Gaming Empire Supercell: We Pop Champagne Every Time We Fail

HELSINKI, Finland — Supercell is known for two of the most popular iOS apps — combat strategy game Clash of the Clans and social farming game Hay Day — but the pair are the only survivors of several apps developed by the company in recent years. Instead of ignoring killed-off products, Supercell embraces each failure, always with a bottle of champagne.

"We celebrate failures," Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen said during a meeting in Helsinki this week ahead of the country's Slush conference for startups. "We don't pretend failing is fun — people dedicate their lives to gaming production and sometimes the products get killed — but we get so much from that failure. We analyze and talk about what went well and what didn't. We pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate what we learned." Read more...