[GamePea Exclusive, Reproduction Prohibited!] GamePea Reports / It is rare for a mobile game company CEO to receive top honors in the Western gaming industry. The BAFTA Fellowship has traditionally been the exclusive stage for veteran figures from major AAA studios, with past recipients including Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Gabe Newellâa list that represents the historical depth of the entire gaming industry. This time, Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen has joined their ranks, becoming one of the very few awardees from the mobile gaming sector.
In Gamelook's view, this is not only a high recognition of his more than two decades of entrepreneurial career but also a signal: the mobile gaming industry has developed to a stage where it can influence the overall landscape of the gaming market.
Supercell itself is a banner in the mobile gaming industry. Almost every one of its previous blockbusters either created a new sub-category in the mobile market or became the most representative successful game in the early days of smartphone gaming. From Hay Day to Clash of Clans, from Clash Royale to Brawl Stars, each title has a distinct cultural identity and stands out. At a time when the entire industry is anxious about growth, these 'evergreen games' have not only withered in recent years but have grown against the trend, with two older products even driving the company's revenue growth year after year.
Recently, foreign media outlet PocketGamer interviewed the newly awarded Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, discussing his career in gaming and the core challenges facing the mobile market. Below is Gamelook's compiled full content:
Ilkka Paananen has built a remarkable career in the gaming industry. He is best known as the CEO of Supercell, the company behind a string of global hits: Clash of Clans, Hay Day, Boom Beach, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars.
Now, he has been awarded the BAFTA Fellowship. This honor recognizes an individual's achievements throughout their career in the arts of film, television, and games. He thus joins a star-studded list that includes industry legends such as Hideo Kojima, Shuhei Yoshida, Siobhan Reddy, Gabe Newell, Yoko Shimomura, and Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto's work at Nintendo was a key inspiration for Supercell's philosophy of 'creating games that will be remembered forever.'
Paananen believes that success in the gaming industry requires three things: luck, a great team, and the best corporate culture. 'Many people have the first two but miss out on success due to luck,' he said in an interview. 'I am very grateful that we happened to have the right time, place, and people.'
The Beginning of a Gaming Career
Paananen has always had a strong interest in games, but his career started by chance. While studying business at Helsinki University of Technology, he said the typical paths for students were either investment banking or management consulting at firms like Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. But he always had a burning desire to start his own business.
During a summer job, he happened to sit next to an engineer named Sami. The engineer mentioned that he and some friends were planning to start a companyâall from the gaming worldâbut needed someone to handle finance, administration, sales, and everything else. They asked Paananen if he was interested. 'I said, of course,' he recalled. 'I was still a student then, about 21 years old.' He even offered to work for free. To give him a respectable title for representing the company externally, he was given the role of CEO. That was his first company, Sumea, founded in 2000, which focused on mobile game development.
At that time, the launch of the App Store and iPhone was still far in the future, and the industry had not yet experienced its explosive growth. 'I remember walking out of that café thinking: Wow, I'm now the CEO of a company. I've never actually had a real job in my life; I've only read business books and studied cases at university.'
So, if that chance encounter hadn't happened, would he still be in the gaming industry today? Paananen said he might still have started a company, but perhaps in a completely different field. But he added, 'Once you enter the gaming industry, it's hard to leave because this industry is so much fun.'
Career Trajectory
In 2004, Sumea was acquired by Digital Chocolate, a mobile game developer and publisher founded by EA founder Trip Hawkins. 'I often refer to my time at Digital Chocolate as my MBA in business and entrepreneurship.' At the time of the acquisition, Sumea had grown to about 40 to 50 employees, while Digital Chocolate had only about 20. Paananen said he had a lot of autonomy there and later rose to become the company's president.
But in 2010, Paananen left the company. After working there for 10 years, he felt he wanted to do something 'fundamentally different,' and the company's operating methods at the time prevented him from doing so. 'They almost needed to completely reset the company.' After repeated discussions with the founder and recognizing the company's established culture and history, he decided to leave.
In 2011, he founded Supercell, building a new corporate culture based on years of gaming industry experience. The company's 'cell' organizational structure is now well-known, empowering small teams to independently develop games. After the initial browser game Gunshine failed (a failure that later became a celebrated part of the company's culture, with Supercell treating every subsequent canceled project in the same spirit), Supercell skyrocketed with mobile games Hay Day and Clash of Clans.
Since then, the company has created five billion-dollar blockbuster games, known for its high success rate and lean teams over the years. These achievements attracted billions of dollars in investment from SoftBank and Tencent. Although the company once seemed invincible, and its game portfolio remains highly commercially valuableâachieving its highest-ever revenue in 2024âthe 'magic' has slightly faded. Since Brawl Stars in 2018, the company has not released a new blockbuster, and the 2024 launch of Squad Busters became the company's first game to be shut down after launch.
In response, Supercell underwent an internal restructuring, splitting the team into two: one department responsible for new game development and another for operating existing games. The company also brought in new management, including President Sara Bach, and significantly expanded its workforce, hiring 300 new employees in 2025 alone. Amid these changes, player activity and revenue for Clash Royale and Brawl Stars have seen significant fluctuations. Meanwhile, the new game division, including the 'Spark' program aimed at incubating new teams from internal and external developers, has yet to truly take off.
Given the company's restructuring and new challenges in mature markets, are the founding principles on which Supercell was built still applicable today? 'I absolutely think so,' he affirmed, adding, 'When we founded Supercell, we thought: Okay, no matter what happens, this will never happen at Supercell.' He explained that successful companies often end up marginalizing creative talent, pushed aside by 'an external force, sometimes invisible, sometimes very visible.'
So, does this culture of external business pressure dominating everything really destroy games and companies? 'We are often criticized. Think about it: nearly 300 million people play our games every month... Comparing our revenue to our player base, you could easily say we could do better with monetization. Industry blogs, podcastsâeveryone criticizes us for it. But perhaps that's why Hay Day and Clash of Clans have kept players engaged for over a decadeâwe don't burn players out. But on the other hand, the temptation to over-monetize and exhaust players is huge because you need to hit the next quarter's revenue targets. So I think this approach absolutely destroys games and companies.'
Supercell's White Whale
Criticized for not releasing a new blockbuster in over seven years, Supercell's corporate culture has faced increasing scrutiny. Asked why the company has struggled, he said launching a new blockbuster is inherently difficult, and given the company's consistent pursuitâeither hit a billion dollars or don't botherâit's not easy for anyone. In his annual blog post, the Supercell CEO noted that since 2020, 22 games have generated over $1 billion in revenue, with 20 coming from developers in China, Japan, and South Korea.
Paananen said the mobile gaming space now faces a more intense battle for fragmented time. At the same time, if the industry looks in the mirror, he believes it hasn't truly created anything 'breathtaking and fundamentally different.' To push the industry to the next level, 'someone needs to come up with that game, and we are certainly trying to do our part.'
But what does he mean by 'innovation'? Is it a completely new experience or a revolution within existing categories? Scopely made a huge splash in the coin-collection genre with the $6 billion hit Monopoly Go!; Diandian Interactive's Whiteout Survival and FunFly's Last War: Survival successfully blended casual gameplay with the 4X strategy genre; Dream Games eventually dethroned King's Candy Crush in the puzzle category with high-quality production. Paananen said he means an entirely new experience that players have never seen before. 'Pokémon Go is the perfect example in my mind. People who played that game were proud of it. I think the industry needs another moment like that.'
Looking to the Future
Paananen has been deeply involved in the gaming industry for over 25 years, almost entirely focused on the mobile sector. Interestingly, he also recalled another summer job: in 1999, just before founding Sumea, he worked as a junior analyst at a telecom company, tasked with writing a report on the Japanese mobile market when feature phones were just entering Europe. From that time, he saw the potential for these devices to become computers and gaming terminals, even though it would take many years for that to become a reality.
After spending 25 years in the mobile gaming track and personally criticizing the industry's lack of innovation, does he still have passion for it? 'You know, I'm more excited than ever. Sometimes people think I'm joking, but I've never been this excited. The reason is that this platform is so much stronger than it was 10 years ago. Any smartphone you pick up today is an amazing gaming device. Networks are better, infrastructure is in place, and we have tools like AI that will open up entirely new possibilities, especially for small teams.' He added, 'Supercell's founding philosophyâthese small, independent, creative cellsâAI will give them superpowers like never before. So yes, it's challenging and competitive, but I think that's what makes it exciting.'
Paananen still dreams of building a company like Nintendo, drawing inspiration from Nintendo's 136-year history, the games and classic characters created by BAFTA Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto and the company's vast and excellent development team. He said Supercell is still very far from that goal. But he feels that as long as he can help the team move one step closer to that vision, he will continue to stay at the company, which has now been around for 15 years.
Reflecting on a gaming career spanning over 25 years and receiving the BAFTA Fellowship, Paananen offered concise advice to the next generation of developers and those considering starting their own ventures: 'Just start doing it. That's my most important advice.'
Tags: BAFTA, Ilkka Paananen, Supercell