Why “Clash of Clans” is popular?
Clash of Clans is one of the most famous app video games in history. Since its release in 2012, “Clash of Clans” has dominated Apple’s App Store, quickly climbing the ranks and claiming the title of No.1 highest-grossing app overall. In 2013, its development studio, Supercell, raked in $892 million in revenue, and the app can bring in up to $5.15 million per day.
This phenomenom is amazing, and as a famous fans of this game, I decide to look through its key factors for its huge success.
An important factor for its success is the information cascade phenomenom. There is lots of high quality games which we might even never heard of its name just because marketing reason that they do not spread successfully. So it is important to ask why “Clash of Clans” is easier and faster to spread through people. I conclude for 2 main reasons.
Firstly, it is a “free” app. We all know that people are more willing to get a free app since if he doesn’t like it after his downloading, he could just delete it from his smart phone without any finacial loss. “Clash of Clans” is just a kind of these game even without any advertisement. However, if you want to enjoy the game better, you could choose to buy its product to lower down your waiting time for a troop to build or a defense to upgrade. So this game is easy to spread, but still make profits if player like it.
Secondly, in games we can join a clan, which is just like a community. We can donate our troop to someone in the same clan and also require for donate. This kinds of communication form a social network that link you to different group. Certainly you can choose not to join any clan, but this will deterioate your amy’s power to invade others’ village, and as my obsevation, over 90% of the players who up to level 30 will join a clan. This mechanism make you easily stay in the game, and even give you the reason to invite a friend in real world to play with you in the same clan which lead the network cascade faster.
In conclution, I think a famous game app should have this two characteristic to make the social network cascade become easier and faster.
Related links:
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-clash-of-clans-is-so-popular-2014-9
http://blog.digitaltutors.com/made-clash-clans-insanely-successful-can-learn/
Nice article! I love Clash of Clans! There is a good review of this game and many others at Best mobile games and reviews