[MISC] Interview with Darian, the Supercell Community Manager, about Supercell, Clash of Clans, feedback, communication, and the development of the game!

Zag: Yeah, fair enough.

So as far as, uh, new troops: it’s interesting seeing troops like the Battle Ram and Ice Wizard and things like that, and it makes me wonder are there other troops that have been developed in the past that haven’t been used?

Darian (laughter): Yes.  I don’t know the full list of them, but one famous example was the goblin zeppelin.

Zag: Okay.

Darian:  There was a zeppelin that had three different attack points.  Like each of the attack points had a different like attack that it could do, but also each one of them could be destroyed individually.

Zag: Interesting.

Darian: And like I said on paper it sounds cool, but on a technical aspect?  It just..it...there was no way to balance it.  It was technically difficult.  It was, um, from a player's perspective, it was not a very streamlined...it was very clunky to use, very clunky to attack, very clunky to defend against, um...and ultimately it was scrapped. Even though they really liked the idea of it.

Zag: So, when there are new units, what percentage of the ones that are dreamed up ever make it into the game?

Darian: A large number of them. Largely because...and this kind of falls onto, you know, why they design in a group and not by committee.  Like I said before when I said not by committee, it's like we don’t vote on it.

Zag: Right.

Darian: But we do come to an agreement on, you know whether we feel like this is the right direction for the game.  ‘Does this fit with the flavor of Clash of Clans?’

Zag: So that’s actually kind of a question too: is..do you know, does Clash really have a theme? Because you look at dragons, those are medieval, you look at valkyries, those are from…

Darian: Norse mythology.

Zag: Yeah, exactly.  Norse mythology and then you’ve got like a hogrider - I don’t even know where that’s from, like is there a theme to Clash?

Darian:  It’s fantasy.  I mean you’ve got wizards, you’ve got archers, I mean, you’ve got dragons, goblins.  That’s as fantasy as it gets.  Just in a very, you know, playful way.  And then you’ve got the hogrider.

Zag (laughter): He just showed up one day?

Darian: Yeah, he just mysteriously showed up on the base one day yelling, well…

Zag: Hogrider?

Darian: What he usually yells. And he really hasn’t left since and we don’t know why.  He kind of just took up residence, smashing everybody’s stuff.

Zag: Yeah he got in that boat. He went across the ocean, and we haven’t seen him in the Builder Hall ever.

Darian: I think they ate him.

Zag: Could be.  I’ve seen those campfires.

Darian: Yeah, yeah.

Zag: There are pigs roasting over those campfires. In the same camp the hog rider is in sometimes yeah.  I’ve always wondered about that one.

Darian: Failed hogrider initiates.

Zag (laughter): There you go.

So, um, what all sources does Supercell monitor to get feedback?  On their games?  Because I mean, you mentioned the players, playing their own games but also there is feedback coming in. Where all do you get that from?

Darian: Everywhere you can think of.  From Forum posts to Reddit posts to in-office visitors and snail mail.  That’s not a joke.  Like I’ve answered a lot of handwritten letters from players: from kids all the way to soldiers deployed overseas in military operations.

Zag: That’s hilarious.  So, I guess the moral of that story is we should all be writing letters to Supercell.

Darian: We love letters.  We love getting letters actually.  It…I mean the idea of...me personally, I find writing letter to be still a romantic, classic way of communication.

But there have been times, where, you know, I came across a family visiting from overseas. They were on vacation, just passing through Helsinki, and, you know, while they had a day to kill before their cruise ship left, they were walking by the Supercell office.  And I just happened to be leaving the office at that time, and the kid walked up to me and just had all this feedback to give.  On what he felt was his favorite Clash Royale character, what his favorite Clash of Clans character was, how he thought that we could improve the game, what was wrong with the game...

Ultimately, we all have families to play the game. So, sometimes the best source of feedback I get is from my stepson.  He’ll come to me like ‘Darian, I don’t like the way this plays, this plays, this plays, this plays,’ and the kid has a good mind for design, so he’ll tell me ‘You know, I don’t like it because of this.  It affects this, this, and this.’

Zag: That’s pretty complex, yeah.

Well thank you.

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