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[antitrop]

Clash of Clans is actually a solid game, compared to the rest of the complete garbage on mobile.

Boom Beach ain't bad, either.

If you prefer to play for hours continuously without break, this game sucks unless you pay.

If you only check in once every few hours 5 minutes each then it is pretty fun.

I usually just checked in 2-3 times a day and spent 10 minutes max.

Same. Perfect to pull out when you're doing something like waiting in line.

 

[CommandThrower]

Clash of Clans is not my thing. Don't think it ever will be, either.

Good for Supercell, though.

 

[Jumplion]

Clash of Clans is a very interesting game to say the least. I personally have it and I occasionally drop by and play around with it a bit. The base building mechanics are really cool, I think, though I find the combat system to be lacking and fairly boring and a resource sink. It's not totally awful in how it tries to make its money, but it does take a good long while to get things moving. If you just occasionally fiddle around with it every other day or so, it's moderately enjoyable.

 

[AdmiralSnackbar]

If you prefer to play for hours continuously without break, this game sucks unless you pay.

If you only check in once every few hours 5 minutes each then it is pretty fun.

I usually just checked in 2-3 times a day and spent 10 minutes max.

Pretty much this. You have to download the game knowing full well it's a scam.
The game is pretty fun as a 10 minute a day experience but any sort of extended play impossible.

It's like getting the free resort stay then being goaded into buying a timeshare.
You better go in knowing that everyone there will be relentless in trying to get you to buy the timeshare.

 

[groshkar]

King, Supercell, Machine Zone and EA are the most prominent, and they seem to be doing incredibly well from year to year. Agree it is very hard to make string of hits, that's why Supercell is such a rare company. 3 back-to-back blockbuster game hits is tough to replicate.

Japan App Store is far more lucrative however, and both Sega and SquareEnix are doing very well there. Of course there will be a point where the growth will slow down, and we will see some shake-ups. Still does not fix my main concern for console gaming, which is the skyrocketing dev costs and treating of the dev staff like disposable diapers.

No doubt Supercell has done very well. The cycle for mobile games is different from what we've grown accustomed to in other forms of media. The tail is a lot longer and a lot bigger, with many of the top apps having been out for a long time and/or associated with top apps that are already near the top. They didn't exist as a company when Angry Birds was released. They might very well have the Mobile version of WoW in CoC, that has incredible staying power. That might even be a MORE precautionary tale for other companies looking to replicate its success.

I'm not worried about the future of console gaming. It either survives, changes, or goes away. Video games will continue to exist.

It sucks that developers get treated the way they do. The skyrocketing cost of game development really isn't my problem. If individual companies go under, others will step in to replace them. Look at the film industry. Their popularity and revenue are down by huge margins when compared in per capita real money to the mid 20th century. Every now and then a studio has a project overrun their budget and flop, taking them down. Games will work the same way.

 

[Vomiaouaf]

How does Boom Beach compare to Clash of Clans? Does it take less time for things to get interesting, or is it about the same in your experience? (That is if you've played both of 'em.)

About the same, really. A few differences in there, including how the building process is handled (only one builder vs. multiple) and how the resources function. They've basically modeled each game after one another anyway. It was mostly a question of theme and atmosphere to me, overall. Fantasy and magic vs. military beach, basically.

 

[Cels]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/technology/master-of-his-virtual-domain.html

Fascinating NYT piece on former #1 player in Clash of Clans.


I also liked their Liam Neeson super bowl ad

 

[Vomiaouaf]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/technology/master-of-his-virtual-domain.html

Fascinating NYT piece on former #1 player in Clash of Clans.


I also liked their Liam Neeson super bowl ad

This article always makes me 'sad' about the world #2. Probably spent a truckload of money to get there, too; but received none of the prestige, fame, or glory.

 

[Ninja Dom]

How does Boom Beach compare to Clash of Clans? Does it take less time for things to get interesting, or is it about the same in your experience? (That is if you've played both of 'em.)

Probably a bit quicker from what I can gather. I first played Clash of Clans when it first came out probably around 3 years ago. I tried but it never grabbed me at all. Now I imagine the game has turned/developed into something completely beyond the scope of when it first came out.

But Boom Beach DID grab me early. Less than an hour of tutorials and getting to grips before you're thrown into the thick of it.

 

[yellowjacket25]

What separates good players from bad ones, though? Isn't it just tapping on the screen to deploy troops? I played the game for several days and based on what I learned, you can't even directly control or micromanage your troops once they've been deployed. To me, it just seems like the skill ceiling is incredibly low. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see little to no headroom for there to exist truly great players (skill-wise) who are way above the rest. And even the best players still have to wait for long periods of time before large armies are created--unless, of course, they spend tons of gems.

You can't directly control the troops but if you are good at attacking then you can predict their behavior and plan for it. One of the hardest troops to control is the Pekka. If you are launching a go wipe attack and you want them to go a certain direction you basically have to clear out the area around them so they don't wander off. You can also use a jump spell to hopefully funnel them in a certain direction. Even if they go the direction that you want them to you have to time when you drop certain spells, when to use the abilities of your heroes, when to drop wall breakers, and how many, where to drop certain troops to draw clan castles, etc. All of these things and more are different with every base design and this is only one attack strategy. If you played it for a few hours then yes, I can see why you would think there is no skill to the game, but at the higher levels, if you just drop troops and hope for the best then you have no chance of even coming close to a victory.

 

[Driw3r]

Well, that's a something. Wow. Never played any of their games though.

 

[Dicer]

Good for them I suppose, I am personally WAY fucking burnt out on these style games, there is no way to get anywhere reasonable unless you cough up substantial amounts of cash....But as we can tell from this report it seems to work in some cases.

Shit like this and Game of War are exceptions not the rule in making assloads of cash so hopefully it's not an overwhelming trend in mobile "gaming" which already has a bad taste to many people.

 

[kaching]

Clash of Clans requires almost no skill at all.

Is this supposed to be an insult? Most games are accessible enough to require almost no skill at all to play, from Pac-Man to Street Fighter to GTA. To play effectively is always a different story and obviously some people have a higher affinity or innate skill at playing certain types of games. So maybe CoC is just one of those games that comes easily to you but it's certainly not a game that everyone plays equally well at without "almost no skill at all", even at the lower level town upgrades.

 

[freenudemacusers]

Yes, because Nintendo always planned to prostitute their IPs out to mobile development

wait how is nintendo of all people a victim in this? they handed mobile playing over to smartphones without any resistance whatsoever, and are now playing catch up in a field they have zero experience in.

and if y'all are waiting for the smartphone gaming bubble to burst, a product everyone and their mom uses... well... enjoy the wait?

 

[groshkar]

It is also hard to have a hit AAA game. The difference is mobile games like Clash of Clans have a much higher return on investment because the development is so cheap in comparison. One attempt at a AAA game is dozens of very high production value mobile games, probably even more. For investors, the ROI just makes mobile super appealing which is why you're seeing so many people jump into the market.

While the idea of having a super hit with massive profits may be appealing, the reality is that there is a lot of marketing that goes into maintaining those titles at the top of the list. There's also significant server infrastructure needed to maintain game state data, and if the company is near the top of the list and are tweaking their gameplay to maximize revenue then they are collecting all kinds of data on every player during gameplay, then analyzing it.

Without all that you're just another one of the thousands of apps on the app store that nobody has ever heard about.

 

[Agnostic]

Boom Beach is great to play when taking a shit.

 

[ghostmind]

NeoGAF Boom Beach Task Force reporting for duty!


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[ChrisD]

I've actually never heard of Clash of Clans... or supercell.

Apparently I live under a rock. Or my friends and family just aren't in the same group the game is targeting.

Or both.

 

[Ocho]

NeoGAF Boom Beach Task Force reporting for duty!


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I'll rejoin today. I had uninstalled the game but feel like coming back.

 

[joezombie]

33% margins are incredibly high for any business, but even so it's sort of interesting that they (have to?)spend so much on things that aren't making these games. The games themselves may be way cheaper to make the traditional games, but the marketing costs seem huge and getting larger for these big mobile games

 

[Chubzdoomer]

Is this supposed to be an insult? Most games are accessible enough to require almost no skill at all to play, from Pac-Man to Street Fighter to GTA. To play effectively is always a different story and obviously some people have a higher affinity or innate skill at playing certain types of games. So maybe CoC is just one of those games that comes easily to you but it's certainly not a game that everyone plays equally well at without "almost no skill at all", even at the lower level town upgrades.

Not an insult at all, just an observation. So far as I can tell, it mostly requires time, not skill, to build humongous bases and armies. I played for several days and couldn't find a reason to continue because I was just bored by it. Maybe it really is one of those games that just doesn't get good until you dump a shitload of time into it (MMORPGs are often the same way). That's time that I would prefer to spend playing games that are actually enjoyable from the start, though.

 

[ToraShiro]

While the idea of having a super hit with massive profits may be appealing, the reality is that there is a lot of marketing that goes into maintaining those titles at the top of the list. There's also significant server infrastructure needed to maintain game state data, and if the company is near the top of the list and are tweaking their gameplay to maximize revenue then they are collecting all kinds of data on every player during gameplay, then analyzing it.

Without all that you're just another one of the thousands of apps on the app store that nobody has ever heard about.

Then there is, of course, the benefit of a game that never runs out of money to put towards. At some point in most games in retail channels there is a maximum of what you can pay, even if it's a ton like DOA's costumes. You will eventually hit the cap and cannot pay the company any more.

In titles like this, however... Well, you can just keep paying without end...

 

[Alchemy]

While the idea of having a super hit with massive profits may be appealing, the reality is that there is a lot of marketing that goes into maintaining those titles at the top of the list. There's also significant server infrastructure needed to maintain game state data, and if the company is near the top of the list and are tweaking their gameplay to maximize revenue then they are collecting all kinds of data on every player during gameplay, then analyzing it.

Without all that you're just another one of the thousands of apps on the app store that nobody has ever heard about.

And that is all cheaper then AAA game development by orders of magnitude. I've worked on a title that ran both gameplay servers for synchronous multiplayer as well as the data base server tracking millions of players stats and inventorys. We had three engineers, none of which worked on maintaining the servers full time and once the server code was built we re-used it in other products. We used Amazon servers to spin up and down whatever servers we needed further reducing costs when we had a low number of active users. Asynchronous multiplayer is even cheaper to deal with.

We're talking a development team of probably 20 people, including marketing working for a year to get a product launched. The team I worked at before (AAA), had a team of over 200 working for 2.5 years with a lot of work being done before they expanded to such a large dev team prior to that. The cost of development isn't even in the same realm.

Marketing is definitely an ongoing expense for these games, and easily outstrips development budgets. But it isn't exactly like you can launch a successful AAA game with zero marketing either.

 

[Ocho]

Not an insult at all, just an observation. So far as I can tell, it mostly requires time, not skill, to build humongous bases and armies. I played for several days and couldn't find a reason to continue because I was just bored by it.

Already discussed previously on how we disagree on this.

Maybe it really is one of those games that just doesn't get good until you dump a shitload of time into it (MMORPGs are often the same way). That's time that I would prefer to spend playing games that are actually enjoyable from the start, though.

You can play multiple games at the same time. CoC being excellent at that.

 

[Tizoc]

My cousins in Bahrain really like this game, and I think it's cool that they enjoy it.
Seems my nephews also played it, I let my younger nephew try Age of Empires 2 on my laptop and he liked what he played.

Regardless, good for them, I really should get that game installed on my iPad though heh.

 

[Longsword]

33% margins are incredibly high for any business, but even so it's sort of interesting that they (have to?)spend so much on things that aren't making these games. The games themselves may be way cheaper to make the traditional games, but the marketing costs seem huge and getting larger for these big mobile games

Marketing costs are huge for all games, mobile or otherwise. But in the case of a game like Clash, putting money into marketing is sensible since it has good ROI. Gotta spend money to make money. You can get new people to download your game years after the launch, while retail games generally have 1-3 months of real sales window before discounts and the new shiny thing come along.

 

[Ninja Dom]

NeoGAF Boom Beach Task Force reporting for duty!


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Woah!! I've been playing completely single player. I've never joined any task force. What do I gain? Can I use what I gain to boost my single player base??

 

[Ninja Dom]

I've actually never heard of Clash of Clans... or supercell.

Apparently I live under a rock. Or my friends and family just aren't in the same group the game is targeting.

Or both.

What country do you live in? Both games are advertised VERY HEAVILY here in the UK on TV during the afternoons..

 

[ghostmind]

Woah!! I've been playing completely single player. I've never joined any task force. What do I gain? Can I use what I gain to boost my single player base??

By joining a task force, you can participate in operations, which are coordinated attacks on larger installations (some of them brutal). The better your task force does in a operation, the larger the reward will be delivered to all members SP bases, via a special cargo vessel.

 

[GCX]

Supercell won't be the next Zynga or Rovio simply because they believe in the power of small teams. Despite the huge profits they have expanded only moderately so there is nothing to crash and burn.

 

[jcm]

The fear is that with the rising costs of AAA/console development, publishers are going feel increasingly reluctant to spend a ton of money on console games and will reorganize their plans and studios to be more mobile focused where the potential profits are massively more appealing from a business perspective.

But is that at all likely? The mid-tier has already been wiped out by high AAA costs. The pubs that are left are chasing the big money AAA blockbusters. Are they going to up and switch to smart phones?

 

[bomblord1]

Mobile is growing at a really fast rate every year. There´s no crash any time soon.

That's exactly why it's due for a crash. Unchecked growth almost always leads to a massive crash.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Great for Supercell. Amazing company that does tons of good for Finland.

 

[CarbonFire]

That's exactly why it's due for a crash. Unchecked growth almost always leads to a massive crash.

What exactly is "unchecked growth" in this case? Mobile gaming has been growing steadily since it started getting popular on the iPhone.

I don't think Supercell will always be making this kind of money, but I think there will continue to be a market for someone to make this much.

 

[kinoki]

I need to try Clash of Clans.

 

[murgo]

NeoGAF Boom Beach Task Force reporting for duty!


We would love for more GAF'ers to join us. We are currently 21 out of 25 members. Just search the task forces for NeoGAF.

I think I'll try the game later and join!

 

[bomblord1]

What exactly is "unchecked growth" in this case? Mobile gaming has been growing steadily since it started getting popular on the iPhone.

I don't think Supercell will always be making this kind of money, but I think there will continue to be a market for someone to make this much.

The massive amount of money entering the market the massive amount of developers going after the money. It's very similar to the 1980's game crash or the .com bubble.

 

[PrimaNocta]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/technology/master-of-his-virtual-domain.html

Fascinating NYT piece on former #1 player in Clash of Clans.

jesus $3000 on the game? & I thought my $200 spent was crazy.

 

[ChrisD]

What country do you live in? Both games are advertised VERY HEAVILY here in the UK on TV during the afternoons..

US. But I don't watch TV. Our household is pretty much all digital. Walking Dead on Sundays and the occasional news in the evening. That's about all that I see.

Though I just asked my more mobile-inclined brother if he knew what the game is, and the response was a quick, "YES, I see ads all the time!"

I guess it's more that I just didn't know. In which case, rock life confirmed.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Thank you Mr. Neeson

 

[Dugna]

I still fall for it.

I wish they were making 2bn T.T

 

[n0razi]

Why do you guys think the game is so popular? Because they force us to play? No, the game is fun and great for mobile. Simple as that.

they are popular for the same reason that slot machines are popular... they use hooks that cater toward addictive and obsessive personalities

 

[Ocho]

they are popular for the same reason that slot machines are popular... they use hooks that cater toward addictive and obsessive personalities

Care to explain these 'hooks' you talk about and how they compare/contrast from regular videogames?

 

[kaching]

Not an insult at all, just an observation. So far as I can tell, it mostly requires time, not skill, to build humongous bases and armies.

Sorry, but it's a pretty poor observation. A core component of the game is raiding and your success at doing that has a huge swing factor on the time it takes to build those humongous bases and armies. The more effective you are at raiding, the more quickly you'll have the resources at your disposal to upgrade your base and armies. Being effective at raiding requires a number of different skills, like knowing the best way to deploy your troop types, assessing base configuration and exploiting weaknesses, etc. The cost of building your raiding parties also factors against the resources you have to upgrade other things, so it also behooves you to balance out optimal army composition without breaking the bank.

 

[Chubzdoomer]

A core component of the game is raiding and your success at doing that has a huge swing factor on the time it takes to build those humongous bases and armies. The more effective you are at raiding, the more quickly you'll have the resources at your disposal to upgrade your base and armies. Being effective at raiding requires a number of different skills, like knowing the best way to deploy your troop types, assessing base configuration and exploiting weaknesses, etc. The cost of building your raiding parties also factors against the resources you have to upgrade other things, so it also behooves you to balance out optimal army composition without breaking the bank.

Fair enough. As I've said before, though, I imagine it requires an enormous amount of time just to get to the good stuff. After all, even resources are merely keys to unlock often-lengthy timers for constructing/upgrading things.

 

[Brashnir]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/technology/master-of-his-virtual-domain.html

Fascinating NYT piece on former #1 player in Clash of Clans.


I also liked their Liam Neeson super bowl ad

To stay on top, Mr. Yao was spending at least $250 a week on the gems.

Yeah....

 

[More_Badass]

if the frequenters of this forum, who usually stand for a much more varied and niche segment of gaming, is all about this game, I truly fear for the future of gaming.

One can enjoy this and still enjoy Bloodborne and Witcher and Transistor

Someone liking something you don't doesn't mean gaming is dead

 

[kaching]

Fair enough. As I've said before, though, I imagine it requires an enormous amount of time just to get to the good stuff.

Which is different from other more traditional games how?

After all, even resources are merely keys to unlock often-lengthy timers for constructing/upgrading things.

But it doesn't require you to actively sit in front of the game for progress to continue. Your actual time invested for these upgrades is probably less than the time you need to actively spend grinding to get to the "good stuff" in an RPG or the like.

 

[Ocho]

I'm starting to realize some here don't understand the concept of mobile, casual gaming, thus the hate of CoC. They want console experiences in their devices, and expect mechanics in par. They don't comprehend CoC's way of building stuff behind 'timewalls' actually works in their favor.

 

[groshkar]

And that is all cheaper then AAA game development by orders of magnitude. I've worked on a title that ran both gameplay servers for synchronous multiplayer as well as the data base server tracking millions of players stats and inventorys. We had three engineers, none of which worked on maintaining the servers full time and once the server code was built we re-used it in other products. We used Amazon servers to spin up and down whatever servers we needed further reducing costs when we had a low number of active users. Asynchronous multiplayer is even cheaper to deal with.

We're talking a development team of probably 20 people, including marketing working for a year to get a product launched. The team I worked at before (AAA), had a team of over 200 working for 2.5 years with a lot of work being done before they expanded to such a large dev team prior to that. The cost of development isn't even in the same realm.

Marketing is definitely an ongoing expense for these games, and easily outstrips development budgets. But it isn't exactly like you can launch a successful AAA game with zero marketing either.

True enough. But the revenue you're going to generate will be orders of magnitude lower as well, outside of a handful of well known exceptions by a few different companies, none of which have any presence on consoles.