The latest addition to Supercell’s roster, Clash Royale, is clever, but it may lose players on it’s way.

Sean’s thoughts about Clash Royale:

Clash Royale is the second best selling game of the Finnish multi million company Supercell. Like its big and four years older brother, Clash of Clans, its very cleverly made. Chests, with interesting loot, can be won. But there is a waiting time to open your chests. It takes three hours for them to open and reveal the content. Of course you can gem them, but that’s not really cool. The chests  contain coins, to purchase cards, gems and cards.

Patience, my friends

Of course you can also buy gems with real money, which allows you to purchase more coins to buy better cards. Clash Royale is played online on a mobile device. You play against other players to get chests. Like in Clash of Clans you can also join or found a clan. There you can donate cards to other players so they can upgrade their cards faster. By donating cards you receive a little bit of gold. There are different kinds of cards: Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary. The point is, Supercell wants your money so be patient.

One of the best things about Clash Royale would probably be that you can play it anywhere. But nowadays that is not something special any more. Supercell did a really good job with this one. Almost all the cards in the strategic game have a weakness, so there is not really a overpowered factor in the game. The goal is to defeat your enemies towers by combining certain cards together. For example set a tank (unit with a lots of health) first and a heavy hitter (makes lots of damage, but is feeble) behind it. The cool thing is you can communicate with other players that are in your clan. Sadly there isn’t any clan wars yet, but I think that will be possible by analyzing playing styles of players and constructing a kind of avatar that will be playing for you in the clan war. Sometimes the game can be a little pushy by trying to sell you chests.

Father’s thoughts about Clash Royale:

As a small country with a strange language – or rather four languages, one of them very strange – surrounded by big countries, one seeks fellow small countries with strange languages. This search mostly leads up north, to Denmark or even better Finland, if we are looking at gaming.

What once Denmark was with regard to innovative movie formats i.e. the Dogma-movement of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, is nowadays Finland in pretty much all things gaming. With Remedy leading the way in big, fat AAA-productions like the «Max Payne»-series and «Quantum Break». On the mobile platforms Rovio set a new industry standard with «Angry Birds», that in every sense of the word got the Hollywood treatment: Ride a horse till it’s dead and then eat it. But it’s fair to say, that the «The Angry Birds Movie» – compared to «Assassin’s Creed», «Warcraft» and all the game adaptation turds of 2016 – was at least fun.

Supercell, Finland’s shining gem of the mobile industry

And then there is of course there is Supercell, the shiny gem of Finland’s mobile game industry. Their performance first brought on the investments of the Japanese Softbank and last year China’s Tencent Holdings. Tencent bought Supercell for $ 8.6 bn (http://supercell.com/en/nextchapter/). With this move, according to Fortune, Tencent captured 13 % of the global gaming market. Not bad for one company.

But why am I telling you all this? Well, after the humungous success of «Angry Birds» Rovio turned out to be a one hit wonder. All the titles that were hatched after the pig-fighting fluff had absolutely no public appeal. Amazing Alex – hugh? Fruit Nibblers – yargh. Supercell always had two pretty good feet they were standing on: Hay Day for the ladies, Clash of Clans (CoC) for the not-so-gents. Boom Beach – well, don’t mention the war… And then came Clash Royale (CR).

At first, when I downloaded CR, I was not impressed and erased it again. Also the general reactions among my peers seemed rather reserved. Even the kids didn’t really go for it – until in the last couple of weeks things picked up for CR. As I did with CoC, I was curious, what made CR so popular and installed it again mid-February. In the beginning it was an okay experience. Kind of fun, but nothing too spectacular. Then I contacted my friend Lukas, who is an avid poker and Hearthstone player, next to being a competitive Poké-walker and asked, whether he was playing CR. «Nope, wont go there. Some of my friends are seriously hooked», was his answer. Now that got me going.

The strategies are similar to the ones of CoC: Send in a heavy like a giant or a valkyrie first and have them followed by some lighter fire troops like witches, minions and such. As CR is card based, you first have put together a combative set, that will cover all areas: tanks, foot and air soldiers, cluster defense etc. Once you have compiled your deck and it’s well balanced, things change to the better. Now CR shows its true face: It is about luck – draw the right cards and strategy – well timed combinations.

Whereas the troops behavior in CoC is rather erratic and unpredictable, the field of play in CR is pretty clear and certain tactics work clearly better than others. I.e. to take down a powerful foe like the jousting prince or a towering giant a skeleton army or a group of minions pretty much does the trick. Well timed, they can break the charge or the rolling power of a heavy.

But the main attraction of CR is, that it is player vs. player, real time. It’s not like in CoC, where you trash the camp of an absent player. No, your opponent is online there at same moment and you don’t know what cards he or she has up the sleeves. And, does your enemy know the tricks of the trade?

Fast paced, suited for a short attention span

Furthermore CR is fast-paced. As Sean said: «Clash Royale caters to the short attention span of people.» That’s absolutely true. Whereas CoC takes time to train armies and it depletes your resources (elixir), CR is always on. Bing, bang. Like in a first person shooter, dying is part of the gameplay. You die, you respawn, you kill, you die, you respawn… The short matches in CR follow a similar mechanic. You win, you lose, you win, you win, you lose… The quick matches have you coming back for more. Let’s see if I can beat the next guy? Nope. Too bad, maybe the other one.

This quick and dirty gameplay is at the core of Clash Royale and the pull is very strong. Just another one, another one, your competitive brains demands. CR has even a built in safety feature, that prevents to eager players to spend too much time. If you have won 20 matches and filled up your trophy slots, you can continue to play, but you wont get any rewards until the next day.So what’s the use?

This said: I can see millions of people spending millions of dollars to power up their decks, to get an edge in the game. In April 2016 the revenue of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale were even. According to Statista they both raked in $ 100 mio. in that month. But then, in August 2016 the Wall Street Journal quoted Superdata, that the CR revenue started to drop to $ 62 mio./month. Half of what was earned in March, ($ 133 mio.), when it entered the android market. It looks like Clash Royale is not as regal as hoped for.

A painful progression curve

One explanation for this decline is the progression curve when levelling up cards. As with all free-to-play or pay-to-win games time is money. Combine this with an element of luck, things get even worse for players who just want to have some fun and not invest tons of money.

As Zach1476 put in a forum: «It’s their in game economy. Arena 8, I get 10 cards per chest when it needs 800? It’s too slow. No reason for me to buy gold when I am 750 cards away from the upgrade.»  The following chart shows what Zach was referrring to:

 

If this feeling arises, that a target is out of reach, then people will stop playing and certainly wont spend more money. In the light of these facts, my guess is, that I wont be playing CR much longer or only sporadically, as the progression curve will bend exponentially and just chewing on a bone, is not much fun.

Addendum, July 15, 2017:

I am still playing Clash Royale. So much for short lived. The key to CR is, to be part of an active clan. Otherwise the progression curve of troop upgrade costs is not realistic. So once again «sharing is caring» in this Supercell title. Throw in the different chests that hold many surprises and you will eventually get to the next level. If you are part of an active clan shoving troops back and forth is also an easy way to earn in-game currency.

The one thing that is missing: The F-You button

Having played CR now over many months, I find one thing specifically intriguing: the high level of irritation, that this game can provoke. Sure it is key to have a balanced set of cards, a good sense of timing, when to play which character and of course a healthy portion of luck, but the limitations in communication add to a twisted form of irritation. If it comes down to four crude pictograms of an encouraging, laughing, crying or furious king plus some comments like «good luck», «wow», «oops», «well played» and such, this adds to a poisonous mix of frustration. If you have lost by the skin of your teeth and are taunted by the laughing king at the end, you will realize the one thing that Clash Royale is missing: The Fuck You button.

I am well aware, that this game is played by many kids and the proposed add-on is therefore a no-go, but there should be better a way to express your anger and frustration, other than with a «angry king» pictogram. At first I didn’t believe Sean, when he said, that there are players, that play in a pissy way. I thought, that he just wasn’t up to the challenge, but then realized, that there truly are pissy players aka spawners or planters. Their main tactic is to set up one pestering hut or building after the other to for one thing have an ongoing stream of troops marching against your base and second to divert your attack, because added buildings will be attacked first by most troops. This strategy is pretty hard to crack and only allows a tedious form of play. So my plea still stands: Bring on the f-you button or a cluster bomb, to eradicate the real estate spawners.