a little bit here. So people understand, before we start digging into the design principles and things that work here,

like how, what this is like? Yeah, it's, yeah, I have to think of that, like, what kind of numbers can I actually, like, public talk about, but there are like there are numbers that are public about our our success and about the game so like i'll i'll share ones i mean just things i found on on wikipedia right so of the things i know i believe clash of clans is the is the game that has made the most money of any game uh on uh on the mobile i was i was i read a note about that that you're the clash royale which you'd worked on

sort of the card game variation of it had made something like $2.5 billion over three years was the last note that I had seen. And that was even as of 2019. So who knows where it's bad since then. So those are just a couple of numbers that kind of just like and pieces of data that kind of blew my mind. And I'm sure there's more. But just to give a sense of stuff, I know you can share because it's already public.

Those are certainly, yeah, ballpark numbers. So like kind of we're talking about like, we're in the like billions of annual revenue. Or like half a billion of annual revenue or stuff like that. And this is all coming from free to play mobile games exclusively. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's the player counts are also like quite.

I think we've talked about those there's been like. we've had like kind of we've been around like 30 million DAU we've had at some point we had like 100 million DAU across all our games so like 100 million players in one day played like our like four of our games

like logged in unbelievable yeah that's quite a lot the numbers the numbers are so staggering It's hard to wrap my head around it. Talking about huge games, of course. I know in the PC, for example, League of Legends is known to be like huge game.

I think I might, I can't remember exactly, but they have also like read something like 30 million DAU, for example. So in one day, 30 million players playing, I think. And you, yeah, those are like massive. At a hundred million. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane.

Of course, for all again, but still, yeah, those are like kind of, yeah, and we have had like in installs. When Clash Royal launched, I think this is like someone's public information, but like when Clash Rial launched, like it was in, within a week, we had 30 million installs, for example. Okay. All right. So I think we've done enough enough of this, this context. So we are pretty big scales. You're kind of, kind of a big deal. So I want to just set the stage here because I want to spend a fair amount of time.

It's like, I want to level up my own thinking here, right? I can't even conceive of making games with that scale of an audience. And I'd like to, by the end of this conversation, have my mind opened up to it. So let's maybe walk me through what does it look like when they're trying to either. And I want to attack this from any angles. You can pick wherever you want, right? Starting a project like this, scaling a project like this, marketing a project like this, testing it. Like, what does it take? How do you build, especially with this, you know,

obviously in the context of free to play mobile, how do you start thinking about building projects at that scale? Yeah, that's a, that's a big question. I know, it's meaty. It's meaty. So pick any piece of it like. And so, so let's let's start from like kind of the company culture and the kind of the fundamental thoughts on like how we how we want to make games at SuperZone. which has been kind of not copied, but people, lots of companies are kind of replicating it and like kind of taking, being inspired by the way Supercell operates. So we are, like, we have some like really strong values that include trust, independence and responsibility. And so like we are, like the name Supercell comes from the teams,

being these sales that are consists of high-performing great individuals that make a really great team and who are able to like very independently do the right decision. So we have like every game team has basically like full trust and full independence to do whatever they want. But the caveat is that we are making hit games. So you really

need to be thinking how do you make a billion dollar game and not just like, oh, I just want to like make something funny as a hobby. But the point is that you're not making you're not making Puerto Rico, right? now. You're not making Euro games. You need something that's going to really have huge ridiculous mass appeal. So for example, I would I would love to make like a board game version

of some of our games, but it doesn't make any sense for me to like spend time of that even if I would love that. I could maybe do that on my free time. But but the point is point is that like the idea is that like who knows best like what works in a game. Like it's the game developers. It's not the leadership. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. some external consultant. It's the ones who actually make the game who understand the game they are making as well and everything that like kind of can make the decisions. So like and there's also like it's very important that the that the like with the independence like I think it's like it's a very important value. It's like you feel ownership of what you do. So like if this if the idea

kind of comes or if it's like micromanaged from above then you don't feel ownership and you slowly and gradually like stop caring basically about what you do and you're like okay whatever like i'll just do what i'm told to do and uh and i don't care so like you really want to like uh i feel i'm not like perfectly selling selling this or like kind of explaining this but but one thing is that like the the kind of the the whole trust and a responsibility like usually it's, yeah, it's kind of like, just words on a, on a PowerPoint. Right. That's exactly where I was going to, that's exactly where I was going to dig in next is because

that what is the difference? Everybody says those things. What is a difference? How do you live it? How does that, how does that scale in reality? Yeah. And that, that would be like, might be a better question for, for our CEO, but like, basically, like, we certainly, like, we certainly live it.

and we certainly like, it's really true. And it has led to like some really difficult situations and difficult decisions also sometimes when you like, you, because when you are responsible, for example, when you kill a game, that's really tricky. I've been like, it's really tough. Like you are not being told that you need to kill the game. You need to do that decision yourself. and you need to have me through what that looks like like what that kind of even a level yeah yeah yeah I've been I've been in that situation once but so far I've been uh yeah actually as a background I've been 10 and a half years at super so I've been a while when I

joined the success was already there but it wasn't like publicly known yet so it was kind of like at the early days of the success. But Hayday and Clash of Clans were out there already. So I've seen some ups and downs in the company. But yeah, so killing a killing game. Basically,

I mean, the game can be killed in various phases, of course. Like you could kill it like you're developing the game. You might end up like killing it at that point, like you feel that, okay, this doesn't have what it takes. This doesn't like this doesn't click enough. This doesn't like make sense

or this, maybe this doesn't feel scalable enough or whatever the reason is. That might be a situation to kill it. And at that point, like you have to like you, the developers of the game who are working on the game have to identify that. Like no, like

you can hear feedback and you can like listen to feedback, but no one is going on like, you have to make the decision. So, all right. So I just, I'm fascinated by this. And I want to really unpack it because so this idea, if you're when, if you have a, how does a game originates? There's a team, the teams, these sort of super cells of groups are already defined. Or you kind of come together and say, hey, we want to make a game. Like, let's start from the germination period.

And then we can kind of maybe walk through the checkpoints. I feel like I'm trying to. I kind of figure out like how to like explain all this because it's such like a huge amount of different different like topics. That's okay. We got we got, this is why it's a long form podcast. We have all the time in the world and there's a lot. And you know, it's, I don't expect if it was easy to unpack a multi billion dollar a year

process, then everybody would do it. So so it's okay. Yeah, we're going to take our time. So, so we know that we have these core principles, trust, independence and responsibility. We know that the individual small scale teams have ultimate authority. here. And now the question is, how did that, let's start with just like kind of how those teams get formed and how the authority plays out. Ideally, we'll come up with some specific examples or you can create some hypotheticals. We can't talk about the specifics of like where, how this team is

functioning and integrating and making these key decisions. Yeah. Okay. So teams are usually formed quite organically. But this is like this process of like how is a new game started that has evolved quite a lot and changed quite a lot along the years. So I think there's been like five different processes or non-processes that have for forming these. Like sometimes we had a more rigorous thing. And then we scrapped that because like it felt like the more rules you added the clunkier and problematic it got. So but usually I would say that it's very organic. So you might have, right now we have a like a, there's a prototype team. There's a, they are working on like a couple different.

They're working with different prototypes there and brainstorming different stuff and trying out, trying to just make, make something that's playable and see if it clicks and then take it further. And basically that kind of phase, the phase where you're doing a prototype that is usually just like two or three people. Like that's it. Like you're just like testing this like core gameplay, core interaction.

Uh, or that's happening. And then if it's, if it's like, if it really feels, hey, there's something to do this. Then this is like,

this would be a phase when like forming like an actual team. Then this would be a decision when like, uh, the leadership would be a bit involved that like, hey, okay, like now we have this concept. It's looking really cool. And we have these people that we have like, like there's a bunch of people from these different disciplines that would be like

and really really excited to start working on this game for real. And that's kind of like a soft green light moment in a way that like, that okay, like, hey, let's let's start working. Like you guys can go like agree with your car. leads, make sure that transitions work out, you know, all that. So like very organic, in other words, like things happen very organically. But you have to like, of course, be again, here's again, trust and responsibility comes down here.

So like, like, even if I would, there would be like a project that feels like super fun and like, oh, that's cool. Like, I want to go there and work and they want me to join them. Like, I can't just leave my current team. I can't just like dump them. That would be like very irresponsible for me. from me. So I have to like then discuss with my lead that, hey, by the way, there would be this opportunity and I would be really interested about this. And let's figure out this

transition. Let's hire someone else. Or like I have this other guy, this other team who could maybe replace me and so forth. So like all right. So let me let me just make sure I'm getting this. I'm getting this right. So what I what I heard was you start there's a some some people are assigned to this sort of prototype team, which are small little groups that can kind of organically just try stuff, just iterate, try things, see if they get something excited. Then they, there's some window where they, I mean, they're obviously showing these prototypes off to other people in the company. They get enough people excited from different disciplines. They're showing it to people around. Is there some kind of formal system for this or it's just sort of organically like, hey, come

take a look at this and you just have people show up? I'd say it's very organic. Like, Okay. It's quite common that at some point there's like some kind of what we call company playable. So like it's just opened up to the whole company and anybody can play. And then you're kind of like, yeah. So that's pretty common. Okay. So there's a thing that's available to play.

Eventually you get enough positive feedback. I don't know people like, hey, this is cool. I would totally work on this. Or you got enough of a critical mass that now you go to the leadership and say, hey, I think this is ready to go. I'd like to move it forward as one of these prototypers that now you want to

build a team and go? Is it like you approach it or is there a regular review? How does that go from leadership saying, yeah, we're going to pull the trigger here? Yeah, so what the leadership would be looking at there mostly is the team. Like, is this a team

that they would like, do they believe that this team can deliver? Oh, okay. So they don't even, I mean, not even really evaluating the game at all. You're not pitching the game or anything. It's just saying, hey, this group of people. Okay.

This group of people all believe in something. Let's go. Yeah. Probably at that point, like, there's some level of validation already for the game. It's self in a way that that, like, that's already some validation that people got excited about it and all that. So, like, but it's really interesting parallel there. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.

Continue. Yeah. And but then like kind of like at this point things are still like very very organic. Then things get a little bit more formal when you go to like what we sometimes call phase two. So we we have this. We talk about phases, but like it's it's also a bit fluffy. But like we talk about phase zero as this phase where you are making that prototype. and then phase one when you're like kind of like a little bit above that and we're kind of now in phase one right like we're we're making a little bit more than a prototype we're like adding art and we're like we're like kind of maybe defining the meta game the progress game around that like minute to minute gameplay and and then then we go to like phase two and phase two is like a bit more formal because that's now like okay now you're heading for like some kind of BIDA or some kind of soft launch now we kind of like

start actually putting like the core concept is really solid now and and we believe in it and now we need like more manpower to like actually get this like going now here's like an important thing that like that ideally at this point like you would have like you would be at a pretty good phase with the core of the game and this doesn't always work but like it's really because Because when you start scaling up the team, it gets really tricky to change the course of the project. So before this, you had maybe like five people there in the team. At that point, it's like very easy to still like change completely the course of the project. That's like, okay, like, let's do, like let's maybe change the theme completely or let's change like kind of the

what it's actually about. Maybe it's not a action game. Maybe it's a card game or whatever. So you can still do that kind of change. But then when you start to scale to like 10 or 10 to 20 people, then it gets immediately like a lot harder. And also like you start to like involve maybe like other teams like the marketing team, for example, to planning the launch of the game or stuff like that.

So now you kind of like ideally have a pretty solid core. So now you're in phase two and you're starting work. towards like an actual launch to put it out there to to to to the real real audience okay so up to this point you've not you've not put anything out to anybody outside the company this is only internal so far usually not no uh i think in the early days we we did we did there was a little bit more that but like there's also this thing of like we we have some weird problems because of the success. So like we really have to be careful like when we show things to the public because it's like a pretty big deal usually. Yeah. And so so that's kind of like you're kind of like

a little bit careful with that. Sometimes maybe a bit too careful. Yeah. One of the challenges of being so one of the challenges of being a big successful company is you, you have a lot more to lose. So you have to be more careful a little bit than the newer smaller designers or design teams. Okay. So what you know, phase zero to phase one, there's a leadership moment. that they say, okay, enough people believe in this. We're going to let you go forward with now. You've doubled the time, the size of the team. Now, how do you move from phase one to phase two,

where now you're talking about quadrupling the size of the team and adding in a bunch of different departments? What makes something go from phase one to phase two? So, well, at this point, like we, there's probably at this point being like certainly like a company playable and we might even have been looking at like some really, we have a, I think we're, are like 400 right now.

That's also something like we are pretty small company, actually like person wise, considering the scale of our business. But it's still enough that we actually can't get like quite a nice testing. It's quite a nice testing environment for like for our games for sure. So we get to like internally test sometimes even a little bit extent to like friends and family depending. then so at this point like we get we do get some validation of like hey does this like concept

work right so that that that kind of gives the confidence then like the the the moment and an important factor here is also like the momentum in the team does team believe it like there's been projects where like people have been like excited they're like hey this was like super cool like playable like we're happy like like you should do you should do this but the team actually ends up not believing in the project anymore. They are like, okay, like that they see maybe the problems that like the players

in like the other people in the company don't see. So that's also like an important place where like the kind of the where like kind of the trust and responsibility comes in and the independence that like the team is really they know the game

best. Like they understand the problems. They understand the opportunities and the issues they might be facing. So like if they feel that hey, no, there's something like really fundamental that this won't work out or we don't really have the momentum or the motivation to do these big changes that are like required. That may or maybe they even went that trap then that's true that like, hey, you know, like

do this game except like maybe you should change this one aspect. But maybe they already tried that and figured that it was wrong and so forth. So they might be like. And so the team, yes, gets back to the idea we're talking about earlier when the team has to choose to kill a project. This might be a fair.

Yeah. And I love, I mean, I love that this is, you know, the principles here. Like you start very small, prototype rapidly.

Don't spend a lot of resources. Slowly build like momentum and get, you know, get traction, then work on building the other parts, adding resources, art, building the meta game,

building other pieces, then scaling up from there. I mean, this is just a great, great process. As you get more confidence, you add more resources and for sure more time polishing. And then you have these opportunities to kick out. But it seems like now since you're getting a team to 10, 20 people, then now the cost of failure is higher. The cost of closing it out is higher.

And presumably it's just going to keep going up. So now what got us to the point, I'm still not sure I'm clear, like what moved us from phase one to phase two? And then how do you, who amongst this now? 10 or 20, you know, 4 to 5 people can all kind of agree probably to say, yeah, we're going to stop. 10, 20 people starts to become harder to agree in anything. Yeah, there's usually when the team grows and when we go to phase two, like, there usually

still is this like core team in a way. There is this core group. Usually it's the ones who started, but sometimes, sometimes there's maybe a new member who kind of joins that group in a way. I've been in that position as well where I like I join a team that was already established, but they were kind of or maybe some core member, some vision holder, like switch to another project and then I step in and I kind of become one of the vision holders for that project from there on forwards.

So now the point is that like there's like even if you would have a 20 member team, you still might have like four or five members who are, like the actual like kind of right okay that makes sense and then and so does that core decision maker team is they're the ones that they get to decide on their own whether you go from phase one to phase two also they can obviously choose to kill the game or change direction are they do they just get to say hey we're ready pour on the extra resources leadership or does leadership get involved with jumping to that next there is no like there is no hierarchical like power that this group of four or five people would have like kind of like an an organizational power it's it's more like

I don't know. It's kind of weird because it's almost like a silent contract in a way that's like an organic thing. But like you know who are who are like in this group. And you do of course like you talk about it as well that like, hey, like we are like vision holders, et cetera. Sure. Yeah.

I love I love I mean I can I can dig into this forever. And yeah, maybe I do also want to speak to the CEO because like building this is all kind of cultural norms like not hierarchical, not. explicitly rule-based cultural norms that are building these things at scale. That is so rare and so hard to achieve. I'm absolutely fascinated by it. So you've got these, I don't know if this maybe is something of like Finnish culture here.

It's hard for me to imagine some of this in the US. Yeah, it's not really Finnish either. Like it's because it's quite uncommon like also in Finland. It's actually like really hard to like explain because A, I've now lived in that environment now for like more than 10 years. So it's like, it's just like normal to me in a way. But also, also like I realized that it's not common to other people. So it's like kind of hard to like, we've had a lot of people who start in our company.

Like they, it takes a while before they then like realize and that they might come and say that like, okay, now I get it. Now I understand it. Like I thought it was kind of like just a little bit just talk. I didn't like believe that it was like actually like this, that we would actually be independent. But now I get it. And it's, yeah,

it's a bit hard to explain in a way. Well, it's all right. You know, this is something for me. I think about a lot as I scale my own company, right? When it's,

you know, if you're the whole company is, you know, we're what, 12 or 13 people now with some various extra consultants and people outside of bit and it's still at that stage where you know you can kind of talk to everybody and know everybody and you know kind of bill but as you scale to you know dozens and that let alone hundreds you really need this kind of you know cell based systems and abilities to have trust and make sure

that the culture continues and i i put a lot of effort and that's building company culture and so i always look for successful rules like this successful companies and that that has certainly be a big challenge and those have been like testing points the the the whole of like growing the company and all that. Like it's been a testing point for the, for the culture. And there's been like, there's been lots of internal resistance to like growing the company for sure.

And we've grown deliberately grown like very, very slowly. Like most of the people who, especially like the leadership and stuff, they have experience of companies where the companies like grew too fast. One, one finish. super company that kind of fell because of that was Nokia.

The infamous Nokia who was like there were of course like the biggest like phone makers in the world at some point from from the small country of Finland but they hired like everybody. A lot of people who are work at Supercell now and working in the game industry, they used to work at Nokia. Like they, they hired like anybody who almost like walked through the door. And they had like, they had a lot of middle management and a lot of hierarchy and a lot of people who didn't really actually have like any jobs. And it was like, it was like really, really tricky.

And it's kind of like imploded the whole thing. So they hired and they grew too fast. The culture didn't like catch up. So it's been like a thing of like. like we're super careful about how fast we grow and also like who we hire. So I think that has been like a key thing to like that that we have like grown very modestly and also like been very diligent with the recruiting. The recruiting process has always been like quite quite long and like lots of people

from different disciplines like interview, etc. And yeah. And this is similar to what I hear from, from Valve. Val, process is very similar. And, you know,

you need to, in order to have a system that allows for a lot of freedom and individual responsibility, you have to have very hefty gatekeeping up front that you get the right people that can support that kind of life and that kind of culture. Yeah. And to be fair,

like kind of like, I think you should not like, this is, this environment is not great for everybody. Like, it's not. like it's very easy to be the kind of person that wouldn't actually like enjoy working in this environment because it can be like sometimes it's like really frustrating when you don't

you kind of don't know exactly what you should be doing you need to like figure it out yourself and so so because I and I think it's not like a it doesn't make you a bad person it doesn't make you a bad person if you if you're not like if you yeah if you if you don't want to work it's almost like an entrip like are you an entrepreneur sort of sorry like my pronounce yeah you're a little entrepreneur within your own company yeah yeah are you like an entrepreneur or are you like an employee like that that kind of difference that like it's it's not explicitly wrong if you don't want to found your own company it's not explicitly wrong if you want to be an employee and want to get a paycheck and want to kind of have very clear goals and want to know what you

should do and all that. Like that's completely fair. And so like it's not an environment for everybody. So so I think there's kind of like even if you would get rejected, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are bad at what you do or you're a bad person or you're like incompetent. It might also just mean that you might not be, you might feel that you're not the right person for this environment. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Okay, I've, there's so many things I want to cover. So I want to get through this phase process.

We're never, you know, but so we have the, the transition from phase one to phase two. There's not a leadership process. It's just, again, you just recruit more people to move there. And that's what gets you to phase two. Is that correct? I'm still not 100% clear on how that happens. Yeah, to be honest, neither am I, because this kind of changes.

And it's every project, every project is a little bit different always, like in every story is a little bit different. But like, basically you start scaling, but you could, you could sum it up as like, you do scale it up like gradually as the confidence grows. So as you summed it up earlier.

So like, okay. So then we go, then what's next? What's next after phase two? I assume phase three, but maybe you can surprise me here. Phase three is basically like we are alive. So phase two can usually last quite a lot of time.

And unfortunately, that has started to last quite a lot of time lately for games. So we are like in the early days, like games like Hayday and Clash of Clans, for example, the first big hits that were launched, I think it was like six months or something. it was even less when from like from starting them to like launching them but now now we are like talking years and that's not like

that's something that we are a bit struggling with and we're like talking about it a lot and trying to like figure out how can we make things like how can we validate these games like faster because that this is now like an issue of this that we're very afraid of showing our games to the public because like we don't want to show anything like half baked. We wanted to be like we're ready.

And but that means that it takes a lot more time. And so, yeah, so again, like the basic principle in a way of game development, like validate your game, validate your project like as fast as possible, like validate every phase of your project as fast as possible. And we've become like a little bit. slow on that. And flush out validate for me here because I think. Yeah. So validate would be that like okay is this well I guess you could sum it up like is this game worth pursuing is this game going to be the kind of hit that we're looking for. But also when you validate

individual things like if we go to the game design level you validate for example a feature or you validate the moment to moment gameplay. there's like, okay, are we in the right direction? Is there something fundamental that we should be looking at to like change or tweak before this is ready? Yeah, so I understand that when I'm, you know, I play test a game. I get feedback directly. I can say, yep, this is good.

This isn't. I take that feedback. I parse it out. But is that, is that all we're talking about here? Is there something else when, you know, you're validating entire economic systems? You're building a whole different setup.

How are you doing that without showing it to the point? public and getting feedback from real test audiences. It's kind of bold. It's kind of bold because the thing is that like now if we are very afraid of publishing, of showing this game to the public and putting it out there, then what happens is we want to build all of that before we do that, right? Like we have to like, we need to make sure that it has like a really great like progress game or a really good meta game where you're like how you progress in the game. We need to make sure that the balance is.

great there. We need to make sure, of course, that the moment to moment gameplay is fantastic. We need to make sure that we have all these things like Supercell ID or other APKs and stuff like that, like cover servers need to be perfect. We need to be able to scale to those millions of players. And we need to have content for like a bunch of months and we need to have a plan for how do we live operate the game, et cetera. So all of these take a lot of time to build. and the plan. But then it might be that actually there's like something wrong already with the moment, the moment gameplay.

So something that we now actually quite recently did for the first time, which was kind of cool that the game that I'm working on at the moment, which is called squadbusters. I'm one of the game designers now there. And we had like a limited time closed being. And so what that meant is we invited or like actually like yeah, we invited a bunch of people and but we limited the the player amounts to well, it was 5,000 like the first closed beta. So I guess that's like quite a lot of players, but that's like very, very little for us. So that was like a super small, small test from our point of view.

And and and we had it running only for. seven days. So we didn't have, like, we didn't have content. We only had content, relevant content for like three days of gameplay. And so that, that allowed us then to like that, hey, we don't have to have like everything polished and all that. So we can validate this a bit earlier. And we got a lot of good feedback then. We really only focused on like testing the moment to moment gameplay. That's really the core gameplay of the game. We got lots of. We got lots of values. valuable feedback from the players. Of course, well, we can later talk about, like, player feedback and how to, like,

how to analyze that and how to react to that. But, like, then we kind of, we listened to the players. We made some pretty big changes. But now because we were able to, like, close the game and just, like, work in peace, we were able to, like, really, really do, like, a lot of changes fast. Like it's a bit different to working in a live environment when you have to like constantly care about the players who are like already playing there. That takes also some some effort and focus. Right. Yeah. Live operations. A whole other subject that we'll maybe get into if we have time.

And so then we were able to like have a have another limited time be that like pretty soon after that and that kind of like that then like was really successful. we had made some really good changes and that was like a very pretty successful like beta then like in the sense of like player sentiment and stuff and they were like super happy with change that we did so excited well i that's that's great so so it's actually really nice to hear now you're actually still evolving your process and you know being able to kind of counter counteract so so now now it's kind of now that's for example discussed now especially the new games and games that are in this what i called like phase two So, like, moving towards this launch, like, they are now talking a lot about, like, maybe they should also do this, like, limited, limited Bidas and stuff.

Maybe that would make sense. So, like, all right. So, so I want to, I want to, you know, I don't know how much you know about kind of what the, the marketing and launch process looks like for games like this or if you can speak to it. But I'm interested in that. And I also want to, I want to unpack for people because this is a principle I actually learned and I talked about in my podcast episode with Peter. Adkison, but I want to flesh it out here because your numbers are even bigger than the ones I talked about with him. If I, you have a game and it's people love it and you're confident that you can make tens of millions of dollars a year with it or even maybe a hundred million dollars a year with it.

And you as a designer have to decide to kill that game. Most people listening are going to think that that's crazy. Can you explain why it's not crazy and why he's not crazy? And why, how you think about that or how the company thinks about it. Yeah. Or do you agree? Do you think it's crazy? It is crazy. It is quite crazy.

And it is not like, it is not easy. It's far from it. And it's very like, emotionally, very taxing to do that. But I still, so I've been in that position once.

And, and it was like, yeah, it's very taxing, but I think ultimately I'm happy that we made the decision rather than like that we would have been told, no, you can't. Like this is like stop, stop working, like go do something else. That's like interesting. So there is so, so so there is something going on behind the scenes here that there's a,

yeah, you're responsible. We trust you to make the right decision. But if you don't make the right decision, we're going to make the right decision for you. So what's what I just heard. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. that's not what I mean. I mean that like kind of it's good that like I think part of the the reason the culture works like this is this is one of those like hard things that the culture brings with it. But when you make that decision yourself, you, it's easier for you to not get

bitter about it, you know, like that you had you had to go through that thought process. You had to make that like conclusion yourself that no, this is not going to be like. Because ultimately, like, you have, you do have that one kind of, I would say, like in a way, green, like, this needs to be a hit game. So like, you have to like ask yourself then like, like, will this be that hit game? And eventually you'll get numbers. So you have like, you can make a way more educated, more educated guess based on like the science and the data as well. But it's still always like a judgment. What can you unpack?

Can you unpack that, that a little bit? What does that mean? because you're not actually playing it live at this point. So what are these numbers in science? No, no. I'm actually talking about the situation where you are playing it live. Like when the game is already like out there and you're like kind of, you're seeing numbers, but it's still like a limited amount of people. But I see.

Like a limited amount of countries, let's say. Like a test market. So you'll launch a game and then again, it's just worth unpacking because a lot of people won't be familiar with this. So the typical process when you move from phase two to phase three is you're going to pick some small markets to try to launch and do a smaller scale launch. Yeah, that's just, that's a typical, that's a very typical thing like in, in, like the mobile space especially, that like you, you do some test markets.

It varies really. Like there are some like kind of classic proxy markets, but that it changes a little bit. So you might be trying Philippines to like test out the Asian market. You might be testing in Canada to test out like the North America, the US market. but for the UK to test the but yeah it's very silly but but there are like kind of you test in like usually you test in like smaller market but that's also very some people want to go like

straight to the big markets but like still you don't go like fully globally usually and then you get data so you get you get like actual numbers from actual people like people install the game like do they retain and now now here's like maybe something that like what we look at first and foremost is retention. And retention is about, like, how many people return to the game in, like, the consecutive days and, like, the days after the first one. So the retention is, like, really, like, a kind of a, like, and there's lots of games than benchmark. our own games, but also like in the industry that you can benchmark then.

Like, okay, like how sticky is the game? How engaging is the game? And that's kind of like the first and most important thing at evaluating. Usually the monetization is like easier to figure out than the retention. Like if the retention isn't there, like if people are not like engaged with the game, then like it doesn't matter what kind of tips or what kind of tricks you use on like on monetization side for example like if people love the game they will also like they will be super fans with that pay for the game and all that sort of retention is like really the key like the game needs to be

like good the game needs to be sticky yeah and and how do you define what is what's what's good what's bad what's what's stellar uh well i i i think i can't unfortunately like share the exact like numbers but like but you would be looking at what you would like well maybe I can like quote some like in the industry standards in a way that what are used like usually in the in the mobile game industry and and what people are so you might be looking for example at like day one day three and day seven retention and then day 30 retention if you have people playing and that would mean day one retention would mean that how many percent of the players who installed the game on day zero, like also played on day one?

So if you would now install a game, play it, will you play it also tomorrow? And then day three is like, will you play it also in three days, in seven days or in 30 days, et cetera? And that number, like, really, really good games have actually, like, hover in the, like, 50, 50, like, day one retention. Sometimes some really good games, you might have the initial player players who are, like, the super fast. They might be, like, in the 80% or something. So, like, we're not talking about, like, it's very, very, like, it's not. like it's not realistic that 100% of the players would play the following day or play in seven days or so. Like we're talking about like a curve that goes down really fast.

But yeah, it's unfortunate that I can't really like. It's important little note that I learned. I learned the no, it's okay. We could talk about just general industry standards, right? And so my understanding is that you're, you know, you're going day one, 50% is great. And then I think day 30, like I think it's something like like seven. percent is still really good. I think the last number I saw. I don't remember what the and like if you if you have a day 30 if you have like 15 percent of the players. So like

at day 30, 85 percent of your players would have already left and you would have 15 percent left. That would be still that would be almost considered like super hit numbers. So that's that's kind of like yeah. Yeah. So you give it it it's crazy to think about how much how much those dropoffs are and that's best case. So these are these games are you know people leave them very quickly. And I think you said something really important that actually I didn't realize, I didn't know when I first, the first time we launched Soulforgers Digital app, we had these insane retention numbers, just insane.

And it wasn't. And then they realized that exactly the super fans are the ones that come first. And so they are going to be super, super sticky. And then as you try to scale and bring in more users, maybe that aren't as much directly in that superfan core audience, those numbers are going to drop. And so you have to be very careful about overweighing your early numbers and when you're doing this. And of course, like the super fans are like super important. They are the evangelists of you.

Again, they are very valuable and they are like, and they're great. But when it comes to like kind of the raw numbers, like you have to, you have to kind of like exclude them if you want to see like, okay, how is it for real? Like when it comes to like, do I want to scale this now or not? So, so yeah, yeah, what those are called in the industry. They're called the golden cohort, like the first cohort of players who come into the game. The golden cohort, yeah. So then now I kind of want to, I really love this walk through. I feel like I've got a much clearer picture of how the company makes decisions,

how you build things. This retention is the fundamental metric. There may not be an answer for this, but I'll pose the question anyway. There's obviously every game, you know, you want the game to be sticky, you want it to be to be great on its own is have you learned some kind of more generally applicable kind of tips or tricks or principles that help to make this, you know, kind of give you that instinct of no, no, this is going to be stickier, this is going to have that retention. This is going to keep people coming back. What is it that's there? And you can speak to the designs from the

moment to moment game. You can speak to principles for the kind of meta game and the progression charts like what is it in your mind that really can can be applicable broadly that can move the needle on this kind of game yeah that's that's that's a that's a good question like i i i think like every game is is its own story and and its own so it's like really hard to say like certainly like you have to when you are like kind of making the game and when you are doing your play tests within the team or within the company or by yourself. You have to like trust quite a lot your own instinct and like develop your own intuition on that stuff.

And and there's no like I don't think there's like ever like a right answer. But like if you've made games and also like actually like if you just played games, you kind of like you kind of know when it just clicks when it like. this just feels right. Like things just click here now. So those are the kind of feelings that you're kind of like looking for that you're like you're scanning for that when does it like when does it click and how do you get that? Like that's really hard to like generalize or or say like any general rules because it's

really depends on on the game, the genre, the platform like anything like when does it click. but ultimately like you can't you still can't like kind of replace the like just test and like get that feel because you can you can theorize and you can discuss and you can talk about it like forever but like when you actually actually play it actually try it out that's when you that's when you kind of like get those feelings so yeah yep no that that's that's been a consistent message from every designer and unfortunately it's not the answer a lot of people want to hear they want do xy and z and then you'll have a hit game and everything's going to be fine uh it's just not the way it works but but training your own instincts is really critical here too right you mentioned you know you play

games you pay attention to your emotions when they come up and what things you know as you put it click uh as you design games you and you get feedback and you cycle it through you can feel it for yourself um and it's not easy i've i've continually try to find better ways to to explain this teach this because it's it sounds fuzzy to a lot of people right now I just trust your gut right yeah it is very it and it is very fuzzy and you kind of like and you have to like maybe eventually like some some someone smarter than ask and like conceptualize this and like actually make this into like some theory theory and some like method that like works foolproof method but like yeah but it's it feels very fuzzy and like and it is this like I guess like design

intuition you could like call it or something that you just kind of get trained well yeah over time and I think I think like what it's like I do you I kind of like I try to be very sensitive about this also like just on like micro design level like let's say I recently worked on the the kind of the the first three days of the meta progression of the game that I work and so So I I changed the numbers and I played it myself. I just played it alone

over and over again like the AI. Then I like kind of was like super sensitive about like feelings that okay here like at this moment like when when I'm kind of like at day two or something like

I felt that this moment where the progress kind of halted. And then I want to like dig into that. Okay. Why did it hold? why did my feeling of progress hold at this point and like, how can I change? What should have changed?

Let's tweak these numbers here. Let's tweak that. Like, let's put a little bit more gold there and let's change the character there or something. And then I tried it again from the beginning. And then it was, okay, now that feeling wasn't there. So clearly, like, what I had changed. Like, it matters.

So, like, trying to be, like, sensitive about, like, these kind of things, like also at a very micro level when designing. Like, that's at least something that I tend to do. Yeah, that's great. And so this is one of the things, I talked a lot about this in the episode with Ben Brod and his work on Marvel Snap. And I, you know, you've had a lot of similar experiences. Clash Royale is, you know, a card game in many senses. Subtower, you know, it certainly is a card game in some sense. And so what is it that when you're trying to test these meta progressions, right? I can test an individual game and have a complete experience and, you know, in this case, minutes, easy to iterate, easy to test. When I'm testing a progression that's both the last, not just days, but weeks, months, years even of progression, it's nearly impossible. I mean, it is impossible to test the whole thing, right? So you mentioned this, I'm just going to test the first three days and I'm going to tweak it. I'm going to test the first

three days again. Is that how you think about it? It's like, I really just got to dial in those first three days and the rest kind of takes care of itself? Or how do you approach this kind of problem of designing and balancing and getting the feel right for the, this meta progression of day-to-day. That's a very good question. And that's something that I'm kind of constantly learning and trying to get better at because it is indeed like very tricky. So in this case, like I was working on the first three days because that was the scope

of our closed beta. So I only had to focus on the first three days. But something that that is also like very helpful like when doing that exercise, when I was just focusing on that, I also. learned a lot about how the game works, how the meta works, how there's numbers. Okay, ah, okay, this is how it feels when you get too much gold, or this is how it feels when you get too little gold or whatever. So you kind of, even if you're like just focusing, I'm not focusing on the late game,

but it enforced me about the late game because like if it feels like this here, it's probably going to feel like something similar when it happens like at day 30 or something like that. But ultimately, like you, again, like ultimately, you can't replace just testing, but just testing is like really hard in these cases. So, so there are like tools you can use or methods that you can use. So you could have the game running on the side. So you might have a version that has like some version of the meta progress while you're like working on the game. Maybe that's for friends or family. This is, for example, something that they did in Marvel Snap and this is something we've done.

done a couple of times like a supercells well, that you have like a game running for example for 30 days. That it's just like going on and like people can play. Mostly they're playing against AIs if it's that kind of game or in games like heyday. You're just like playing the game by yourself, farming around. But then so then you get like a feel of this a little bit like longer progression. The trick thing is that like then you notice that's,

something is wrong, you make changes. So how do you verify that? Well, you have to start from the beginning and that's slow. That's again, like very slow. So it's, yeah, it's tough. Then you can, of course, like the one method is using, using bots or using like simulations. That's very effective to like validating, validating some like long-term progress. In fact, that like you don't have something like completely whack like in the in the in your numbers but that doesn't the the thing with like bots and simulations is that they don't like really convey you the feeling of like how does it feel how does it feel when I it's day 14 and I wake up in the morning and I have this game that is now like part of my life how does it feel like when I play my first session in the morning when I go

to the loo in the morning. That's a relevant thing. How does it feel when I go to bed, when I play my last session, when I do, what's the thing I do as the last thing before I go to bed so that it feels good that I go to bed so that it doesn't feel like,

oh, I'm obliged to like stay awake, that I need to like, it needs to feel good. So like ultimately, it's like it's about like the player experience. It's about the feeling that the player has. But they need to be, it needs to be like a good because these games like these games are like tricky because they are like we are making games that are meant the goal is that these are played for years so we have to like

they become if you want to if you play them for years they become like part of your daily routine so we have to be respectful of that right we have to like understand that this is now like part your daily routine, like it can't be like, it needs to be gauging, but it can't be like too crazy so that you like burn yourself out or like get stressed because of it or stuff like. And that's like really tricky. It's not like something that we do always like perfectly, but it's like something that you have to be very mindful of as a game designer and when balancing these games. Do you have a specific example of a decision that you made to help people sleep better that comes to mind in something along these lines? Yeah. That that makes just a little more concrete.

Something very specific could be the chest system in in Clash Royale and the exact timers that the chests have. So the chest in chess system in Clash Royal is such that like whenever you, when you play a match, if you win, you get a chest. And to you don't immediately get the cards and the loot that is in the chest, but you have to open it and you start a timer. So you start the chest, so it might have a timer of three hours or eight hours or 12 hours. And then you wait and then you get to it after that timer is done, you get to open it. So now, this actually there's quite a lot of pack,

quite a lot of lessons and dilemmas tied to this, like this chest system. But something that it does now for this thing is that like, okay, like you, it's late at night, like you want to have a chest opening all the time, right? Like you don't want to like miss out on time because there's, you can only have one chest opening at the time. Okay, nowadays you can have two and so, et cetera, but that's a different story. But let's say you can only have one chest opening at the time. So you want to make sure that when you're sleeping, that there's chest opening. Like if you're really engaged, you, you kind of, and if you're like a super fan, again, this goes also to the principal

of like people will like optimize the fun out of games so like if you would only have chess that have a one hour timer there will be guaranteed be players who put an alarm clock on during the night to put the chest opening like to open like once per hour so you want to have chests that have an eight hour timer or a 12 hour timer and you want to ensure that players get those chests during the day so that they can like go and sleep in peace yeah okay great now it's a great example. And so, you know, we're building these items. And now we've talked a lot about this kind of retention as the number one metric and then the habits that connect people to that the rhythms of their lives, right? What do I do when I wake up? What do when I go to bed? Making this a part

of your life, especially as mobile games, right? You're going to, you're playing it when you're on the toilet. You're playing it while you're waiting in line. You have all these different options that are that are accessible. And so how does that integrate is great. And now, you know, we kind of put monetization off to the side, but we now I'd like to talk a little bit about that. I know we're running a little late, but we'll run a little late because it's exciting and interesting. And so, you know, now if somebody wants to open that chess faster, they can pay to do that, right? So there's a variety of different things that are available that now, how do you think about monetizations? I know this can be a very contentious subject just to put it out there, right? I believe games have to monetize in

order to be able to make them. So I, but, uh, but how do you think about finding that line of how do you monetize? How do you think about monetization? This is a, yeah, this is a very touchy, touchy topic of course. Like monetization is, it's very, very loaded, very, very tricky topic. And, and, and also like internally, it's not like we all have like one single mind about like monetization that we have we have lots of discussions about about monetization lots of heated discussions about how to monetize how not to monetize what's the best strategy and how do we how do make but ultimately everybody certainly agrees that like we need to make money like it's it's a business as well and and we need to pay salaries and people have more G's and people have kids

etc so like something needs to happen but but yeah Monetization, one tricky thing is that, like, it's kind of like compared to traditional games, monetization in free to play games is, like, it creates this weird adversary, like, relationship between the player and the developers. Like, in its, in like a toxic extreme, it creates this adversary, like, kind of position, which, for example, In this chess example, so now I talked about how the timers are there to make you feel good about going to bed. But players might see the timers purely as a way to make money. So it's and like that, oh, they put a timer here just to like screw with me. Like it would be much better if it wouldn't have a timer. But then you would burn yourself out because you wouldn't feel like there's a moment where you can like just like,

leave the game B when you have played for like 360 days, et cetera. So like, and that's like a super hard balance to, to like find. And there I don't like have a clear answer. But there, for example, how I see the speeding up chess in Clash Royale is that like it's an option. So now like, yes, we offer, we give you this,

these timers so that you can like manage them into the rhythm of your everyday life. But if you pay, you can like manipulate that yourself. Like you can you can ignore what we are offering you and you can like kind of you can make you can you can you can play more. You can get rewarded more if you want if you want to have like a longer session for example or something. But it's like purely optional. So that would be like how I would see it. Yeah. I think that there's this there's this there's these different aspects of it where I

I think, you know, I always have this sort of philosophy that I want to be able to give people a ton of value such that when I ask them to pay me for something, they're very happy to do so. And one of the nice things, you know, there's degrees where that's not going to be the case. But one of the nice things in principle about free to play is like, look, I can give you a bunch of stuff for free. And therefore you could, you could accrue a lot of value before I have to ask you for money. And that's one principle that in theory works better, right? When you buy a game at the store, whether it be a board game for $40 or a, you know, traditional kind of console game for $60, $50, whatever it is, you're stuck. You bought that thing and you, you know, like it or not, you've now had to have this huge

upfront cost. It means a bunch of people never get to experience it at all because it's too expensive. Whereas free to play games now, they live off of the whale concept, right? This is the kind of tricky other side of this, that there's a very, very small percentage of players who pay, I think, I forget what the numbers were like. Last time I looked at it was something like, you know, the 0.1% of players paid 90% of all of the money that goes into these. I don't know if that's still accurate, but it was something crazy like that.

And so you end up, in theory, having to cater to that small demographic. Is that kind of still the way that it's working these days? It varies quite a lot of game, from game to game, but like, Yeah, the whale economy is certainly still exists, but like, but there is like there's quite a lot of push boat in the industry and also like within within our company to like to like kind of the thinking of like how do we get like more people? How do we like increase the conversion so that like we wouldn't be reliant on these like these individuals or like this very small percentage? like how can we get like more people to pay for example like you know five bucks per month

or something like that and that for example the season pass uh which uh now i can't remember remember like which was the first game that like kind of introduced the season pass uh maybe it was fourth night that made it popular or something i'm not sure but uh but that for example like that's like the opposite of like a whale based monetization right like you are giving huge value for a very small, for a fairly small like kind of payment. But you also like then ask for engagement from the player. So yes. Yeah, some some yeah, I like the idea of there being some small kind of consistent no brainer investment, if you will. You know, something that people can do that they there's the nice thing about the season passes is some combination of like of paying and

right? The free to play ideas I can just play and earn. If I pay a little bit, then I can earn way faster and I get some cool goodies. And then, you know, it's such a good deal that I'll take it. And then for people that want even more faster than you, you know, do have higher price items and whatnot. They can, they can get into it. I think there's definitely something great there. And I think there are certainly some principles that are like, like, I would say like we at supercellals like everybody agrees on like things like things that you have in your game. game as everything that is related to gameplay like it needs to be earnable also for free like there should not be anything that is like purely behind like a pay game uh we could make exceptions on something like let's say cosmetics or early access to something or something like that like that that could maybe be examples where where it could be like pay only but like basically for free you would be able to like eventually at least get like anything that exists. Yeah, it's a good principle to make it feel a little better. I mean, a lot of these games where you're.

Yeah, no, yeah. I mean, it varies, of course. And it's not like kind of like if there are fans of our games listening to this, that like, of course, like we're not perfect always in all these aspects. But that is certainly like a principle that we really need to like stick to. And sometimes it's a bit of a grain line that is it really. really like free if it takes years to like reach or whatever, then like that. But yeah, that's kind of the principle.

Yeah, yeah. That's that there's a lot of that right where that if you want to compete at the highest levels and games like Clash of Clans and these other ones, it's very, you know, the amount of time it takes to get to that tier compared to spending. It's very, at least, you know, not not realistic for most people. So it could be a challenge for sure. So, um, I, I, I, wondering, all right, we're a little over time. So I, you know, I think that there's this infinite

depth on all of these, these conversations. I think the, yeah, we have like very, like, yeah, it's been, it's been quite as paranoid. I feel that I haven't been very good at like explaining it in a like very concise way and like all these topics, but there's like, no, no, you've, you've done great. Yeah, I feel that we are like just scratching the surface of like, of many, many things here. I want to say about monetization, one thing about like this monetization versus like free to play and like, and all that. So ultimately, it's really about like the player experience. Whether you pay or you don't pay, like, it's our responsibility to like create, like our as game developers to create like a great experience for the players.

That's what we want to do. we're not it's not always perfect but that's like kind of that's where we aspire right like that's the goal that you should have like a great experience whether you pay a lot whether you pay a little or or don't pay at all and so like yeah I think that's something that's like kind of important yeah player experience is the only metric that matters at the end of the day that is the thing that we're all building and and I know just you know people it's very easy to demonize you know, companies that they have with, that are trying to make money.

I think that's ridiculous. I think there are definitely bad practices. There are definitely things that are predatory, but I think the idea that you are able to provide this experience and for more money, you can accelerate the experience or have variations on the experience seems, you know, totally reasonable to me. And it's what allows the games, you know,

millions and millions of players to play for free because these things exist. So, yeah, and if you want to develop these games for years, if you want to keep on making new content for the game, new features the game, or in your case, if you want to make new expansions to Ascension or new expansions to SoulForge Fusion, if the game doesn't make money, then that's not going to happen. You're not going to get. So that's also about player.

So if you are a super fan of the game, you do want the company to make money so that they keep on developing the game. So that you get like, again, like more on better experiences. Yep. Yep. So as you mentioned, we could continue to dive deep on all these things. And I appreciate it. You made one comment earlier that you said we would get to.

And I just want to make sure we do cover. You talked about how to react to and analyze player feedback. And I don't want to leave people hanging on that because that's such a another great deep topic. So why not we'll use that as our last like meaty topic. And then we can close out with anything else you want to say before we, we wrap up. Yeah, all right. Yeah, that's how to, how to analyze, like, how to talk about, look at, like, player feedback. That's something that's kind of like, I feel that I'm constantly learning a lot well as I'm about everything, but like, constantly learning about, like,

how to read player feedback because it can, it can get quite talk to, like, when you have millions and millions of players, you can imagine that, like, you have players, like, you have players, as many players as there are people in like medium-sized countries or even big countries. And so there's a lot of different kind of people in that kind of group. And so you kind of get a lot of different kind of feedback. Not everything is nice. Not everything is written very nicely or expressed very nicely. That is a nice way to say that.

There's a cesspool of hate and vitriol out there. It can be quite stressful. I've certainly burned out a little bit with that, with bringing that. But something, you kind of have to, when reading that feedback or when kind of receiving it, you need to kind of like, as a developer, try to read between the lines that what are they actually saying?

So as an example, now with our game squadbusters, when we had our first closed beta, the number one feedback that players gave to us was that, hey, you should make more game modes. You should just make more game modes because it's too repetitive. That there needs to be like different things, different rules, etc. And we listened to that, but we didn't want to make new game modes straight out so that like because there are some things that happen when you make like

a completely different game mode like you for example you split the player pool that now you have players who now and that starts to affect like matchmaking times and stuff so now you have like half the players are playing mode a and half the players are playing mode b also like if you if you maybe stagger them that like sometimes mode a is available and it's and sometimes mobile, then you might be that people start to have like really, really strong preferences and might not want to play when their favorite game mode is not on or something. And then they start to demand that like, hey, this should be on always. Why isn't this on always?

So it creates some issues with that. So we wanted to kind of like avoid some of those issues. And it also didn't feel right to our game. So this is also like important. it, you have to understand your game that you're making, what is correct to it, what is correct to that experience. So what we instead did, we did this game modifiers. So it's kind of like game modes, but not really.

So what happens is it's kind of like, let's say, like Fall Guys has these different game modes, but what happens is when you go to a game in Fall Guys, it randomizes which one you're now playing. So we did something similar, but we kind of like we still have that same core game there, but we modify that like we show you that, okay, you're going to play on this map and in this one, like some of the monsters are golden or in this one you get like extra spells or whatever. Like there might be some different kind of like special rules that apply to this combat.

There's extra bosses or there's some like. meteorites that are like raining down during the game. And so now you have, so now we had then our second test and now, well, players still complained about things, but they didn't complain about variation and game mode. So like we managed to fix this thing,

not with the exact thing that the players said, but like with, by understanding our game and understanding our audience and reading between the lines that what do they actually want. So we didn't, what we heard was like, they said they want game modes, but how we interpreted that was that like they want variation.

And so we created variation. And we created like a system that actually allows us to create even more variation than what the kind of traditional method would have allowed us. Because now we can like crank out lots of these. This would be similar to like, let's say, if we would take Marble Snap as an example, which was also like, could straight say that it was also one.

inspiration, like how they do locations, which is like super brilliant, that you, you kind of like go into a match, but you don't know exactly what's going to happen. You have your deck, but you don't know like exactly what locations are there, and then they get revealed during the game, and then you have to adapt to that. So that was kind of the vibe that's like you get something, something random happens and then you have to adapt to that. And that was kind of like it felt like it fit our game.

Like our game is a little bit of this like kind of competitive, competitive party game. You could imagine like Mario Party or something like that. So it has kind of like that kind of vibe. Yeah. No, the value of, this is, I always just go back to my favorite Neil Gaiman quote,

which speaks to this principle, right? When you're, he's talking about books, but same plus games, when your readers tell you that something is wrong, they're almost always right. And when they tell you how to fix it,

they're almost always wrong. Right. If you get enough feedback that says there's a problem, there is a problem. But what they're telling you is the way to fix it. That's where the skill of game design comes in. That's where you're in. things. It's like, okay, what's really going on here? What's causing this experience? How do I solve it?

And then how do I make sure that doesn't create a whole host? The new problems that, that obviously the players aren't even foreseeing. So that's a great, that's a great, great piece of feedback to echo. And you do, and you do kind of what you do want to surprise the players. Like, you do want to like kind of exceed their expectations if you can. Like, that's the, that's the ultimate, like, result, like, kind of like, if you manage to like kind of, fix the problem and exceed their expectations, then that's like fantastic. Yeah. But yeah. Yes. That's a great. That's a great principle to end it on. So if there's so much great stuff to unpack here, I'm pretty sure we could have done

on a whole other two hours, even just covering the same topics, let alone other things I wanted to talk to you about. So there's a lot to talk about. So if people want to find more, you've talked a little bit about the games you're working on, if they want to find more of your stuff or kind of connect whether it's connecting with you online or playing more of your games where yeah so i don't really have like much of an online presence like i'm not active active on like uh social medias much but you could you want to contact me you could contact me on lincoln for example that's a good place and then of course like supercell games you can go to supercell dot com and also like supercell is very active like in all all the social medias you can find the official accounts there

And all the games that we have are also on all the social medias very actively. And also, like, yeah, playable on iOS and Android. Well, I want to thank you again for doing this. I knew we were going to have a great chat because we already had one when we first met at GDC. You delivered. There's so much great value here. So thanks for coming on. And I can't wait to play your new game when I finally get access to it.

Yeah, thank you so much. It was an honor to be here. Like, yeah, this is my favorite. favorite podcast, game design podcast, and you've had some really amazing guests. So it's a huge honor to be a guest year. Well, welcome to that honorific group. It's been great to have you. See again soon. All right. See again soon. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares

make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me. me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry, and compressed it all into a book with the same title of this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find books or something.