Value, Monetization and Mobile Gaming

Not that I think revenues or monetization are bad things (quite the opposite, in fact). Forbes has a look at fast growing SuperCell that makes games through seemingly development decentralized teams:

Ilkka Paananen says the best way to make money in mobile gaming is to stop thinking about making money. Think about fun instead. Fighting a mild case of flu and jet lag from a San Francisco flight back home to Helsinki, Paananen says that companies that place revenue above fun (we’re talking to you, Zynga) will ultimately fail. “It really is that simple–just design something great, something that users love,” says the 34-year-old. [...]

The growth curve steepens: With daily revenue now at $2.4 million, Supercell is already at a run-rate of more than $800 million for 2013 and could reach $1 billion. That would make it more than twice the size of Electronic Arts’ mobile games division, which has 900-plus iOS apps. Supercell now attracts 8.5 million daily players who play an average of ten times per day.[...]

Most game studios have an autocratic executive producer green-lighting the work of designers and programmers. Supercell’s developers work in autonomous groups of five to seven people. Each cell comes up with its own game ideas. They run their ideas by Paananen (he can’t remember ever nixing a proposal), then develop those into a game. If the team likes it, the rest of the employees get to play. If they like it, the game gets tested in Canada‘s iTunes App store. If it’s a hit there it will be deemed ready for global release. This staged approach has killed off four games so far, with each dead project a cause for celebration. Employees crack open champagne to toast their failure. “We really want to celebrate maybe not the failure itself but the learning that comes out of the failure,” says Paananen.