Ilkka Paananen discusses his profession from Sumea by to Digital Chocolate and Supercell.
The entrepreneur says luck performed a component in his profession – a key factor in a profitable profession in video games.
Paananen additionally affords his ideas on the present cell market, Supercell’s challenges and why he is extra excited than ever concerning the business.
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Ilkka Paananen has constructed an illustrious profession in gaming. He’s most well-known because the CEO of Supercell, whose groups have constructed globally profitable video games from Conflict of Clans, Hay Day and Growth Seashore to Conflict Royale and Brawl Stars.
He’s now being awarded the BAFTA Fellowship, an accolade that celebrates people for achievements throughout their profession within the display screen arts.
He joins a listing that features business luminaries like Hideo Kojima, Shuhei Yoshida, Siobhan Reddy, Gabe Newell, Yoko Shimomura and Shigeru Miyamoto, amongst others. The latter’s work at Nintendo has been a key inspiration on Supercell’s mantra of constructing video games that will probably be remembered without end.
Paananen says to achieve success in video games, you want three issues: luck, to work with an ideal workforce and to function in the very best tradition.
“There’s lots of people who do all of these issues however then by some means miss out on the luck half,” he tells PocketGamer.biz.
“I’m simply very grateful we had all these stars align.”
Paananen has all the time had an curiosity in video games, however his profession began with a slice of luck. As a scholar, he attended the Helsinki College of Expertise to check on the enterprise monitor. He says there have been two typical profession tracks for college kids: turning into an funding banker or a administration marketing consultant, working for the likes of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. Although he had a eager curiosity in entrepreneurship.
Throughout one summer time job he discovered himself sitting subsequent to an engineer named Sami, who mentioned they have been considering of founding an organization with a couple of pals. They have been all video games folks, although, and wanted somebody to deal with every part else, from finance and admin by to gross sales. They requested Paananen if he’d be keen on becoming a member of.
“I keep in mind strolling out of the café the place they’d the assembly and considering, wow, I suppose I’m now the CEO of this firm.”Ilkka Paananen
“I mentioned properly completely. I used to be nonetheless a scholar on the time, I believe 21 years of age,” he says, including he instructed them he’d even do it free of charge. To provide him a reputable title worthy of somebody representing the corporate, he was named CEO. That might be his first firm, Sumea, shaped in 2000, a developer of cell video games – properly earlier than the App Retailer and iPhone arrange the business for astronomical development.
“I keep in mind strolling out of the café the place they’d the assembly and considering, wow, I suppose I’m now the CEO of this firm, I’ve by no means actually had an actual job in my life, I’ve solely learn enterprise books on the College and on case research and all that.”
We requested if that assembly hadn’t occurred, would Paananen be working in video games? He says he’d most likely be an entrepreneur, however possibly in a totally completely different subject. However he says: “When you get into video games, it’s actually arduous to get out as a result of it’s such a enjoyable business.”
A profession in video games
By 2004, Sumea was offered to Digital Chocolate, a cell video games developer and writer arrange by EA founder Journey Hawkins. “I oftentimes name Digital Chocolate my MBA in enterprise and entrepreneurship.”
By the point of the acquisition, Sumea had grown to round 40 to 50 workers, whereas he recollects Digital Chocolate had round 20 workers. Paananen says he was given a number of autonomy as he finally grew to become the corporate president.
However in 2010, Paananen left the writer. After 10 years, he felt he wished to do issues “basically completely different” to how the agency was working. “They would want to virtually reset the corporate.” After discussions with Hawkins, and realising the corporate had its personal tradition and previous, he determined to go away.
In 2011, he based Supercell, constructed on a brand new tradition based mostly on his years of expertise working in video games. The corporate’s cell construction is well-documented by now, empowering small groups to construct video games. After its preliminary browser recreation Gunshine was a failure – one thing the corporate would famously come to have a good time with subsequent cancelled titles – it hit the jackpot with cell video games Hay Day and Conflict of Clans.
The developer has since had 5 billion-dollar hits and for a few years was lauded for its hit-rate and lean groups. That success led to multi-billion-dollar overtures from Softbank and Tencent.
Whereas it appeared the corporate may do no unsuitable – and its portfolio stays extremely profitable after celebrating a report 12 months in 2024 – a few of that magic has pale. It hasn’t launched a brand new blockbuster since Brawl Stars in 2018, shutting down a dwell recreation for this primary time with the 2024 launch of Squad Busters.
“It may be so tempting to over monetise and burn out gamers.”Ilkka Paananen
Supercell has since been by a restructure, splitting the developer between new video games and dwell video games, including in new leaders like its president Sara Bach and considerably increasing its groups, hiring 300 new workers in 2025 alone.
Throughout these adjustments, Conflict Royale and Brawl Stars have seen sharp rises (and falls) in participant engagement and income. However the brand new video games division, which incorporates the Spark initiative geared toward constructing new groups each internally and from exterior builders, has but to raise off.
We ask Paananen if the founding rules Supercell was constructed on are nonetheless relevant within the fashionable business, given the corporate’s restructure and completely different challenges a mature market faces.
“I completely suppose so,” he states, including: “Once we based Supercell we thought, okay, it doesn’t matter what occurs, it will by no means occur to Supercell.”
Paananen explains that firms that change into profitable can finally begin pushing creatives apart by an “invisible or typically very seen pressure from the skin”.
Can this tradition he fears of exterior business-focused pressures destroy video games and firms?
“We get criticised a lot about, when you suppose like near 300 million folks play our video games each single month … when you examine our income to the participant base we now have, you might argue that you might monetise a lot better.
“Oftentimes, business blogs and podcasts and what have you ever, folks criticise us for that. However possibly the rationale why folks have performed video games like Hay Day and Conflict of Clans for greater than a decade, possibly that’s precisely why. We don’t burn out gamers.
“However it may be so tempting to over-monetise and burn out gamers as a result of it’s essential to and also you wish to meet your subsequent quarter’s income objectives. So I believe it completely can destroy video games and firms.”
Supercell’s white whale
Supercell’s well-known tradition has developed its critics in current occasions following a seven year-plus 12 months look forward to a brand new hit. Requested why Supercell has struggled, he says launching new blockbusters – traditionally the corporate is alleged to try for a billion {dollars} or bust – is difficult for everybody.
In his annual weblog put up, the Supercell CEO claimed that since 2020, 22 video games have grossed greater than $1 billion. Of these, 20 got here from builders in China, Japan and South Korea.
Paananen says the cell video games sector now faces considerably extra competitors for folks’s free time. In the meantime, if the business was to look within the mirror, he claims it hasn’t actually been capable of construct one thing “completely wonderful and completely different”.
To take the following step as an business, “somebody must put out that recreation and we definitely try to do our half on that”.
However what precisely does he imply by innovation? Is it utterly new experiences or improvements on current genres? Scopely constructed on the coin looter style with $6 billion smash hit Monopoly Go, whereas video games like Century Video games’ Whiteout Survival and FunFly’s Final Conflict: Survival meshed extra informal mechanics with the 4X technique style to nice success. Dream Video games finally dethroned King’s Sweet Crush Saga within the match-3 with a extremely polished expertise.
Paananen says he’s referring to the kind of expertise a participant hasn’t seen earlier than.
“Pokémon Go I believe could be the proper instance. Persons are very proud to play that recreation … I believe the business wants one other a kind of moments.”
A watch to the longer term
Paananen has now been within the video games business for greater than 25 years, largely centered on the cell area. Curiously, he recollects one other summer time job working for a telecoms firm as a junior analyst in 1999, simply earlier than he based Sumea.
He was tasked with writing a report on the Japanese cell market, simply as characteristic telephones have been coming to Europe. It was again then he may see their potential as computer systems and gaming gadgets – although it will take a few years for all that to come back to fruition.
Given he’s spent two and a half many years within the cell enviornment, and his feedback a few lack of business innovation, is he nonetheless excited concerning the business?
“, I’m extra excited than ever,” he states. “Typically folks suppose that I’m joking after I say this, however I’ve by no means been this excited. And the reason being, the platform is so a lot better than it was 10 years in the past. Take no matter smartphone you need, it’s an unbelievable gaming platform nowadays. The networks are higher, the infrastructure is there, we now have issues like AI which is able to open up all new potentialities, particularly for smaller groups.
“This concept that Supercell was [built] on these small, artistic unbiased cells – AI will give them superpowers like they by no means had earlier than.
“So sure, it’s difficult, it’s very aggressive, however I believe that makes it all of the extra thrilling.”
“, I’m extra excited than ever.”Ilkka Paananen
Paananen nonetheless has desires of constructing an organization like Nintendo, impressed by its 136 years in enterprise and the video games and memorable characters that BAFTA Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto and the corporate’s huge and proficient growth groups constructed.
He says Supercell continues to be very distant from that purpose, and feels so long as he may also help the workforce get nearer to these ambitions, he’ll stay on the firm, which is now 15 years outdated.
After reflecting on a profession in video games for the previous 25+ years and receiving a BAFTA Fellowship, Paananen affords easy recommendation for the brand new technology of builders beginning out within the business and those that would possibly wish to begin their very own enterprise.
“Simply begin it, that’s my primary recommendation.”
