Who spends huge sums on Clash of Clans and why? What kind of people lead the top players in the project? In part, these questions were answered by The New York Times, which recently published material about the legendary Clash of Clans player – Jorge Yao.
25-year-old Yao, known in the game under the nickname Jorge Yao, became the first gamer to receive 4,000 trophies. He held the first position in the world ranking for 6 months, starting in January. However, he became a cult figure in the community not only for this.
Jorge Yao (photo source: THE NEW YORK TIMES)The fact is that for a long time he introduced, together with another player, Flammy, led a series of YouTube broadcasts on the game.
In total, they have been viewed more than 400,000 times. And after that, Yao had more than 79,000 followers on Twitter and 30,000 likes on Facebook.
However, in the spring Jorge Yao announced that he would leave the game. He wanted to leave while he was still at the top.
Yao’s story began in 2011, when he moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia. He tried to make acquaintances by dropping in bars after work, but he never found friends.
In the middle of 2012, he came across Clash of Clans in the App Store. The guy compensated for the lack of a personal life with the results of a new project for himself. With maniacal persistence, Yao won trophies. If he made a mistake when attacking an enemy settlement, he “corrected it” by spending 48 hours at the game on weekends.
According to him, the keys to success in the game are calmness and concentration. In order to stay in the top, he spent at least $250 a week.
When he ran out of money, a clan friend took pity on him and sponsored him with in-game currency (the friend is the 38-year-old son of one of the business magnates). In return, Yao maintained his account when he was away. On weekends, to protect himself from attacks, Yao ordered ready-made food and launched a shield, which gave a temporary respite from attacks.
The result of such a marathon was: leadership in the world top, a sea of likes, the loss of 9 kilograms and the desire to quit the project. However, Yao has not disappeared from the industry. Now he lives in London and works as a marketer at Space Ape, a company that recently launched a clone of Clash of Clans – Samurai Siege.
The moral of the story is as follows: today, even a mobile project can become a sports discipline “without five minutes.” The struggle for leadership in the standings, the variety of winning strategies for players, the ability to share these strategies – all this allows not only to retain, but also to monetize gaming “whales” and hardcore users extremely successfully.
The original article can be found here.
A source: http://mobile.nytimes.com/