Everyone! Welcome to part two of our exclusive behind the scenes look
at Supercell Helsinki, Finland’s headquarters. Wood City.
I’m Darian, your official tour guide.
So in this one, we’re gonna be covering a few topics around life at Supercell.
If you missed part one of this official tour,
make sure you check the link below for the description. Let’s get going.
As you’re catching up on part one of our tour,
don’t miss the exclusive behind the scenes look
at the Clash Royale dev team space, and interviews with the Royale team.
So today, we’re covering one of the most important spaces here at Wood City,
our very own cafeteria.
As we mentioned in a previous video,
it’s absolutely important that we keep everybody’s minds
refreshed, inspired, and creative throughout the day.
Who’s hungry?
So why do we have our own cafeteria?
Well, it's important to take care of our culinary needs as well.
This is where we come for afternoon lunches, discussions with teammates,
relaxing with colleagues, and just enjoying, you know,
some generally good food.
That’s right!
Moving on.
So, meal subsidies are a regular part of Finnish work culture.
We expect everyone to take time away from their desks
to indulge in some nourishing and yummy food.
We have daily freshly-baked bread, and our meals range from pizza
all the way to more interesting things, like braised lamb.
So, let’s eat!
A final part about Finnish lunch culture, and here at Supercell,
is that when you’re done eating, you’re expected to bus your own trays
and put your dirty dishes away. It’s considered...
...good courtesy and etiquette.
Let’s go to the next part.
Supercell is based on the idea that the best teams create the best games.
Now, that doesn't mean just putting a group of individuals together
and hoping for the best. It does also mean properly nurturing
and fostering a healthy work environment.
Whether it’s minimizing the amount of crunch time or...
…providing healthy outlets to ensure proper work life balance.
Maintaining proper mental health is one of the top priorities here at Supercell.
So on each floor we have what we call nap rooms,
where Supercellians can briefly hide away from all the noise,
sit in isolation, and work in solitude.
So they can even have a short nap, if they wanted.
The rooms are fairly sound insulated, so they provide minimal intrusion
from the outside noises, and it’s the perfect place to contemplate
life’s endless mysteries.
Or just grab some quick shut eye, just take a break from the world.
Now, if you’ll excuse me.
I’m playing a Clan War Attack, and I want to 3 Star this Base.
I’ll see you later.
We're passionately dedicated to the games we create
and it’s equally important that we’re able to focus
on other parts of our lives, too.
Whether it’s spending time with family and friends after work,
going on a well-earned holiday after an update,
or just spending an hour at the gym to stay in shape.
Maintaining mental health is not only important
for our personal health,
but it also makes sure we're able to focus on the work ahead of us.
Clash Fest wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the Clash Universe.
That all started ten years ago,
with a game that united players from around the world.
Form Clans and battle for victory with Archers, Dragons, Barbarians, and more.
And this is where the magic happens. Welcome to the Clash of Clans team space.
Even though we're hard at work on the next update for Clash of Clans,
we've managed to steal a little bit of their busy time to sit down with them,
talk about what they do, and why they love working on this game.
What does an Art Producer do?
I’m kind of a general-purpose problem solver, so I just listen to the team,
figure out what they’re having problems with and help them fix it.
What are you currently working on?
Now, it’s organizing outsourcing for external partners working on cosmetics.
So kind of streamline that. We’re trying to move
some of the more tedious stuff that we do for the team
and push it out just to our external partners.
How much outsourcing do we do?
Almost all of our cosmetics are done externally
by a few different companies. -How does that pipeline work?
Can you explain what that process is like?
We do some concepts internally and then we send those out to them,
and they do passes on that, slowly work up the 3D models
until they’re something that we can put in the game.
Then we take them back in, and we polish them, do some animation.
We do effects and integrate it into the game so we can play it in the build,
and then we release it.
What’s the timeline like for these? From concept to delivery.
Scenery takes us about a month, from concept to completion,
and characters, about six weeks.
So what does an Animation Artist do?
It starts from the concepts, really. We’re working with external partners
and we’re also working in-house. So we’re having meetings with them,
giving them feedback from an animation standpoint,
just to see if everything looks good.
When it comes to animation, because a lot of our characters,
especially the Heroes, have a lot of drapes,
three of them have capes, and the accessories that they have,
we want to make sure that we can showcase as much as we can.
So how do you animate characters?
Well, I start with video referencing myself.
Once I have the concept, I video reference,
and then I bring it into Maya, and then I start blocking -
which is just step mode, just to see how those poses are looking,
and then from there, I can spline it and go from there to polished really.
It takes about a week to a week and a half per skin.
And how many skins do you usually work on at a time?
Just one at a time, and it may be about two weeks,
and then I go on to the next one.
We’re also working with external partners,
so they’re also helping us animate.
What is technically the most difficult part of animating?
I guess I’d say, just to keep things interesting.
Keep things interesting; the skins and the ideas,
that’s what I really emphasize, to make the player experience
as fun as possible.
...Which we’ve been trying to do now recently,
with the new skins that are coming up.
What is the most rewarding part of seeing your characters animated?
I’d have to say it’s the community’s reaction,
that you get to see, and we hear from the CMs.
It’s really rewarding to see players enjoy
the characters we animate.
And that’s what we’re trying to do, make it more fun for them, you know?
So what exactly is a game artist?
It’s a guy, a girl who does all the in-game art content.
So buildings, characters, effects...
it’s a broad area to work on.
So, what parts of the game have you worked on?
I work with basically every part.
Currently I'm working on cosmetics,
just adding final touches for the Clash Fest scenery.
And mostly, I work with the characters,
some buildings, effects, and stuff like that.
It’s basically everything.
When designing upgraded buildings for Town Hall,
how do you take a previous one and turn it into an upgraded one?
We need to have some sort of idea what the new TH looks like.
It could be like a shape, a color, something that we all agree on,
and then we just follow that plan, see if it works.
If it doesn’t work, we try again until it’s perfect.
So what exactly does Game Balance mean to you?
Find a balance where the casual players
are able to feel good in their attacks,
where it’s possible for them to get a 3 star from a base sometimes,
but at the same time, we have to keep the more involved players in mind,
so we don’t make the game too easy for them.
So we cannot make the 3 star attack a walk in the park,
but we need to make it possible for everybody.
When we go down for server maintenance and upkeep,
what actually happens besides feeding the hamsters?
Usually, we put a new version of the game on there,
sometimes we have to do technical maintenance -
because it's great that we have millions of players,
but that also means that we have hundreds of servers,
and not all of them are happy all of the time,
and need some attention.
What exactly happens during server maintenance?
So, first we give notice to players, that the game will be closed in 5 minutes,
so they can still run their current attacks to the end,
or whatever they’re doing. Then, we kick all the players out,
we do what we need to do on the servers, and restart the whole thing.
What's been the scariest part of working on servers?
What’s been the most terrifying moment as a server engineer?
The most terrifying moment is always when you modify something on the database
because you don’t want to accidentally delete something.
And then, everybody who has been playing Clash for ten years is like,
‘Where is my game?’
For this last interview, we are sitting down
with the newest member of the Clash of Clans team.
What's your name? No, because seriously, I have no idea who you are.
I’m Adria, new Community Manager for Clash of Clans.
Nice to meet you! And nice to meet you, Darian, by the way.
How long have you been with Supercell?
Actually, this is my second day here.
Two days! -And I’m the new kid on the block here.
So, what are you looking forward to, as far as being a Community Manager?
I hope to be able to be a bridge, between the players and all the community
and the developers team and Supercell, basically.
And what about being a Community Manager excites you the most?
I would say being in the middle of lots of teams,
interacting with players on social media, or with content creators,
or with fellow Community Managers who are more experienced,
and probably know a lot more than me.
So I’m here to learn from you, and you are my teacher here.
So, are you ready for the intense barrage
of update questions from the community?
Okay. I think this is not what I signed up for, but...
It is exactly what you signed up for. -Okay. Yeah, I’m ready.
I’m ready for everything that you want me to participate in.
One last question. Once you’re up to speed,
after only being here for two days, are you up for doing a Reddit AMA?
Yes. Okay. That's a cool idea. Yes.
You heard it. You heard it here, Clash community.
We're going to throw this guy right into the heat,
deep into the heart of the Clash community.
Soon as he’s up to speed and up and running,
we’re going to do a Reddit AMA with this guy,
so you can get to know the newest Community Manager.
How’s that sound? -Sounds perfect. Thank you very much.
Awesome. And welcome to the team. -Thanks, man.
And that wraps up our tour of Wood City. Thank you for joining us.
We hope you enjoyed this exclusive tour of the Helsinki office of Supercell.
And we hope you’ve enjoyed the festivities of Clash Fest.
We're so happy that we can once again host an event with our players,
fans, and content creators.
Thanks for being part of this epic journey.
We hope to see you guys again real soon. But until next time,
Moikka. MEANS ‘FAREWELL’ IN FINNISH