SURVIVAL

Our beloved game, Clash Royale, is about to celebrate its fourth birthday. The big question is: can it survive another four years? There are certain aspects which will help with this. The obvious stuff like advertising and great updates to keep the current players interested. I want to talk today about something which I think is not so obvious. The most reliable information I can find suggests CR has an active monthly user base of about 14 million players. That's a significant number, but only a fraction of the people who have, at some stage, downloaded and tried the game. We're talking about a figure somewhere in the vicinity of the population of the US. My concern is that not enough is being done to retain the established player base. Most of the people who will be reading this are disciples of the game. We have maxed an account, or a deck, and are far removed from the hardest part of the grind. Many of us will have a second "mini" account, still trapped in the grind. As you go through the journey for the second time, do you pay attention to what is happening around you? I see something which is glaringly obvious. There is a huge army of players who have absolutely no idea on how to play the game. Now imagine you are one of these players. You've done the grind. You've maxed your deck, but the best you can do is hit 5,500 each season. Yet, you look at top ladder and there are people going over 8k. They are 50% better than you. You're a full 2,500 trophies behind them. What is the inevitable outcome for you after a series of stagnant seasons? The answer is that you and a large portion of these players will quit because there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Then there's the victims of those above. The players who do not have a maxed account. They have some skills but they lose interest after constantly getting clapped by less skilful, maxed players. So, what is the solution? I believe the best answer is one I turn to all the time: education. How do we rejuvenate the maxed players who have hit a ladder trophy wall? We teach them how to climb. How do we encourage the players dealing with overlevelled opponents? We give them even more skills and show them the light. The only teachers we have in this game at the moment are our content creators. These people desperately need access to the demographics described above. Not just for themselves, but for the survival of the game. For the retention of players. I think it is insane that we do not have a content creators tab alongside the news and esports tabs. We have the ability to teach our huge base of poor players, but we just don't do it. If we added this tab and introduced this pool of players to the likes of CWA and other Youtubers, or RoyaleAPI and other statistical tools, there can only be one outcome... A happier and healthier player base. Education is far and away the best tool to deal with the problem of overlevelling on lower ladder, so please, Supercell, give our teachers a chance. Finally, I'd like to add, we also have a huge pool of casual players. The people who sit on the toilet and play a game. The people who don't care too much about ladder, but want to have fun. Connect them with the likes of Bufarete and Nyteowl. People like these guys build communities.