Taking risks in a live service game with Clash of Clans' Builder Base 2.0
Game designer Alex Roque is one of the most recent members to join Supercell. During his first year working on Clash of Clans, he's gotten the opportunity to explore all sorts of mechanics and systems. Taking part in rebuilding the fan-favorite Builder Base mode, however, came as a surprise—but certainly not without planning.
The free-to-play mobile strategy game from the Finnish studio has been amassing players for over a decade. The six-year-old Builder Base mode—a PVP mode with a more tactical approach—didn't receive updates for some time. In November 2022, the team announced a 2.0 rework. Roque is just one of the developers who took part in the endeavor, workshopping ideas with the team at large and deciding how to approach such an important overhaul for a live service player audience.
It's rare that studios go through such an effort to revitalize languishing modes like this. We spoke with Roque about what kind of work went to bringing Builder Base back to life.
Roque graduated from a career in Mechatronics Engineering in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he was born and raised. He then spent the next few years building ice cream machines, until one day he decided to make a game in his spare time. Brazil's Wildlife Studios took an interest in his project and hired him, spanning three years of experience before joining Supercell.
"At some point I realized it took too much time to make things in real life," Roque tells Game Developer via Zoom. "Making games digitally, you can just build them and test them right away, it's a much faster process to create new things". The developer adds that the opportunity fall onto his lap out of the blue, and changing careers has been the best decision he made.
By the time he started learning the
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