Speaker 1: Candy CRUSH's sweet success fifteen years in the ubiquitous mobile
Speaker 1: game is still Crushing It by Alana Oakin Read aloud
Speaker 1: by Mark Lidorf. Johanna Shurikey doesn't time travel anymore. The
Speaker 1: now thirty four year old had been playing Candy Crush
Speaker 1: saga for years when she experienced the stuff of grad
Speaker 1: school nightmares. Its finals week and I woke up in
Speaker 1: the morning to a startle. I missed a study session
Speaker 1: for my final exam because my phone alarm never went off.
Speaker 1: This was the result of what many gamers refer to
Speaker 1: as time traveling, resetting the date on a device to
Speaker 1: acquire more lives or other time locked bonuses. At the time,
Speaker 1: Candy Crush gave players five new lives every day, so
Speaker 1: dedicated players such as Shurikey would simply change the time
Speaker 1: and keep right on crushing. That did occasionally have the
Speaker 1: unintended side effect of messing with alarms and calendars. It
Speaker 1: certainly messed with Shurakkeie. I thought this is the actual
Speaker 1: definition of an addiction, she says. I was like, I
Speaker 1: need to go cold turkey. I hate this game, and
Speaker 1: I deleted it off my phone about three years later,
Speaker 1: Shurooki redownloaded the app, and it's remained what she calls
Speaker 1: a guilty pleasure ever since, without causing her to miss
Speaker 1: any more important meetings. Candy CRUSH's longevity has made it
Speaker 1: something of a time traveler itself. Many games, especially the
Speaker 1: ones on our phones, spike in public interest and then
Speaker 1: fall just as sharply. When was the last time you
Speaker 1: heard about Kim Kardashian Hollywood, a twenty fourteen mobile game
Speaker 1: estimated to have netted more than fifty million dollars in
Speaker 1: its first four months. Candy Crush, by contrast, has stayed
Speaker 1: remarkably popular over the past fifteen years. On public transit,
Speaker 1: at sporting events, even sitting next to a couple on
Speaker 1: a first date, you can still reliably catch a glimpse
Speaker 1: of someone playing the game. Candy Crush has come to
Speaker 1: mean thing people do on their phones, as in the
Speaker 1: case of a less than flattering cultural meme about on
Speaker 1: duty police officers distracted by smashing suites. David Curry, data
Speaker 1: editor at analytics platform Business of Apps, estimates the game
Speaker 1: had eighty one point five million monthly active users, one
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety point five million installs, and in app
Speaker 1: revenue of eight hundred and seventy six point five million
Speaker 1: in fiscal year twenty twenty five. Swedish publisher King declined
Speaker 1: to provide current internal figures. In twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 1: game crossed an extraordinary threshold, with King reporting a lifetime
Speaker 1: revenue milestone of twenty billion dollars and five billion installs
Speaker 1: across its Candy Crush franchises, which include spin offs like
Speaker 1: Soda Saga and Jelly Saga. It consistently ranks among the
Speaker 1: highest grossing mobile games year after year. I've been playing
Speaker 1: video games my whole life, and recently went back to
Speaker 1: school to study game design, making my own small narrative games,
Speaker 1: and researching what makes games of all sorts tick. When
Speaker 1: Candy Crush first appeared on the scene, I was fascinated, overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: and maybe even a tad squeamish about it. The app
Speaker 1: seemed to feature only the barest elements of what makes
Speaker 1: a game a game. It turns out that may have
Speaker 1: been the secret to its success all along. King brought
Speaker 1: out the initial iteration of Candy Crush on its website
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. It had released hundreds of games in
Speaker 1: the decade prior drawing on player data to fine tune
Speaker 1: subsequent releases. Then the social web took off. When we
Speaker 1: were trying to understand how to crack Facebook, we essentially
Speaker 1: started six different projects in parallel. King co founder Sebastian
Speaker 1: Nutsen told CNBC in twenty twenty the company had one
Speaker 1: really big dud it dispensed with shortly after launch, as
Speaker 1: well as a few mediocre games that we were quite
Speaker 1: happy with. The Lessons about mechanics, player retention, and level
Speaker 1: design would become the blueprint for Candy Crush Saga, which
Speaker 1: was also are released on mobile platforms to capture the
Speaker 1: growing smartphone market. In December twenty thirteen, Candy Crush had
Speaker 1: ninety three million daily active users worldwide, according to King's
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen initial public offering filing. About that time, King
Speaker 1: also filed and then withdrew, an application to trademark the
Speaker 1: term candy in the US. Its continued popularity has much
Speaker 1: to do with the near hypnotic simplicity of the gameplay.
Speaker 1: Candy Crush operates according to match three mechanics, a classic
Speaker 1: video game genre that evolved from games such as Tetris.
Speaker 1: The goal of Candy Crush is to match enough colorful,
Speaker 1: sweet shaped tiles within a limited set of moves so
Speaker 1: that they blow up and vanish, thereby clearing the board
Speaker 1: and progressing to the next level. The game is turn based,
Speaker 1: meaning players can pick it up or put it down
Speaker 1: with no consequence, unlike say, Call of Duty or the
Speaker 1: Legend of Zelda, where you're required to react to whatever
Speaker 1: the game throws at you in real time. That makes
Speaker 1: it ideal to play while you're riding the train, or
Speaker 1: hanging out on the couch or avoiding work. Players jumped
Speaker 1: at the chance to discuss their candy crushing habit with
Speaker 1: me the past few months. A mother of two in Florida,
Speaker 1: a YouTuber in Romania, a professor in upstate New York
Speaker 1: whose arthritis makes fine motor activities difficult. Unfortunately, a candy
Speaker 1: crushing cop was harder to come by. Nearly all of
Speaker 1: them expressed the same sentiment, unprompted they don't identify as gamers.
Speaker 1: Candy crush to them is the exception to the rule
Speaker 1: enticing not because of its similarities to the other bits
Speaker 1: of culture they consume, but because of its differences what
Speaker 1: it offers in opposition to books or movies or social media. Shurikei,
Speaker 1: the former Time traveler, describes the game's draw as providing
Speaker 1: a feeling of satisfaction for having completed a task. My
Speaker 1: background is in speech pathology, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: my work has been with humans, she says. There was
Speaker 1: never a component of my job where I could look
Speaker 1: at a list and be like, yep, check finished. So
Speaker 1: I love you accomplish a level in Candy Crush and
Speaker 1: it's like awesome, on to the next. It's a unique
Speaker 1: pleasure that way. That's not how it feels to scroll
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok, those bottomless, frictionless maws. This reflects King's
Speaker 1: intentions the game fits flexibly into the gaps in people's days.
Speaker 1: Paula Ingvar, the general manager for Candy Crush Saga, wrote
Speaker 1: in an email to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, noting the game's ability
Speaker 1: to produce the satisfaction of making progress with small wins.
Speaker 1: Another aspect of the game's allure is how free of
Speaker 1: cultural context it is. It's distinctively non place based, non gendered,
Speaker 1: non racialized, says David Neeborg, a professor of Media and
Speaker 1: Platform Studies at the University of Toronto, who researches Candy
Speaker 1: Crush and games like it, The appeal can be so
Speaker 1: broad you can have somebody playing on the subway in
Speaker 1: sount Ballow, but also in Tokyo or in Lagos. Just
Speaker 1: because Candy Crush seems simple doesn't mean it was easy
Speaker 1: to develop. Making a game feel organic and intuitive is
Speaker 1: surprisingly complicated, the result of thousands of failed experiments and
Speaker 1: exceptional design. This is particularly true if the goal is
Speaker 1: to have a wide breadth of players, many of whom
Speaker 1: might not ever have played a digital game before return
Speaker 1: day after day, and ideally spend money. Candy Crush helped
Speaker 1: popularize the now ubiquitous freemium model, in which players download
Speaker 1: a game free of charge and pay for add ons
Speaker 1: to make beating levels easier. Gold Bars candy crushes in
Speaker 1: game currency, can be purchased in packs of ten for
Speaker 1: a dollar ninety nine or fifty for seven dollars in
Speaker 1: ninety nine cents. An extra life runs you four of
Speaker 1: those gold bars, while sets of additional moves start at
Speaker 1: ten bars. According to trend intelligence firm Quantum Run, only
Speaker 1: about four percent of players ever spend money in the game,
Speaker 1: so the in app revenue numbers come from a small
Speaker 1: pool of users. You want to have many players, and
Speaker 1: you want to have people playing habitually. Kneeborg said, that's
Speaker 1: an important game design mechanic. In other words, the gameplay
Speaker 1: of Candy Crush is fashioned to supply a fine tuned
Speaker 1: degree of difficulty to ensure players keep playing Too easy
Speaker 1: and it becomes rote devoid of dopamine, delivering novelty. Too
Speaker 1: tough and you might quit in frustration. Achieving this balance
Speaker 1: has kept King on relatively solid footing through two major acquisitions.
Speaker 1: Gaming giant Activision Blizzard bought the studio for five point
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars in twenty sixteen. Then Microsoft bought Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard for sixty eight point seven billion dollars in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Along with Minecraft studio Mojang, King is now
Speaker 1: situated under Microsoft's struggling Xbox division. Both studios have increasingly
Speaker 1: become platforms and are our largest bi monthly active players.
Speaker 1: Xbox Chief executive Officer Asha Sharma said in a statement
Speaker 1: announcing a corporate restructuring on July sixth. Still, King laid
Speaker 1: off two hundred employees in July twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 1: more Xbox layoffs are on the Horizon. King continues to
Speaker 1: play an important role in Xbox's strategy, the company said
Speaker 1: in a statement to BusinessWeek, especially as mobile is two
Speaker 1: thirds of the market and where the next generation plays.
Speaker 1: Candy Crush Saga remains King's golden goose, and under activision,
Speaker 1: the company has prioritized its older titles more heavily, says
Speaker 1: Curry from Business of Apps. Even with increased competition, it
Speaker 1: remains a popular title that many gravitate towards, especially older users.
Speaker 1: On Reddit and the official King community forum, players compare
Speaker 1: progress in thoughts on the game. One consistent complaint is
Speaker 1: the perceived imbalance between strategy, randomness, and payment. Some longtime
Speaker 1: players maintain that later levels are made overly difficult on purpose,
Speaker 1: impossible to solve without additional moves or boosters. Such bonuses
Speaker 1: can be gained through in game challenges or by watching ads,
Speaker 1: but players argue that by far the easiest path is
Speaker 1: to buy them, resulting in a feeling of pay to
Speaker 1: win that belies actual skill. We don't design levels to
Speaker 1: push people into making purchases. Ingvar wrote challenge is part
Speaker 1: of what has kept Candy Crush engaging for nearly fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but challenge and fairness are different. She also noted King
Speaker 1: continually tests and rebalances its games, listening closely to player feedback.
Speaker 1: When I picked up Candy Crush again this summer, it
Speaker 1: felt as though I was playing two games simultaneously. There
Speaker 1: was the surface level one, matching colors and clearing as
Speaker 1: many levels as possible, and a sort of meta one.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see how far I could get without
Speaker 1: straying from the base gameplay, without relying on extra lives
Speaker 1: or moves. The first few dozen levels were a breeze,
Speaker 1: presumably as I was onboarded as a new player. I
Speaker 1: found it easy to enter a gentle fugue state of swipes,
Speaker 1: explosions and victorious micro vibrations emanating from my phone. Then
Speaker 1: came periodic spikes and difficulty that made ignoring those upgrades
Speaker 1: more difficult. I could only get so far on my
Speaker 1: own unpracticed steam, which actually made me want to try
Speaker 1: even harder. Candy Crush Saga now features twenty three thousand
Speaker 1: plus levels, with dozens more added each week. King hosts
Speaker 1: an annual tournament called Candy Crush All Stars, which this
Speaker 1: year culminated in a live finale in London. And one
Speaker 1: million dollars in prize money. You can watch a highlight
Speaker 1: reel of contestants who qualified remotely at events played by millions.
Speaker 1: Many of these hopefuls are players who've reached what the
Speaker 1: company calls end of content, clearing all available levels. The
Speaker 1: finalists seem earnest and a little nerdy wholesome in a
Speaker 1: way that aligns with the cheery game. At one point,
Speaker 1: a contestant is bleeped out, seemingly for saying holy crap.
Speaker 1: The competition looks intimate and ritualistic, even when surrounded by
Speaker 1: the trappings of a larger than live game show. The
Speaker 1: players hunch over their phones, their faces locked in swiping
Speaker 1: in their well practiced choreography. Just like watching the utuboe
Speaker 1: who create content about Candy Crush, you get the impression
Speaker 1: that their tactics are less about making second to second
Speaker 1: moves and more about the thirty thousand foot view at
Speaker 1: which all patterns become legible. There are, also, perhaps inevitably,
Speaker 1: Candy Crush ASMR videos that bypass the logic centers of
Speaker 1: the brain entirely. The point of Candy Crush isn't to
Speaker 1: ever finish it. It's to stay there. Forever in that
Speaker 1: bright and soothing world, swiping your finger across the screen
Speaker 1: in pursuit of the next surge of satisfaction. Fifteen years
Speaker 1: from now, who's to say we won't all still be
Speaker 1: crushing candies.