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Supercell's Ilkka Paananen

The CEO discusses the new browser games company and the "healthy pressure" of long-term investors

GamesIndustry.biz Where do you see the browser market going in the next 12-24 months and where does Supercell fit into that?
Iikka Paananen

We believe there's a whole lot of people who are looking for a little bit of a deeper game experience and a richer social experience as well. So far, a lot of games have been pretty shallow in terms of social interaction, it's not really like playing together.

I'm not saying it's going to move to the other end of the scale but we think that's there's room for richer experiences. As a company we're not going to release ten games this year. We believe that we're going to release a lot fewer games that people will want to play, not for months but for years. Our role model is more a company like Blizzard than the sort of companies you see on Facebook.

GamesIndustry.biz You obviously took quite a lot of investment from LVP and others - was the investment community aware of what's going on in the browser games market, and was it easy to convince them of growth in the sector?
Iikka Paananen

It was varied per investor. Obviously some had a lot of insight and knowledge in where it's going and we really wanted to get guys on board who shared the vision. Talking to Phil Harrison and David Gardner it was very obvious very early on that they really shared the common vision. When visions are aligned I guess they took a look at the team and realised what we had - so from that point of view it wasn't all that hard.

GamesIndustry.biz Does the amount of investment in the company put pressure on the team to deliver? Obviously it's a commercial business...
Iikka Paananen

Firstly, the investors are in it for the long term, they're not in it for short-term win. That's a good starting point. I would say it creates some good, healthy pressure and there's people you are responsible for. But definitely, everybody is in this for the long term and that's really important for us.

GamesIndustry.biz The excitement, investment and acquisitions in the online games space - is that a bubble that's going to deflate anytime soon?
Iikka Paananen

The market is certainly extremely hot but I think as long as people can prove that they are actually making money and prove that we as an industry are making constant progress and it's growing, if that continues I wouldn't be worried about a bubble.

From our perspective we actually don't pay a lot of attention to it because we're in it for the long-term. We're not thinking about this year or the year after, we're looking at the next five to ten years. We're focused on creating a really, really great game experience for our users - if we're able to do that, that people are willing to spend a lot of time on, and some of their money on, that's where we're aiming.

GamesIndustry.biz How have you approached ease of use for the consumer - as soon as you introduce any kind of plug-in you lose a significant proportion of the audience, for example...
Iikka Paananen

Exactly. First of all the whole client side is done in Flash because it has the widest range. Technically speaking Flash is a plug-in - although we say "no plug-ins required" we've been getting a lot feedback from users - but in practice the majority of users have it.

We selected Flash because it gives us the widest reach and gives a great user experience. We have to make the games super-accessible. And we're going to be using Facebook and Twitter as log-ins for users. We're trying to make it as easy as possible for the player.

GamesIndustry.biz How will you approach marketing the games? There's a lot of content out there on the web and it's a battle to draw the consumer in when they are faced with so many options and established games and portals.
Iikka Paananen

I think it all starts with the fact that we believe we have a product that is worth talking about and it's different. We've only been live for two weeks and there are a lot of people who are really passionate about what we're doing. We think we already have the beginnings of a very loyal and fanatical following. And we just need to get more people like that.

We've been getting a fair amount of press and publicity across the web, we think that will help us get to a certain stage. And then we'll buy into advertising, and on top of that the product is extremely viral. We're not making it enforced viral, but more that users will need to take down a mean boss by calling in their friends, which should make it more natural, if you will. Our plan is to get to a critical mass and just trust that the product is viral.

Iikka Paananen is CEO of Supercell. Interview by Matt Martin.

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Matt Martin avatar
Matt Martin joined GamesIndustry in 2006 and was made editor of the site in 2008. With over ten years experience in journalism, he has written for multiple trade, consumer, contract and business-to-business publications in the games, retail and technology sectors.
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