Each year, new trends and “fads” take over Hudson High School. Typically, each year a new or old mobile game will arise and also follows this pattern. In the past, there have been yearly fixes like Among Us, Retro Bowl, Clash of Clans or Brawl Stars. This year is no different: Clash Royale is the app making its claim to fame this school year.
Clash Royale was created in 2016. It was developed and published by Supercell, which is the same creator of the game Clash of Clans which was at peak popularity in 2019. Clash Royale was originally designed to be a spin off of Clash of Clans, but containing more individualistic qualities.
Supercell has recently been the predominant creator of popular games. They produced Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars (which was trendy last year) and now Clash Royale. While Clash of Clans and Clash Royale are similar, Brawl Stars had many differences, but the strategic and compulsive qualities this game also possessed allowed it to join the ranks.
Clash Royale is a game of strategy, competition and risk. To play the game, one must battle opponents to earn trophies, trophy amounts correlate to the arena ranks each player is able to use. Each time a game is played, trophies are either lost or gained depending on how many towers you conquer and defend against your opponent.
Competitors battle in arenas with cards that they have received by winning previous battles. Each player begins their journey in the game with a few starter cards, and from then on it is up to them to obtain new cards by executing more games. The game also features other versions and mini games if the original game concept isn’t appealing.
Along with this, participants can play against their friends if they choose to in several different mini game versions. Players also have the option to join “clans,” which are groups of players on the app who can interact and play for higher reward together. This keeps the social appeal that Clash of Clans was so renowned for.
The competitive aspect of high risk, high reward philosophy is one of the most captivating qualities of the game. But apart from this appeal, the game has been on the app store for almost nine years and it is currently surging in popularity. The question is: why now?
While there appears to be no clear answer, dominant Clash Royale players at Hudson High School share their opinions on the matter and other thoughts they have on the game. These players had two of the highest amounts of the trophies in all of Hudson High School.
First, senior Luke Sladkey, who has 15,145 trophies believes the game became so popular recently because it became viral on social media app TikTok, but he originally started playing long before the trend arose. “I started playing Clash Royale in like 2016 because I thought it was fun and my dad told me to get it.” Sladkey was not alone in his early discovery of the game, as senior Holden Reed, who has 14,650 trophies, also started playing the year the game was made.
While they were both early birds to the game, Reed and Sladkey’s opinions differ on the recent peak in fame. Reed believes the game got so popular because of how “addicting” it is. “The game makes you always want to play more, like you lose a game and you’re like oh I need to play again to earn my trophies back, so you just keep playing in an endless cycle.”
As far as the future goes, it is unclear how long the game will stay trendy for. In the past, games like Among Us or Clash of Clans were at their peak popularity for one to two years, while games like Retro Bowl only lasted a few months. Reed’s assumptions are similar, as he expects the game to peak for about another year.
Sladkey believes the popularity of the game at HHS in particular is directly related to the phone policy at Hudson. “If phones have to go away in January, I think It’ll die out, but if they don’t, maybe till the spring.”
While there is not one clear answer to the Clash Royale madness, factors like social media, peer influence and family input definitely have shaped the Clash revolution. But one thing is clear, whether it’s Clash or Among Us, every year a different mobile game is hyperfixated on and takes HHS on by storm, this year Clash Royale assumes that position.
