Name of the Game: Clash of Clans
Creator: Supercell
Platform: iOS
Target Audience: players who like playing casual games, younger audience
When I think of the most popular games that I’d always hear about, one of them was definitely Clash of Clans. While I always grew up hearing about people I know play it, I never really took the opportunity to play it until I saw it on the list for this assignment. Playing this game made me learn more about what it entails and how it can be defined as a live service game on mobile devices. Because of how this game includes constantly changing attributes like seasonal battle passes and constant updates, it’s able to get long-term engagement from its players which is why I think it was so popular. However, after playing the game and thinking of class and Designing Chance: Addiction By Design, I was curious about how Clash of Clan differentiates player retention from compulsion to play the game.
With Clash of Clans, playing the game made me learn that its mechanics are honestly pretty straightforward and revolve around interactive actions like collecting resources and making buildings. Besides these mechanics, however, I learned that a big part of the game dynamic is time and unpredictable outcomes because of how upgrades take super long unless money is spent and how with combat you can’t guarantee the outcomes. I feel like this mechanism can cause the game to become addicting because the players always have to come back on the game hoping for the best results.
Another thing I noticed about Clash of Clans is how it plays into aesthetics in terms of challenge and submission. When playing the game, players are supposed to feel a sense of pride when things go their way such as planned attacks; however, the most prominent aesthetic in my opinion is one dealing with passive progression because how often you need to login daily to plan timers and make marginal gains. Noticing this reminded me of Designing Chance talking about the psychological state where players lose track of the objective to win and hyperfocus on maintaining engagement instead.It also made me think about how the article talked about how near-miss experiences can result in compulsive behavior. With that being said, I feel like Clash of Clans embodies these techniques by making players feel like they are really close to winning a battle and then as a result of not winning, making them want to reattempt the battle. Overall, I noticed Clash Of Clans can create a sense of delusion where players feel like they could eventually win.
I also feel that the game’s monetization model promotes this sensation by creating the game in a way that frustrates the player enough to the extent in which they spend money to get better results. Because of how the game gives access to new things based on how much you spend as shown below, it’s easy for players to have the urge to purchase upgrades. Like discussed in class, design choices are formal elements that can cause a player to behave a certain way through limitations given to them and I feel that this game embodies this alot. When reading the article on live service games, I also noticed how things mentioned in the article closely align to the game design of Clash of Clans. In the article, it talks about how live service of games stretch their game out in a way that gets players caught in a loop of always grinding. I feel like Clash of Clans fits this concept perfectly because this game never comes to an end and there’s always a new upgrade coming. Like in the screenshot above, all the players can do is wait for results with no means of an end to the game.
Through playing Clash of Clans, I noticed this game deals with alot of randomness and uncontrollable factors to gauge their audience. However, this can raise ethical concerns because the game emphasizes prolonged engagement over their users’ excitement. Unlike other games I’ve played where randomness is used to make parts of a game more dramatic, this game uses it in a way to make money by causing their players to become frustrated. This encouragement of spending through manipulating player emotions in my opinion is a very big ethical problem. Clash of Clans is an example of randomness in games that can also be used to exploit players, especially when the game is catered to a younger audience. In my opinion, I believe randomness is acceptable to use in games when it is benefiting the players’ overall game experience in terms of their emotions.
