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What is Clash Royale?
Clash Royale is a mobile game developed by the Finnish game company Supercell and globally released in March 2016. Categorically, it falls under the emerging popular genre of real-time strategy games and followed behind Supercell’s previous successes Hay Day and more closely related, Clash of Clans (CoC), both released in 2012. However, during the early stages of the company’s history, it wasn’t always brimming with hit game releases. -
Origins of Supercell
Where did 'Clash Royale' come from? What came before it, and how did its creators get to where they are at its global launch in March 2016? -
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Origins of Supercell (Intro, Including Jan 4, 2016)
Where did 'Clash Royale' come from? What came before it, and how did its creators get to where they are at its global launch in March 2016? -
Supercell's Beginnings
The first couple of years of Supercell were the company’s humble beginnings. While they formed in 2010, their IP history started with a PC game called Gunshine.net. While it flourished in the summer of its 2011 release with a peak of over half a million monthly players, the craze for it did not last until the Autumn season of that year. They realized that their game wasn't formulated for long-term engagement and scrapped it to focus more on other projects. -
Supercell's Pivotal Revelation
They then turned to the basis of mobile gaming. Their new goal was to craft something that could keep the players' interest that could be played for only minutes at a time during the day – something that wasn’t possible with Gunshine. After some failed betas, their back-to-back success of Hay Day and CoC kicked them to mobile game stardom. With the casual progressive nature of farming with Hay Day, and the strategic, multi-modal form of play of CoC, they found the sweet spot in this new formula. -
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Supercell's First Wave of Success
For four years, the two big games served as the primary source of revenue and success for the Finnish group, making a name for themselves across app stores worldwide. Moving forward, succeeding CoC was a steep hill to climb. At the 43-month mark since its launch, it grossed a total of $4 billion – a feat only achieved then by a few other mobile games and occurred around the same time as Clash Royale’s global release. However, what Clash Royale had over previous games was a preexisting fanbase. -
Supercell's First Wave of Success
For four years, the two big games served as the primary source of revenue and success for the Finnish group, making a name for themselves across app stores worldwide. Moving forward, succeeding CoC was a steep hill to climb. At the 43-month mark since its launch, it grossed a total of $4 billion – a feat only achieved then by a few other mobile games and occurred around the same time as Clash Royale’s global release. However, what Clash Royale had over previous games was a preexisting fanbase. -
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The Rise and Fall of Clash Royale
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Artifact #0: The First Look
Pictured above: 430 Clash Royale's first promotional video, debuted on their YouTube channel. On both sides of the screen is Patrick Carney, AKA "Cheif Pat", a YouTuber known for his content on CoC. In the center was the first interface for the deck builder in Clash Royale. The deck is notated by the 8 cards at the top of the screen with others available to choose from below, with their rarities indicated by color. Link to the full video: https://youtu.be/_hNxfiXmeAE?si=FbA1B9KpImcBOfqW -
About Artifact #0
From the get-go, Clash Royale was set up for success. By borrowing characters from CoC that grew iconic with the player base, while also encouraging many YouTube community leaders to cover the game as the global launch neared, Supercell presented elements that would greatly raise the interest for an already talked about new release. In just the first week, it topped the Apple and Google Play store charts, and at the end of the year, received the Game of the Year award by the same two firms. -
About Artifact #0 Cont'd
This promotional video from the team is divisive in that it directly shows YouTubers' involvement in the project, and thereby a community that will be there right away with beloved figureheads. It also displays a standard game to introduce a new style of play that the fanbase has never seen before, a vertical mobile user interface, with gameplay mechanics that are reminiscent of gameplay from CoC. -
The Rise and Fall of Clash Royale (End of Intro)
But besides the buildup, what about the game of Clash Royale itself entices its player base? How did Supercell keep its players coming back for more? And what was the turning point that sent the game going downhill? This timeline aims to boil down these overall factors and community sentiments throughout the game's lifespan into simple, unbiased segments explaining the causation and effect. -
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The Rise
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Artifact #2: Chests & Rare Cards
Pictured above: A player receives a "Miner" card from a chest of cards. It has the rainbow "Legendary Card" rating and theming, indicating that it's extremely rare to find in chests. This player just unlocked the card, and there are no more cards that can be received by the chest, indicated by the "0" on the chest. -
About Artifact #2
At the time of this artifact, 4 rarities of cards existed in the game, with Legendary being the highest, or least probable. The rarity system drew people into the game, continuously fishing for more of these rare cards to unlock them to play in battle. They could also fish for them to upgrade the cards, giving them better chances in play. This system also served in monetizing the free game, giving people the choice to buy the chests with real money, without giving them innate advantages. -
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The Life of Clash Royale
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Artifact #3: Interview with the Design Team
Pictured above: YouTuber "Clash With Ash" interviews with Seth Allison, a now former member of the Design Team for Clash Royale. Seth is not displayed on-screen, as this is a voice-call interview. Gameplay is being shown in the background. During the interview, Seth discusses the process of balancing cards and the review they undergo. These balance changes were released as monthly updates at this time in the game's history. Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL1S6o9oo9Y -
About Artifact #3
Seth explains that the team he works with has play-testers who play with the updated cards and report on how their changes affect overall gameplay and that this process is thorough. He also goes in-depth in the interview with each card that's being updated, showing "Ash" and the community that the people who work on the game put care into the updates they put out. Going further, the notion that the updates are consistent and often also fosters positive sentiment from the community. -
About Artifact #1
On top of the real-time strategy, the matches within Clash Royale oftentimes end with exciting close calls and intense moments that captivate the players. In addition, a big difference from Clash Royale's predecessor is that between matches, there's no wait time to hop into another one. In CoC, and especially in its early days, the wait time for training armies and upgrading buildings in the player's village was very long in comparison. -
About Artifact #1 Cont'd
This difference made Clash Royale players who played CoC previously feel a lot less limited in how much they could play at a time, creating a pseudo-addictive effect. -
Artifact #1a: Gameplay
Pictured above: The start of a match between two high-ranking players. Each player has two towers and a King tower. The objective is to destroy more towers than your opponent. Each player has a bar of 10 "elixir" displayed at the bottom that replenishes automatically throughout the battle. With the elixir, players deploy cards from their deck of 8 each costing a certain amount. Troops deployed will automatically walk forward, targeting enemy towers or troops varying on the card. -
Artifact #1c
Pictured above: The player has just won the battle. It was a close game, the opponent just launched a "Rocket" at the player's tower, which would have destroyed it if the player hadn't destroyed their own seconds before. The player is using the in-game emotes to taunt their opponent, laughing at them through the screen. Full video of the game, plus other games this player played: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUU6Akpxdyk -
Artifact #1b
Pictured above: The game's timer of 3 minutes has reached zero, and neither player has destroyed a tower, extending the game into overtime. The player is currently deploying an "Ice Spirit", costing them 1 elixir to defend something charging their tower, while their opponent is being attacked by another one of the player's cards. A "Fireball" was just deployed, indicated by the explosion near the top right corner of the screen. The greyed-out cards indicate that the player is low on elixir. -
Artifact 4a: The Champions Update
Pictured above: a graphic promoting an update to the game, adding "Champions". On the left is the "Golden Knight", centered is the "Skeleton King", and to the right is the "Archer Queen". All are posed as if they're presenting themselves ready for battle. -
About Artifact #4a
In this update, a new, 5th rarity was added to the game, called the "Champion" rarity. Similar to Legendary cards years prior, Champions were now the hardest cards to obtain in the game. At their release, Champions were very strong cards, triumphing over regular cards by a large margin in gameplay, giving their users what felt like an unfair advantage. In addition, there was another issue that made players dislike this even more. -
About Artifcat #4a Cont'd
Many players who had leveled up cards, evenly matched with their opponents, now had low-level Champions, whereas some people who chose to buy chests or offers from the shop had max-level Champions, completely overpowering the free-to-play player base. What made things even worse was that once these players were able to level these Champions up, the design team released balance changes greatly reducing the power of Champions to reasonable amounts. -
About Artifact #4a Cont'd More
This led some people in the community to believe that the people in charge of this update intentionally released Champions too strong to begin with, maximizing on players who were willing to spend money to get these cards. This suspicion lowered the overall feeling of the development team from the community and contributed to future disappointments. -
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The Fall
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About Artifact #4b Cont'd
In addition to this disdain, there was no other way to obtain these Evolutions than through buying the game's battle pass and unlocking 1 Evolution per month for 4 months, or buying this shop offer to get them all at once. It was an unfair advantage only obtainable through monetary actions. Because of this, players were outraged. What was a free game to download now became pay-to-play in their eyes. Considering the game's popularity with teen audiences as well, people began to stop playing. -
Artifact #4b: The Evolutions Update
Pictured above: a shop offer when the Evolutions update was released. For $140 CAD, this offer would give the player the resources needed to "Evolve" 4 different cards, shown on the bottom row. On the top row, are resources necessary for upgrading cards. The amount shown is only enough resources to level a small number of cards, most likely around 6-8, depending on how upgraded the player's cards are beforehand. At this time, over 100 cards were added to the game. -
About Artifact #4b
Similar to Champions, Evolved cards or "Evolutions" were released far stronger than their regular "unevolved" card counterpart, except, the degree of this difference was much more staggering. What made them different was that the player could only play it after they played its counterpart a certain number of times. The impression players got, however, was a set of cards that they believed nullified the skill or strategy other players put into playing - they believed Evolutions to be that strong. -
The Consequences of Champions and Evolutions
Since Evolutions were released, the trend has stayed the same. A new evolution is released too strong and is locked behind a paywall, discouraging players from playing and losing revenue for Clash Royale, despite the ones in charge at Supercell pushing for more monetization. What the future of the game holds is unknown, and whether or not this trend will continue is unclear, but as long as it does, Clash Royale will foreseeably not be able to reach the heights it obtained at its peak.