Supercell is a Finnish mobile game developer founded in 2010 that has found great success with games like Clash of Clans and Hay Day. The document discusses Supercell's culture and values that may contribute to its success, including believing the best people will create the best games, celebrating failure, small team sizes, transparency, and paying it forward. It also shares key metrics like their fast revenue growth and large workforce despite only releasing two games so far.
Iโm Heini from Supercell and here to talk about our โsercet sauceโ and if culture can be a competitive advantage. The main areas:quick history of us,Our organisaion, and our company culture. Lets start with a quick introductionโฆ
We launched two games on iOS in 2012, Clash of Clans and Hay Day. - Our growth has since been pretty fast.In 2012 our yearly revenue was USD 101M.In the first quarter of 2013 we topped that with proit alone.But this is actually the more boring information about SupercellThe interesting part is how our team of 106 people has created this success. Lets recap our history quickly
It all started on a simple idea that the best people will create the best gamesOur CEO often says that building a game team is like building an NHL teamYou find the best people and let them do what they do best
Well in 2010 when the company was founded, the NHL team had 6 founding membersThey started in a small 30 m2 office in Helsinkiโs neighbor city Espoo Ever since the beginning Supercell has been about focusing on games without any bureacracy, hierarchy or powerplayActually if you look at typical large game organizations, they tend to be something like this:
We are speaking about an incredibly fun and creative industry but often our organisations are about one person on top with a vision that everyone else excecutes.Well, we really want to do things differently and give freedom to everyone in at Supercell to follow their visions.
- So how to lead creative teams?Well it comes down to our company culture and this is what is Supercellโs secret sauce. Our competitive advantage, if you like, is our amazing people and unique culture. Games can be copied, but you cannot copy a person, right?
How do we do things then? Hereโs actually one of my favorite photos of the Supercell team and I guess your thinking that weโre celebrating a launch of our game or some other milestone?Well no, we are actually celebrating failure here.Whenever a team kills a game project, we gather the entire company into the kitchen for a post-mortemCelebrate learning โ not failure itself
And have we failed!Launched 2 games and killed 4 in 2014Itโs not all bad โ we do drink beer when we succeedGame teams decide to kill a game
Our teams our smallClash of Clans 5 individuals until launch. Today about 10. A couple of Programmers, Artist, Lead, Game designData scientist, Quality specialist, community managerSmall teams means that everyone takes responsibility for their work and each team member has big influence on the gameOur people our passionate and build games out of love for games!
- Our game teams have full freedom to decide what they do with the games- Of course with freedom comes responsibility and our game teams work really hard to keep our players happyListen to the communityDicuss in teamsEach team has their own processes So, we have no management basicallyWe have Ilkka who we often call the least powerful CEO and then we have the small teams that decide what to doSame goal, same direction, incredible passion to get things done
Another important part of our culture is transparency Everyone gets an automatic email in the morning with key numbers on how weโre doingSame information -> smart decisionsNo powerplay over information
We also try to pay it forward and give backWeโve got incredible support from the public, our players, and the governementWe owe our success to our players and all the support weโve gotten and try to give backThis is a movember campaign from last year.
So can sulture be a compeittive advantage?We think soIf we look at us, we are still a relatively small game company and have managed to become the leading mobile game developer on iOS. We are 106 ppl, have 2 gamesLooking a bigger company on the market, they have almost 10 000 employees and 969 games on iOS. This shows that small teams can achieve great things This is possible for any small developer out there!
So to sum it, we believe the best people create the best gamesLet them do what they do best
This is a photo of our team in Helsinki back in NovemberWeโre actually looking for new people to join our team in Helsinki From artists to developers and customer acquistion
- Pleasecheck our website and you can mention the white nights conference if you do decide to apply!Thanks again for your timeQuestions