Clash of Clans - the Winning Formula
I see a pattern here. First, it was Hay Day, which is Supercell's first poke at farming games and hands down the best farming game on iPhone and iPad. Now Clash of Clans is doing the same thing to the strategy games by outclassing genre veterans with ease.
What makes Clash of Clans a great game is the trademark Supercell winning formula approach to game development. First, you take an existing social game theme. Then you benchmark and reverse engineer the best titles in that genre in order to create a strong and natural feeling core loop. You follow up by building a game around that solid core loop. Sprinkle a new and improved game play twist and dress it up in stunning graphics. Finally, you polish the game to perfection with a limited beta launch by making the game available only in Canada. Once it's polished and the KPIs look solid it's time to come out with a bang and take app charts by storm.
But even though Clash of Clans is the best there is it's still not the best there could be. Despite being extremely polished and reworked on the basis of the genre benchmarks Clash of Clans has plenty of room for improvements in some key game play mechanics as well as in the virality and even monetization features.
The Core Loop
There are three major parts in Clash of Clans' core loop: Collecting Resources, Building & Training and Battling. Nevertheless, not all of the parts of the core loop are equally important as the importance of each part is influenced by player's ongoing goal in the game, which creates different style game play styles from resource gathering and building heavy to active battling.
Collecting Resources is enhanced via beautiful use automated farming mechanics
Coins and Elixir are the two soft currencies in Clash of Clans. In order to produce Elixir and Coins player simply needs to have Elixir Collectors and Gold Mines. Resource production is automated meaning that player doesn't have to initiate resource production nor wait till resource production has finished production. Also to be noted is that the resource production facilities have a maximum cap, meaning that they will keep on producing resource till specific amount after which they will stop production till a player has collected the accumulated resource. To increase resource production maximum cap player needs to upgrade the resource facility.
User initiated farming mechanics vs. Automated farming mechanics
The resource production is perfectly done in Clash of Clans. Firstly it's always rewarding to return to the game as you can harvest all of your resources at the start of every session. Secondly, the automated farming mechanics encourage new players to visit the game more often as the resource facilities reach their max pretty quickly in their early stages.
Building & Training - everything is interdependent
Roughly put; everything that has to do with building consumes Coins while everything that has to do with troops consumes Elixir. This means that starting a construction, research or an upgrade takes either Coins or Elixir (never both) as well as time to finish the task. Time taken to upgrade a building depends on the building's current level so that upgrading buildings is fast in the beginning and extremely slow on later levels. Same steep curve applies also to the price of upgrades.
Upgrading buildings is crucial for progress as the player needs more and more resources to build bigger and better units. What's genius about the upgrading flow is that everything is tied to one-another meaning that players can't just keep on upgrading one specific building but instead have to upgrade everything.
For example take a look at the image below. To upgrade a Gold Mine player need Elixir while upgrading Elixir Collector requires Coins. This ties the resources together as upgrading one resource production facility takes always exponential amount of resources produced by the other resource facility. There's always a specific maximum level for each of player's building based on the level of their HQ. Upgrading HQ takes tremendous amount of Coins and in order to store those Coins player needs Coin Storages, which cost huge sums of Elixir... well, you get the point...
Everything is interdependent in Clash of Clans' economy
Nevertheless, the greatest building/progress restriction is the fact that player has only two builders. In other words, a player can simultaneously have only two building/upgradings at the same time. Overcoming this restriction takes only $5, which is the price of a third builder (I'm sure many of us have made that purchase). In case you want to have a fourth builder, well the price just went up to 10$. Talking about a great use of price elasticity!
Battling - stop punishing the player
Training troops consume Elixir and time. The better troops you produce the more Elixir it costs and the more time it will take to produce them. But time and Elixir are not the only ones restricting players from building the most massive army. Every better unit takes also more housing space, which creates demand for bigger Army Camps. Army Camps need to be upgraded, this takes resources, time and of course upgrades to the HQ... and you're back in the devilish interdependent economy of Clash of Clans.
Units cost Elixir and time. Better units require more space limiting the size of player's army.
Here comes the sad part from player's perspective: all the troops you use in a battle are consumed win or lose. So you face a situation where you build and army, attack and lose every single troop even if you won the battle by a landslide.
Sure from economy perspective consuming the whole player's attacking force creates a great sink for Elixir but from a retention point of view I really think battling should be reworked. Kabam's Edgeworld does in my view the battles better as it allows a player to retreat (raid other players) as well as to keep all the units who survive a won battle. Not only is this approach more user-friendly but it also creates demand for super units, which player can take from one battle to another. And believe me, super units, in which players emotionally invest to, sell like popcorn in a movie theater.
The Progress
Solid retention in Clash of Clans is mainly due to the steady and visible progress players have in the game. Second key factor in the retention is the well extremely well-designed core loop, which reward player for being active and promises progress for each return session. Finally, it's also about those notifications, as just when you think you won't be coming back to the game anytime soon, your iPhone and/or iPad informs you that the awesome building you forgot you were even building is ready now.
Clash of Clans has some great first-time flow, as it creates an emotional attachment to the game area aka. player's village in a matter of 5 minutes. The game starts with Player entering her village, which is after a couple of dialogs attacked by goblins. Player defends the village with a cannon (learn defense) and launches a counter attack (learn attack). After the counter attack player gets back to the village and goes quickly through the core loop (build resource production, build barracks, train troops) till it's time again to launch a second attack against the goblins. After the second attack, the game slows down to normal progress speed and introduces the achievements (which work in the beginning as quests) to the player.
You start small...
But progressing is not only about getting more resources and upgrading your buildings and troops. Progressing is also a lot to due with the way you village transforms visually. The puny village of the first session will slowly but surely transform into a combination of Lord of the Rings and Warcraft.
...but you end up EPIC
What's cool and new with Clash of Clans compared to similar games is the single player mission flow. Sure it's super hard compared to the rewards you get for beating goblins and yes Edgeworld had also single player missions but the way they are presented on a separate map makes them just really compelling - till player engages in the player vs. player battles...
Players can choose whether they want to fight other players or AI (goblins).
The Virality
The ultimate goal in Clash of Clans is to beat other players and be a part of a winning clan. First few days player is protected from attacks from other players but once this shield is dropped you become free game. In other words, after the shield is dropped your village will be destroyed between 1 - 3 times a day. The protective shield is re-activated for several hours after each lost defense.
There are two ways a player can stay away from destruction (or so we are told). Firstly players need to build up their defenses, which defend the village automatically in asynchronous PvP battle. Walls, traps, cannons, watch towers, mortars - you name it! Secondly players need to join a clan by restoring the castle next to their village (awesome way to introduce clans!).
The broken clan castle is found on the game field. Great way to set up a long-term goal and avoid overwhelming new players.
Once in a clan players can chat and in theory plan attacks or revenge in behalf of other clan members. In practice yes, you can chat and even donate some troop but you can't coordinate attacks, simply because in Clash of Clans you can't really choose who you will attack. You can only revenge to someone who once attacked you or you can just attack random opponents who're close to your own experience level.
So what's the point of being a member of a clan apart from getting few low-quality reinforcement troop for your next attack? Well, if you're a member of a powerful clan, you all get awarded. There are weekly tournaments and those who wreck the most combined damage get awarded. So yeah, clans are fun for few dozen of people but not for the vast majority of daily players. Plus it would be nice to even get a notification that a weekly clan tournament has been restarted.
Clans don't really clash because you can't yet attack other players from this view nor co-ordinate attacks against chosen opponents.
The second issue is with friends. Players can sync up via Facebook, which enables them to see all of their playing friends. But after syncing up things fall flat. You can visit your friends or view their clans (and join them). You can't attack your friends. You can't message your friends. You can't gift your friends nor can you request anything from them. Not to mention that you can't even invite players who are not playing to start playing.
All these people I know yet no way to communicate with them.
The third issue is the lack of World Map is a serious downfall as map creates true rivalries between players and rivalries fuse retention as well as monetization. For example, in Kixeye's Backyard Monsters you can see you neighboring players, attack them, conquer new territories onto which you can create outposts.
World Map in Kixeye's Backyard Monsters
The Monetization
Clash if Clans has a whale-based monetization because the prices increase as the game progresses creating a situation in which majority of players (retained users) pay higher prices than a minority (new users). In short: ARPPU goes hand in hand with retention.
In Clash of Clans players pay for speeding time and boy, there are a lot of waiting in the game. As described in the core loop chapter every action takes time from building to upgrading and from training to improving units.
Gems are used to instant finish what ever player is doing. And that's where the catch is. In the beginning whatever you are doing takes a little time, which not only is good for retention but it also encourages to instant complete production with the free Gems you have from the start. So, in the beginning, it's pretty useful and cheap to progress fast and the free Gems you get for completing achievements just push you in that direction (+ first time flow forces player to use Gems so many times that it starts feeling right). But as the game progresses the production times increase. Pretty quickly you are waiting days for productions to be completed - and some players will continue paying (now tenfold) to skip the waiting.
The smallest price point is $4.99 creating gigantic ARPPU and ARPU.
Gems can also be converted into Coins or Elixir. I usually like to sell separately virtual and premium currencies as it encourages paying players to make several purchases. For example, if resources were sold separately buying Gems would help the player to instant finish a production. Then the player would want to start a new construction right away, which would create demand for Coins or Elixir. A player would lack the soft currency because he just speeded up the production instead of waiting so not enough time has passed and the resource production facilities are empty. Of course, players can instant finish resource productions but that doesn't create re-buys in the same session - only increases consumption of Gems.
Also, Clash of Clans still lacks power-ups. Magnificent consumable weapons players can use to improve the success of their attacks (don't underestimate players' willingness to revenge the attacks on their villages). That would convert players who have progressed far but don't find it compelling to pay $30 to speed up a single production.
The best there is, but...
Clash of Clans is an amazing game. Supercell has thoroughly gone through all the benchmarks in the genre and created a game, which simply outclasses genre veterans such as Kabam and Kixeye. What's even more impressive is that this is Supercell's first poke at the whole strategy genre.
Clash of Clans is a combination of well-balanced core loop, extremely compelling graphics, and super smooth gameplay. What makes the game top-grossing is the combination of very solid retention and whale economy, where retaining users end up making higher average purchases due to rising costs.
But even though Clash of Clans is the best there is there's still room for significant improvements in gameplay (battle mode), virality (world map, interaction with friends) and even monetization. Now the question is whether there will be someone else who comes up with an improved version of Clash of Clans or will Supercell continue its dominance with future updates. I believe in the later one because Supercell has shown that they have the patience to perfect their games. They're not moved by financial quarters and their deadlines seem to be tied to the quality of the product instead of a random date set in executives' mind. I believe that Supercell has the winning formula to make great social games.
