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🎮 Predicting the Future of Supercell’s Brand New Studio

Jesper Gustavsson

In Today’s Email

🚀 Supercell announced over a year ago that they will be opening a studio in North America. Very recently they announced that they will actually form two teams - and today we will review what we know about the teams so far.

On the go? Listen to one of our podcasts from this week, we’ve got

🎧 TWiG #212 - Apple's New Price Points / Game Genre Taxonomy pt 2 / Nintendo's Mobile Strategy

🎧 Kress's Corner #3 - How to discover and manage Licensing?

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Predicting the Future of Supercell’s Brand New Studio

A year ago, Supercell announced their intention to open a studio in North America with the mission of developing games for PC and Console. Their first step would be to hire a core founding team around which they would build the development team.

As the Supercell blog post stated a year ago, “We are establishing this new team to pursue a specific goal: assemble and enable the best talent in North America to create what’s next across any platform, not just mobile. We want to build ambitious games players may not expect from Supercell.”

After 12 months of silence, the team of founders has been revealed. It’s two teams, actually.

The Head of Studio - An interesting choice

Ryan Wener, the mastermind behind Supercell NA studio, is an industry veteran well-versed both in the Supercell mobile formula and culture and on PC/Console platforms:
He was Supercell’s Marketing Lead for the last ~9 years. And spent the previous decade at Activision, where he led the Global Brand Management of memorable titles like Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, and the gone-but-not-forgotten Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

With first-hand experience on both mobile, PC, and Console, and vast experience at Supercell and its internal culture - as well as the trust of the top brass in the company -, he seems a great choice to lead a studio with the mission of expanding the company beyond mobile.

Nevertheless, a point that shouldn’t be missed is that Ryan’s profile is primarily a brand marketing-oriented one. He is not (as far as we know) a direct game maker or even a game team builder.

One could wonder if this makes Ryan a bold choice to lead the studio. Personally, I don’t share that opinion, since true to Supercell the goal of the Head of Studio won’t be to be directly involved in the game development but rather build a strong environment for game makers to experiment and succeed

I think that the executive responsibilities, and game-making expertise, will be handled by the rest of the studio leadership. That is why the emphasis has been on hiring teams of founders.

If anything, I believe that Ryan’s vast experience in brand marketing can be key, as he is likely to be very knowledgeable of the requirements for launching a PC and Console hit at scale; which development teams more focused on game creation may not.

Team 1: The Blizzard Riot

The first team is made of very senior PC and Console profiles, most of which have in common having worked in both Riot and Blizzard. That makes them the closest thing in games to a rock supergroup:

  • Maya Kylmamaa (Game Lead, Engineer), was CEO of the now defunct Reforged Studios (a Helsinki studio focused on AAA strategy games). She previously was Technical Lead at League of Legends and a Software Engineer at several expansions of World of Warcraft, among others. Summarizing: a professional well experienced with PC, with first-hand experience leading a team/company.

  • Kevin J Bray (Game Engineer), another professional with years of entrepreneurship experience (CEO at now defunct Byte Canvas; Executive Director at Tonk Tonk Games), who previously was a developer and lead engineer at League of Legends (about the same time as Maya).

  • Candace Thomas (Game Designer), a veteran designer with vast experience in the MMO genre, having worked at World of Warcraft, the canceled Lord of the Rings MMO by Amazon Studios, and more recently at upcoming Riot’s MMO (wait, is this bad news for the LoL MMO!? I won’t forgive you for that, Supercell!)

  • Charles Lee (Art Lead), veteran art director and concept artist with past experience at Blizzard, Sony Pictures Animation, and who until very recently worked in the Visual Development of Netflix hit Arcane (damn!).

This is a well-balanced team in terms of disciplines, covering software, design, and art. And past experience in entrepreneurship. And seems it provides a solid ground to start hiring the rest of the team, while they start prototyping their ideas.

I find interesting the fact that several of them are ex-Riot. It’s well-documented that the R&D process at Riot involves prototyping with small teams, which in turn could resemble the famous (Super)cell structure. Given that some members were in Riot until a month before the announcement, it’s possible that they’ll bring many of their methodologies and learnings to their new enterprise.

The challenge here is that - while all of them surely are extremely talented individuals, and have some similarities in past experience - this is not a team that has been working together before. And newly assembled groups often take a lot of time (even years) to evolve into a high-functioning team.
IMHO, this makes it a different situation from the Second Dinner core team (of Marvel Snap fame), who were already used to working together at delivering top-level content and was easier for them to become operative.

An additional risk is the remote work factor. We don’t know if any of these teams are actually remote, but Supercell stated a year ago that they would be flexible in terms of allowing hybrid or remote work. This could slow down the process of grooming this new team into a world-class, perfectly running game creation machine. Supercell game teams traditionally have never worked remotely.

The fact that the team is new (and possibly remote) could be a factor in why it has taken a year to get the final roster. Some may think this was slow.
I disagree. I think that slow is smooth and smooth is fast: Spending a year to get the team could be a good investment if it boosts the quality of the hiring and ultimately gets a team that can work smoothly and delivers quality. Their ability to move faster from this point on and deliver quality is what matters.

What game genres we can expect from this team is pure speculation at this point.
Based on the team’s past experience, my prediction is that it will be a competitive eSports-oriented game, an angle where another ex-Riot team recently achieved success and that synergizes well with Supercell’s portfolio.
Alternatively, perhaps it could be some sort of lite MMO (in the line of Clash Heroes), where Candace's past experience would seem to suit better.

One thing is for sure though, whatever games they will be experimenting with have to have billion-dollar potential. We know that Supercell, nor a team coming from Blizzard and Riot, will not settle for less.

Team 2: The Wildcards

This one is interesting because both members are industry veterans - clear pattern in all the names in this piece -- but have quite heterogeneous experiences:

  • Steve Desilets (Game Lead, Designer), an industry veteran with vast experience as Design/Creative Director (EA, Amazon Games, Zynga). His most recent experience was being Game Director at ProbablyMonsters (no released games, apparently).

  • Matt Mocarski (Art Lead), has held different Art Direction at companies as varied as Amazon Games, King, and - more recently - Playgig (a company working on their first game).

The common point is that both were the co-founders of the indie games company Scuttlebutt Games. The company website still announces their first game Deliver Us, but it looks like it’s now defunct since both members moved to other companies and their Twitter account hasn’t posted since 2020.

What can we expect from this team? The profiles make me think of something indie-looking. Perhaps a revamp of the game they previously developed at Scuttlebutt, which was somewhat reminiscent of the classic Cannon Fodder.

This second team is a bit of a headscratcher: Can an indie game team create something on PC and Console with a big-enough scale to be worth for Supercell? It’s a company focused only on genre-defining billion-dollar titles, after all.

PC indies hit created by small teams like FTL: Faster Than Light, Vampire Survivors, Cult of the Lamb, or V Rising are great games, but far from billion-dollar material. The few examples that come to mind on that scale would be Minecraft and perhaps Stardew Valley.

Then again, indie teams are incredibly creative as they are not held back by usual conventions, so there’s always the chance that they’ll deliver an unexpected gem that can serve as a foundation for a bigger-scope project.
The lack of programmers in a team though is a problem. Not sure how they will prototype fast enough until they get some.

Will this lead to Supercell’s next billion-dollar hits?

As much as I am biased towards rooting for Supercell, it’s undebatable that ultimately this whole endeavor is a gamble: Supercell is aiming to enter a market they have no expertise in, with newly formed teams that have not worked together before, and thus don’t have a solid track of success on the platform.

A safer approach could have been to acquire an already existing company or start by porting already established Supercell mobile titles to PC and Console.
Instead, the path taken will render results that can fall in the entire spectrum between succeeding spectacularly or failing absolutely. It truly depends on what the individuals mentioned can form high-functioning teams and scale up (no pressure!).

Nevertheless, I believe there are some reasons to be optimistic. Among them:

  • There is a market opportunity: At the moment, PC and Console are more welcoming platforms for new games than mobile. Due in big part to the ATT changes on the platforms and the overall saturation of the mobile market, the chances of launching and scaling new hits on mobile are lower than ever. So it makes total sense to explore going cross-platform and developing PC/console-exclusive games. For example, Gameloft recently achieved record double-digit growth thanks to the success of Disney Dreamlight Valley.

  • They’re veteran developers experienced on the platforms they’re exploring, and they have a clear target (PC and Console). This is a contrast to the other international Supercell Studio (Shanghai) where the games in development (Clash Mini, Clash Heroes) seem very western market-oriented, which doesn’t seem to synergize with the opportunity of developing them in mainland China with talent experienced in that market. What makes Clash Mini a game that could have not been possible to develop in Helsinki?

  • And the studio strategy seems true to Supercell’s creative pillars: A model of small core teams of expert developers with a very startup-like mindset, but without the same time and money constraints of a startup so that they have enough freedom to what’s needed; but also enough accountability, incentives, and passion to avoid falling into a complacency culture.

In my humble opinion, the biggest risk for these teams is that they try to create the same games that could’ve been done by Supercell Helsinki, for the same audience, with the same methodology. Instead of doing something uniquely suited to their skills and target platforms.

I think that Supercell NA teams, as well as any mobile team trying luck on PC and Console, should carry out their own strategy and methodology. They need to adapt to deal with the team scale required for a PC/Console title, establish different processes for product validation, and prepare for an entirely different way to launch and promote a new game.

In any case, the whole Deconstructor of Fun community wishes Supercell and the newly formed teams the best of luck. We look forward to playing what they craft!

Written by Javier Barnes

🎙️ Deconstructor of Fun Podcast

🎧 TWiG #212 - Apple's New Price Points / Game Genre Taxonomy pt 2 / Nintendo's Mobile Strategy

Eric Kress, Ethan and Laura gather this week to tackle Nintendo’s mobile strategy, the importance of taxonomy and game classification (part 2 to “Hybridcasual”), an Apple update on pricing and NFTs and Rovio’s newest character to their long successful Angry Birds franchise. Eric also shares his short but sweet second career as a basketball coach. Until next week.

🎧 Kress's Corner #3 - How to discover and manage Licensing?

Eric sits down with Rachit Moti at Layer Licensing to discuss how to discover and manage licenses and how his technology works.

The Game of the Week

Vampire Survivors (Poncle)

Vampire Survivors (one of the biggest indie hits on Steam and also the main reference for Habby’s massively successful mobile title Survivor.io) got a surprise launch on iOS and Android when it was announced on “The Game Awards” last week. 

This roguelike bullet-hell game has been one of the most loved PC games of the year and sits at position one on steam’s “best of 2022” list (1). It will be interesting to see if this PC port sees similar launch success as Survivor.io did (one article claiming that Survivor.io generated $75 million in its first two months of launch - 2)

Give the game a go and let us know what you think!

Weekly highlight by Jesper Gustavsson, Director of Product at SYBO Games

📝 NEWS

📊 INDUSTRY

💻 PUBLISHER

  • Nintendo sees mobile gaming as a marketing strategy as opposed to a revenue generator

  • 300 QA Devs Unionize At Microsoft-Owned ZeniMax Studios

  • GameStop reportedly makes another round of layoffs

  • Microsoft signs deal to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo for 10 years

  • Witcher: Monster Slayer to shut-down and developer Spokko to shutter

  • Activision Blizzard releases 2022 representation data

  • Marvel Snap releases jaw-dropping animated music video featuring famous Marvel pairs, plus a free Storm Hero variant card

💎🙌 INVESTING / M&A

👾 NEW GAMES

  • Polity is a life sim MMORPG where you can rule or be ruled, out now on Early Access on iOS and Android

  • Ragnarok Arena is out now on iOS and Android, with special in-game giveaways and a physical raffle draw

  • Archeland, a brand new strategy RPG that takes inspiration from Fire Emblem, opens pre-registration for Korean gamers

  • Crash Team Rumble Is A Competitive 4v4 Game Starring Crash Bandicoot And Friends

  • Massively Popular ‘Vampire Survivors’ Is Out Now on iOS and Android for Free

  • Amazon Games brings Blue Protocol MMO to Western audiences

  • Oh my Anne lets players discover an emotional tale while solving match-3 puzzles, now on soft launch in Canada

  • Airship Knights, the latest fantasy idle RPG, officially launches

  • ‘Valiant Hearts: Coming Home’ Revealed for iOS and Android Through Netflix at the Game Awards

  • Diablo 4 launches June 2023, Blizzard confirms

  • Flash Party opens pre-registration on Google Play and Steam ahead of launch next month

  • ‘Total Football’ is an Arcade-Style Soccer Title Out Now for iOS and Android, Here’s What You Can Expect

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