This article was first published in the December 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

Not much is happening, and Supercell likes it that way. By the end of this fine summer's day in Helsinki, €5 million (£3.6m) will have rolled into the gaming company's accounts as it does every 24 hours; but the offices are quiet. There is a pile of shoes by the door: employees walk around in socks, which might contribute to the hush. The team for the game Clash of Clans, the highest-grossing app in the world, tinker at their screens, all of them wearing headphones. "Everyone sits quietly and taps on the keyboard," according to Marika Appel, Supercell's marketing manager. Ilkka Paananen, co-founder and chief executive, adds: "Last year we hired 25 people, across five offices, so it's even less in Helsinki. That's probably why it's so quiet." There's a long queue for the pizza being handed out. It's all very reasonable.

There was a time when Supercell was sound and fury. In the summer of 2012, it releasedHay Day, followed by Clash of Clans. Six months later, those titles were generating $1 million a day. Six months after that, $2.5 million. In April 2013, Supercell raised a $130 million funding round led by IVP. That year, it raised $892 million - up from $101 million the previous year. In October 2013, Japanese telecoms giant Softbank bought 51 per cent of the company at a reported valuation of $3 billion. In March 2014 it released Boom Beach, which was one of the highest-grossing games of the year.

In March 2015, Softbank purchased the rest of the shares owned by external investors. Gamesbeat reported that the valuation was $5.5 billion.


Supercell co-founder Ilkka Paananen intends to be "the world's least powerful CEO"

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"It's been a really great three years," Paananen says. He's tanned and wears shorts and his trademark black Supercell T-shirt. Now, he's determined to take his time: "We've taken our own approach here, which is: we like to do things very, very slowly."

You can see it in the interiors of the office. When WIRED first visited in November 2012, the team had just arrived after Nokia had moved out. The initial office space was standard zany startup chic: a room dedicated to LEGO, colourful chairs, stupid names for meeting rooms, the world-domination map showing active players around the world. The newest part of the office is very different, more a subdued members' club than a playground for nerds. The rooms currently being furnished will be more elegant still. Apart from one - a recreation of the bar that was the backdrop for a half-time Superbowl advert featuring Liam Neeson.


Slowing down makes sense. There are other gaming startups - Zynga, Rovio, King - that enjoyed explosive growth and are still hugely valuable businesses. King, for instance, has a market capitalisation of $4.2 billion. But each of these has been unable to sustain their initial dizzying ascents.

"It's been a great three years. We've taken our own approach here, which is: we like to do things very, very slowly" Ilkka Paananen

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Supercell rocketed even higher, even quicker. "We try to map out different scenarios, for whether something continues to grow or dies out," says Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype and an investor in Supercell. "Many times companies are not tracking according to the best scenario. With Supercell, they've been tracking, at least initially, according to the best scenario."


The question is whether Supercell is still tracking and where it is on the parabola. Right now, it feels like it's throttling back. That could still mean a steady ascent - or it could be the first feeling of weightlessness before the company comes down. Supercell hasn't fully released a game since 2013. It has created scores of them - and killed them all. Paananen has lost count: "How many? Oh my god! Many. Let's see. We've killed... many." Games can be good, and popular on the App Store, but if they won't be played for a timespan of years, they get killed. Supercell is celebrated for toasting each of its failures with Champagne.

Gaming is a hits industry and, eventually, Supercell will need another hit. "The nature of this business is that you're going to have hits and then softer quarters or even years," Paananen says. "We like to think much, much longer term, ten years ahead. We'll keep the company small, stay organised in small independent teams and hire as slowly as possible to make sure the culture sustains.

Then if you add some luck into the equation and give us enough time, we will make some great games. "All of us have been part of companies that have grown really quickly. This time we promised ourselves that we're going to do things differently."

In an industry where novelty rules and in a startup culture where growth is worshipped, Supercell has perhaps found a way to take its own sweet time.

Supercell's rise, from the release of Hay Day to its $2.5bn acquisition, was conspicuous. But the two years before that were more important: the company's structure and culture were forged with the hope that they would see it through decades of success.

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Paananen, alongside Mikko Kodisoja, Petri Styrman, Lassi Leppinen, Visa Forsten and Niko Derome, founded the company in 2010. Kodisoja and Paananen's previous company - Sumea, a mobile games developer - had been acquired by Californian games developer Digital Chocolate. Over the years Sumea had grown from 30 to 400 employees by making throwaway games for dumb phones. Supercell would be the opposite. "The original founding idea was to do games that people would play for a long time," says Leppinen.

Less Cut the Rope, more World of Warcraft - but for a much broader audience. "One of our dreams was to create games that people would play for decades," Paananen says.

David Gardner, general partner at London Venture Partners, the investment company that was part of Supercell's first round of finance in 2011, says: "What was interesting was how they wanted to do it was extremely organised." Instead of hundreds of developers, they kept it small. Each seven-person cell would create games quickly, and abandon them quickly; the only people who could kill a game were those who had come up with it.

Put all those independent cells together and you have Supercell. Paananen wanted to be, in his words, "the world's least powerful CEO". "That is something that hadn't been done historically in games," says Nicholas Lovell, who runs games consultancy GAMESbrief and is the author of The Curve. "The Supercell model is: trust the team. That gives them empowerment."

The first product idea was the opposite of small, though: make cross-platform games, for Facebook, tablet, mobile and the web. The team developed Gunshine.net, a massively multiplayer role playing game for Facebook, and released it in February 2011. "I didn't want to be rude," Gardner says, "but I didn't think Gunshine was going to be a good product."

Gunshine was a good game, but a bad fit. Facebook was a platform for broad, casual games; Gunshine was extremely complex. The same logic would apply to any Supercell game, though: people would only play for years if it was deep, yet Facebook and the web were built for the shallow. "We got that completely wrong," Paananen says. "So we threw everything down the toilet."

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Every startup must have its pivot, but what's noticeable with Supercell is how painless and quick the process was. It wasn't so much that the team pivoted the company - the company pivoted itself. "In retrospect, developing Gunshine.net was like a training camp," Louhento says. "Nobody was heartbroken when we decided to make the call. You know: scrap everything, fuck this, let's move into mobile."

The beta of Gunshine had around half a million monthly players; nevertheless Supercell decided to kill it. The company which, by then, had raised $11 million had scrapped its only product. "There was a bit of pressure," Paananen says. "We have a very senior team, ten years plus of experience, raised lots of cash, and yet they still can't put anything out..." According to Louhento, "You could feel it in the air.

It was a now-or-never situation."

In January 2012, Supercell had five games in development. Two would become Clash of Clans and Hay Day, the other three would be killed: the pivot had baked discipline and ruthlessness into the company's culture. "Supercell very nearly went bust," Lovell says. "It nearly went horribly wrong. It was a brave and gutsy move. I wouldn't underestimate how much that formative awareness, that making a radical change saves the company and informs a lot of how else they behave." The move to mobile worked for three reasons: it offered breadth - billions of devices - but also depth: people constantly keep their devices with them. And it was exploding as a platform - in 2011, 472 million smartphones were sold; in 2014, it was 1.24 billion. Each one of those is a new potential customer for Supercell.

"Nobody was heartbroken when we decided to make the call. You know: scrap everything, let's move into mobile" Lassi Leppinen

Six months later, Clash of Clans and Hay Day were released. Engaging and highly polished, the games dominated the charts. What was unusual was how they stuck around; and how they continue to do so. The games were free - a strategic move to reach as many people as possible. Revenue would come from more committed gamers making in-app purchases. Supercell makes its money from gems, the currency in Clash of Clans, which can be bought with real money. Gems let you upgrade the buildings in your fort or can be exchanged for other game resources, like gold and elixir. 1,400 gems will set you back £79.99; people who spend a lot of money on gems are called "gemmers", and they keep Supercell in business. Some of the top players spend around £1,600 a month buying gems.

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That may sound extreme, but unlike most free-to-play games, it's possible to play quite happily without them. Supercell doesn't force them down players' throats. "They have always had a very long-term view of the customer, which is - don't hammer them for money right away," Gardner says. "Build a game that's inherently fun and make sure that the spending experience brings pleasure rather than removing anger."

When Clash of Clans and Hay Day started growing, Supercell started building them out. "Our content is spread out, it's progression," says Lasse Louhento, who designed Clash of Clansalongside Leppinen. "That's how we planned it to work long term. It opens up layer after layer." Supercell hasn't just been adding extra levels to keep players interested. It's continuing to develop the games themselves. "It's our duty to keep the game fresh," says Louhento. "Adding more - not content, but layers of depth." Chief Pat makes wildly popular YouTube gameplay videos for Supercell and has been playing it since its release. "It's way deeper than what it was," he says. "There were only a couple of ways to play the game then, but now it's very different."

Supercell's game lead Lasse Louhento is trialling his team's latest title in-house

And this is interesting, because gaming becomes a lot less like Hollywood than it does the TV industry. If console games are the box-office events where you pay top dollar for a one-off, Supercell's games have the slow-burn longevity of a TV series. An EastEnders for the mobile world. "More and more you can see that these are not just hits," Zennstrom says. "They're more evergreens than hits. That doesn't mean that they will be forever, but they're there for a long time." At that point, the notion of people playing a game for years, maybe decades, doesn't sound so far-fetched. And the notion of a hit becomes less important.

Who wants a sequel to Coronation Street when the original is still entertaining people and making money?

Television thrives on social (who shot Lucy Beale?), even in an on-demand world and, increasingly, so does Supercell. Social elements keep people coming back to the game. "The social element becomes even bigger than the game," Paananen says. "It's the reason a lot of Clash of Clans players keep coming back." People - especially younger players - make friends on the game. "For my generation, it was Facebook," Gardner says. "For my son, it's Clash of Clans." Players' cars have broken down and they have sought help by opening up Clan chat, rather than phoning their roadside assistance company. There have also been wedding proposals: one user, JNatsu, spelled out "Will You Marry Me" in Level 7 walls. (The reply, a yes, was inscribed in the intended's own base. When JNatsu, posted a screenshot of the proposal to the Supercell forum, another user replied, "This should of [sic] probably been in Off-Topic". Clash is serious business.) Paananen wants to go further with social because it also adds more layers to the games.

"We really have to make them deeper and better with the social factor.

The more social games are, the bigger chance they have of becoming hobbies." "Supercell" also refers to a type of thunderstorm, characterised by a deep, constantly rotating updraft. They are known as "quasi-steady-state storms", which to some extent feed on themselves in a virtuous cycle. At this stage, the Finnish Supercell is similarly self-sustaining, through its culture and structure, which reinforce each other.

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Choosing mobile as a platform means it's possible to create games which reach billions with just a small team. Those teams make games quickly, and scrap the ones that don't work just as quickly. When a game takes off, that cell keeps developing its own game,

over many years. That's the culture.

Supercell's co-founder Lassi Leppinen co-designed Clash of Clans with Louhento

Structurally, the popularity of its existing games gives Supercell a fantastic data set for measuring whether a new game will last for months or years. The revenues from its three titles means the company doesn't have to chase short-term hits, and has the luxury to wait until its next evergreen game comes along. The revenues also mean it can spend money on marketing the existing titles (Supercell was reported to be spending $1 million per day promoting its games) and finding new players.

Timing has been crucial. "They entered the market at the perfect moment," Gardner says. "When they launched, you didn't need as much money to build and market a product."

Supercell is now in a strong position. "Longevity is at the absolute heart of these games," Lovell says. "It's always been the case in the games industry, the rate in which well-known franchises come out - FIFA, Call of Duty... But now we're seeing it's not another version of the game, it is literally the same game. I can predict right now what the top games of 2016 are going to be, because I'll just give you the top ten so far.

The only other creative medium where you can do that is West End musicals."

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Focus is not the things you do, it's the things you say no to," says Paananen.

And Supercell says no a lot, in different ways, at different times. Anyone can come up with an idea for a game and convince other Supercell employees to join their team. The best way to do this is by developing a prototype, which usually takes a week. From then on, the game lead stands up every Friday afternoon and tells the rest of the company how the game is progressing. Many games are killed at this stage. A few months later, the team will put out a "company playable", which every employee plays and gives feedback. Many games are killed at this stage. After this, the team prepares a date for a soft launch, in the Canadian app store (to allow games to keep a slightly lower profile). After launch, the team closely watches how the game progresses. Many are killed at this stage, most recently,

Spooky Pop and Smash Land. They only lasted a few months in 2013.

"It's not for everybody, and it's not for the faint-hearted," Louhento says.

"We don't feel bad about it, because it was our decision," adds Jonathan Dower, the lead developer on Smash Land. The game was popular, but it "didn't have the pull [to keep people playing] for years". He's now working on the next game; when WIRED visits he's about to give his first Friday-afternoon presentation, and start the whole six-month cycle again. Touko Tahkokallio, a game designer of Boom Beach, is "getting his team together and working on an idea". Louhento and Leppinen have already created a company playable for their new project.

At least one player - in this case, JNatsu - has proposed through Clash of Clans

Can they develop another Clash of Clans? "I'm not ready to say that Supercell has eliminated the hit business by making a game that continues for a long time," Lovell says. "But it's way more profitable than gambling on the next hit. I'm worried they haven't got another hit. But nowhere near as worried as I am for somebody whose business model is fundamentally based around this." "We as investors want things faster than is needed," Gardner says. "I think Supercell has a long, long way to go."

Much of the calm that radiates throughout Supercell comes from Paananen. He puts people at ease. True to his promise as CEO, he gets out of the way. Ask five former investors to choose one word to describe him, and they all give the same reply: "Humble."


There is no secret to making wildly popular mobile games, but Supercell has a structure that maximises its chances. "Is it going to happen next year? I have no idea," Paananen says. "But will it happen in ten years? Yeah, I'm confident that it will happen. Like, we have all the time in the world."

Tom Cheshire is technology correspondent at Sky News

Photography: Nick Wilson