Nov 142 min read

Supercell club sees superb signups

Updated: Nov 15

By Joshua Yan Nov. 13, 2024

Witches, wizards, anthropomorphic cacti and yakuza mobsters have found a new home at the school in the form of the Supercell Club.

Supercell is a video game company best known for developing multiplayer mobile games like Clash Royale and Brawl Stars. This year, some Supercell games—primarily Brawl Stars—have experienced a massive resurgence in popularity as fans began moving away from Clash Royale.

While it used to be the most popular Supercell game, Clash Royale began losing players when Supercell added features discouraging free-to-play playstyle. One such feature was evolutions, which introduced various unbalanced features that were locked behind either a paywall or numerous hours of gameplay. Clash Royale also introduced a new leveling system, making certain upgrades near-impossible to attain for free. According to PlayerAuctions, the game saw a 100,000 concurrent player decrease last year.

“Brawl Stars is much fairer to free-to-play players like myself. Developers introduced balance changes and ranking system improvements in accordance with player complaints and brought back items that players asked for. The main attractions that drew me in were the Godzilla and SpongeBob collaborations. Legacy players could also return to previously archived features and rewards with the Classic Brawl Event,” Senior Bryant Vo said.

Supercell games have had a particularly large presence at the school, with many students playing during brunch, tutorial and (to many teachers’ dismay) even class time. Seeing opportunity in their popularity, Junior Max Nguyen went on to form the Supercell Club with his friends: Sophomore Kavin Kwak, Junior Fernando Gomez-Tagle, Junior Orion Jirman, Junior Daniel Oh and Sophomore Ryan Park.

“During my Biology Honors class, I noticed two of my classmates were playing Clash Royale. Soon, many people started crowding around and talking about their gameplay. In that moment, I realized that mobile games like Clash Royale could be used as a means of connecting people,” Nguyen said.

With the primary goal of uniting people through similar interests—along with providing a safe haven amidst concerns about stricter phone regulations at school—the Supercell club is open every other Thursday during lunch in the GBA. Meetings consist of collaborative playtime, discussing game updates, making character tier lists and more. The club had its first meeting on Oct. 9, garnering almost 70 members—all of which were male.

In addition to regular meetings, the Supercell Club is also hosting tournaments for various Supercell games. Their first, a Brawl Stars tournament, took place on Oct. 23 and involved over 20 teams of 3 players. The winning team won a Brawl Pass+ for each team member and the second place team received regular Brawl Passes. The club plastered posters and QR codes around the school to promote the tournament.

Despite being an entirely new club, the Supercell Club has ballooned in success over the past few weeks. In a culture where many clubs involve academics and social justice issues, the Supercell Club stands out as one that has gained a lot of attention for a lighthearted topic that its members have genuine passion for.

About the Contributors

Joshua Yan is a Senior at Leland High School. This is his second year as a staff writer for the school newspaper. He likes playing piano, playing games with friends, and pen spinning.