Developing New Games
Anastasiya Liohenkaya
Game Artist
“…games kept pulling me in through their beauty: the worlds, the colors, the way a good game guides your eye without a single word. “
I used to be an architect. Architecture taught me to love complex problems inside strict constraints. But games kept pulling me in through their beauty: the worlds, the colors, the way a good game guides your eye without a single word.
I remember the exact moment it clicked: I caught myself seriously designing an arcana for Io from Dota 2. An impossible brief, and I couldn't put it down! That's when I knew. I've built games in a lot of genres since, and all roads led to strategy. Structure plus art. Architecture you can play.
A supercell game for me is one that people play for years and then tell their friends about it without anyone asking them to. A game made with attention: for the player and for their time. I've seen from the inside how much the teams here care about the player experience, how they build stories that genuinely touch people, and this changed what "quality" means to me.
My own bar: a game that's still around when today's players show it to their kids. This means building something that hasn't existed before.
What is driving me to build this? Curiosity and a good amount of ambition. Most of the work is iteration and dead ends before one day a system we built suddenly clicks, turning into something fun. That moment pays for everything.
I want to make a strategy game that a kid, their dad and their grandmother can all play. Either together or each on their own bus ride. And if that kid finishes a session thinking "I could make games too", that's the whole job done.
Jeffrey Shen
Game Lead
“…here I get to truly focus on crafting the magnum opus. To make something remembered forever!”
Growing up, similar to most, games have always been the biggest distraction and an obsessive hobby. Originally destined to take over my family’s business importing silk garments, I got a job doing freight ship provisions at the Oakland port for work experience. Waking up at 4 am, and being scolded by ship captains was a different kind of wakeup call.
I scrambled to find any job in gaming possible, landing as a “Game Master”, a community manager of sorts on an MMO and the rest is history. Perfect start in retrospect, to really help understand players from the other side.
Game making is a fascinating puzzle of fitting the right fantasy and functions together, but it requires thousands of decisions. No one has the perfect answer all the time. I have made many mistakes across product, design and in the interactions with people. But those scars have crystalized into wisdom I get to apply now.
What excites me is applying those learnings with a group of individuals who’ve experienced the same but are still bright-eyed. Together we can make something that might reach a billion people.
Why did I choose to make games here?
Supercell prizes its culture and you can feel that in the people. Beyond that, the creative process is often bouncing ideas off other great minds, and Supercell is exploding with them.
Coming up with not just good, but great ideas takes inefficient searching through many deceiving paths. Supercell is a rare mobile studio that respects the creative space needed to find them. With the culmination of culture, fertile space and a gathering of like minded craftsmen, here I get to truly focus on crafting the magnum opus.
To make something remembered forever!
Charmie Kim
Game Lead
“The amount of freedom you get as a leader, a game team, and the freedom to make your own decision is absolutely amazing. “
I've always liked games. As a kid I played lots of games on my cousin’s PC, until at 12 we got a home PC for the first time and totally became obsessed with playing games.
Then as a teenager, I forgot about video games for a long time. I was always creative, so I really liked my art classes and I really wanted to have a career in fashion. The last minute change happened when I applied for different universities and I suddenly had the thought of “what if I don't want to make clothes for the rest of my life ?”
That’s when I chose a totally new program called New Media. There I met this professor that changed my perspective on life and in that period I started playing video games again. Soon after I realized I wanted to go into games. I packed up everything, moved to Vancouver, and attended a one-year game design program. And then the rest is history.
What makes making new games at Supercell great?
Well, the thing about Supercell is the agency. The amount of freedom you get as a leader, a game team, and the freedom to make your own decision is absolutely amazing. It's not for everybody. Some people need more structure. I don't need that.
If you have a strong vision for what you're trying to accomplish, then Supercell gives you that freedom and has the resources to support you. There couldn't be a better place for this.
And what drives me to build this?
It’s the culture. Ultimately what matters and what keeps me happy are the people I work with day to day and the relationships with them. I’m excited to see my team every day, my team is absolutely amazing. Empowering teams is foundational to Supercell culture, and it deeply aligns with how I want to make great games.