Candy Crush Saga: The “King” of Casual Games

Part 1

Candy Crush Saga is developed and published by Midasplayer International Holding Company – better known as King.  King has operated the skill games web portal King.com for about a decade.  King has long supplanted Zynga as the largest and most talked about social/mobile casual game developer and Candy Crush Saga has replaced Angry Birds as the most talked about casual game.  This post is in three parts — part 1 covers some basic game design including where Candy Crush innovated and some reasons why it is so addictive; part 2 highlights monetization methods and references posts by others that I found insightful and interesting; and part 3 introduces the debate over ethics and industry health with respect to current freemium game monetization methods.

Level 65

A Google search on “level 65” results in a full page of tips, hints, cheats, walk-throughs, videos, and more about level 65 in the mobile and social game phenomenon Candy Crush Saga.  No need to add “Candy Crush” to your search – just “level 65” will get the result.

Level 65 is a key Candy Crush level that players have a very hard time beating.  The game has select levels, like 65, where not only candy gets crushed, but so do players hopes of reasonable progression.  Players report spending the better part of a month stuck on level 65 – often coming excruciatingly close to beating the level several times.  Most frustrated players finally get a game board with the right amount of built-in random luck to compliment strategy and skill and succeed; others pay cash to tilt the balance in their favor through in-game boosts.

Beyond level 65 lies a pay/viral gate ($0.99 or three “tickets” from friends) leading to level 66 out of the 400 or so levels in the game.  The addictive grind goes on, gated by more monetization.  In all, the game likely earns the better part of a million dollars per day for King.

Why write about Candy Crush?

On Tuesday 9/17, I am hosting a panel at the NY Games conference.   The panel covers current popular monetization methods in freemium (free to play with in-app purchases) mobile and social games.  The topic covers specific monetization methods in use, the ethics of the methods, and their effect on the long-term health of the games industry.

Candy Crush Saga is top monetizing and most popular game on mobile and social platforms (by gross revenue and daily audience) at the moment.  While revenue per player (ARPU) is not as strong as more core titles and social casino titles, Candy Crush makes up for this with unreal volume.

Candy Crush Saga currently has over 50 million daily and 130 million monthly players on Facebook and many additional millions on iOS and Android smart phones.  The Facebook Daily to Monthly player ratio (DAU/MAU) of roughly 40% reflects extremely high engagement.  Candy Crush is the #1 monetizing app on iOS and the #5 ranked free app by audience.

Why does Candy Crush perform so well?

The first and most important stop in monetization is a good game – and Candy Crush is a great game.  Engagement and fun are prerequisites to audience growth and meaningful monetization.  This isn’t unique to games — for consumer products in general – whether games, detergent, tv shows, or smartphones, or candy bars – consumers vote with their attention and dollars.  Given enough exposure, products that people enjoy succeed, products that fall short of expectations fail.

For a game to succeed, the elements that make people want to play over and over must be there – this generally includes a fun and challenging play pattern that engages over time, an interesting theme, and a clear and pleasing UI including audio that enhances the experience.  Candy Crush excels in all of these elements, and embeds/layers monetization into the design and experience in smart and very effective ways.

Candy Crush is an important proof point for the casual games industry.  It shows that casual skill based mechanics (arcade style games) can monetize at a high level.  It also shows that incremental innovation can reinvent a well-worn play pattern – in this case 3 in a row matching.

King’s innovation with Candy Crush is far down the line from an original work.  The most successful version of the 3-in-a-row mechnic is PopCap’s Bejeweled which appeared in 2001 (itself derivative of a Russian game called Shariki which pioneered the “three in a row” matching mechanic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shariki)).

Bejeweled is a long-term franchise with multiple sequels and versions for most every global distribution platform.  Business Insider just published a brief history of the franchise here:  (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-history-of-bejewled-2013-9).  Bejeweled has been copied countless times and Candy Crush has incorporated and created some of the best variations on the basic mechanic.

In Sum, What makes Candy Crush so good and so addictive?  Certainly the game delivers on “easy to learn/difficult to master” as all great casual games do.  But, just like Candy Crush, the answer has many more levels.

Below are some of the elements that I think make a difference for Candy Crush:

Emphasizing limited moves as the game’s main constraint.

Many arcade and puzzle genre mobile/social games (Bejeweled Blitz, Collapse, Diamond Dash, etc…) use time as their main constraint – usually running a 60-second clock and making the experience somewhat frenzied.  Pacing Candy Crush by moves has several positive effects:

1. It allows the player to determine the pace of their gameplay and feel more in control as each decision feels more strategic.
2. It opens the game to even more casual players who are intimidated by, or not interested in, more time pressured mechanics – i.e. players who don’t like to think and click at the same time (notice that most social games fit this criteria as well).
3. It allows for a slow build of tension and a feeling that the outcome of the game is determined by the players strategic choices.

Losing is Still Fun and Motivating

Even when you lose, there is the fun of “almost winning” — the addictiveness of “near misses”.  I noticed early on that just playing a level of Candy Crush is fun – win or lose.  At the time, this was refreshing for a social game on Facebook where losing is rare.  Part of the enjoyment with Candy Crush is the fun of the journey within the overall mechanic – i.e. smart choices and positive feedback even within a losing level is still enjoyable.  Part of it also is the charge from coming close, but falling just short.

Psychological studies[1] have demonstrated that in regular (non-compulsive) players of gambling games, mid brain responses (dopamine release) to “near misses” are similar to responses to winning.  In addition, near misses in gambling settings contribute to the players distorted perception of their chances of winning.  For compulsive gamblers, the mid-brain response to near misses is especially enhanced.

These near misses have the effect of stimulating a positive brain response and motivating the player to try again to defeat the level.

Superlative Feedback including Unique and Catchy Audio

Candy Crush player feedback is a multilayered combination of audio and visual stimulus.  Clinks, pops, swooshes, crunches, explosions, escalating notes, and more are all part of an emotionally evocative audio experience.  The audio works nicely with the UI and game play.  When a player advances a level, there is a visual animation of their icon moving to the next level with the sound of boots marching.

In addition to a background loop, music indicates level success and failure and is generally well done.  In game sound effects accompany every move and escalate with success.  When a chain reaction move clears many candies the caramel smooth (and somewhat creepy) voice-over rewards the user with exclamations including “tasty”, “sweet”, “delicious”, and “divine”.  People respond positively to praise – even mechanical random praise – it makes us feel important.

Upon winning, especially with moves left over, there is an explosion of audio and visual feedback – the voice exclaims “sugar crush” and the experience is worthy of a casino slot machine.

Variation and Freshness as Levels Progress

Candy Crush does a good job of varying puzzle layouts and introducing new obstacles over time.  There is a good mix of familiarity and novelty throughout the game.  A big part of the difficulty in level 65 is the creeping chocolate mechanic, which is fairly new at that point of the game.  Interspersed with the core “clear the jelly” goal are score and time goals, “bring down fruit” goals, and a variety of new obstacles all of which combine to keep the game fresh and challenging.

The Balance of Skill vs. Luck

King clearly has great level designers.  Their team has managed to make the game engaging to non-payers, who make up a majority of the audience (70% according to the company), and payers.  Players also maintain a feeling that their skill is instrumental to their success, and to some extent, this is true (the actual skill vs. luck curve seems to be carefully managed throughout the game and can be debated).

On Level 65, I repeatedly re-played the game — sometimes at a controlled pace and making “smart” decisions and other times playing quickly and making the best matches I could see without deliberating.  I consistently came much closer to beating the level with the deliberate style.  Specifically, there are 65 spaces to clear in the level, and playing deliberately usually got me 10% closer – a difference of five to ten closer to the target.

A Novel, Trippy, and Appealing Theme

Candy Crush, while borrowing on influences like Bejeweled and Candy Land, is a novel, and even trippy (in a Tim Burton sense) experience.  At first play, the odd cut out characters, occasionally light and dark music loops, and creepy voice feedback are unfamiliar but intriguing.

The treatment of the theme is novel, and novelty, again, is a dopamine trigger.  Dopamine release in the brain was once thought to just represent pleasure – more recent studies have shown that dopamine actually triggers motivation to seek out reward.  So the formula of feedback + near misses + novelty is a powerful motivator to continue to play to seek victory, and progress that gates the promise of more novelty.

Plus, who doesn’t love candy.

Level Based Friend-Only Leader-boards

Candy Crush is the first game I noticed that used fresh leader-boards for each level.  Players like being “king of the hill”, and in Candy Crush, they have 400 chances to achieve top status.  Friend-only leaderboards also keep the user closer to the top, and, facilitate social interactions (bragging and other communication) both inside and outside the game.

These are just some of the key reasons for Candy Crush’s success.  In the next post, I will focus on monetization.