There’s quite a big chance that next time you travel by metro, a high educated man in a fancy suit will enter the metro, sit down, grabs his fancy new smartphone and start playing Candy Crush. And there’s even a chance that when he’s out of lives, he rather pays 0.99 cents than waiting 30 minutes for a new life. Nowadays, this situation has become normal in the entire world. How is it possible that millions of people, no matter what education or job they have, are addicted to crushing candy’s?
I did a little research on the success of Candy Crush for my case write up last week and found some very interesting results. In March 2013, Candy Crush surpassed Farmville 2 as most popular game on Facebook. Mobile monetization firm ThinkGaming estimates Candy Crush to have over 7.5 million daily unique users. Data site AppData even estimates Candy Crush to have over 15 million daily unique users. Whatever the exact number is, it is clear that Candy Crush is a huge success. Developer King has a daily revenue of $850,000 out of Candy Crush. Recently King even stopped advertising on Candy Crush, because they’re already making so much money with just the game itself.
Now back to the key question: Why is Candy Crush so popular? During my research, I found three factors that makes this game such an immense success. The first factor is simplicity. The game must be easy to learn, and it shouldn’t take too much time. King works with a timeframe. Each level is designed to take a maximum of three minutes.
Secondly, there must be a good concept. Riccardo Zacconi, co-founder and chief executive of King, has set up a factory-like production line with multiple small teams working on a game for a maximum of three months. After those three months, the game will be released on their website. King uses its website to test the game. If the game fails, then only three months work is wasted. If a game turns out to be a big hit, they proceed with working on that game and release it on Facebook. King has currently over 200 games running on their website, but only 8 were released for Facebook. “When we develop a game for Facebook and mobile we know that game is very likely to be a success as it was a success on King.com,” says Mr Zacconni. Furthermore, King handles the freemium model. The game is free to play, but there are options to buy in-game advantages and lives. Although there’s a small percentage of people who are actually spending money on Candy Crush, it is enough to get a very high daily revenue because of the big amount of daily active users.
The last factor that made Candy Crush a success is by far the most important factor: Facebook. When the game wasn’t released for Facebook, Candy Crush probably didn’t even have 10,000 daily active users. After the release for Facebook on April 12, 2012 Candy Crush grew to the most popular game on Facebook within a year. King doesn’t have to do any advertising on Facebook, because their users will do that for them by asking their friends to give them lives or to get access to a new episode. Without Facebook, none of you would know Candy Crush now.
I didn’t have time to invest any more time in my research, so I didn’t really do research on the psychological aspect of Candy Crush. I’m wondering, what makes people play games like Candy Crush. Is it because ‘everyone seems to play it nowadays, so I have to play it as well’? Or is it just to kill time when you’re on your way home? Or maybe is it because people just like to see that they had a better score than most of their friends? I’d like to hear your opinions about why this game is such a success.
Sources:
http://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/2/candy-crush-saga/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/candy-crush-saga-studio-behind-game-with-over-44m-monthly-users-promises-more-hits-8755414.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-success-as-gamers-get-a-crush-on-candy-8604756.html
http://www.startupitalia.eu/blog/article/strategia-vincente-riccardo-zacconi-mr-kingcom
http://www.appdata.com/
I guess it’s a combination of the reasons you mentioned. For me personally, I started playing the game because I noticed many of my friends playing the game through Facebook and I heard them talking about it. At first I was a bit hesitant to use the game, mainly because of privacy issues. But I guess ‘keeping up with the Jones’ has a strong effect on participation.
The social aspect of the game itself also has a big part in the popularity of the game; nearly beating the level makes you want to play more and more and seeing that one of your friends is almost passing you, makes you want to keep ahead of them.
A part from that, it’s also an easy way to kill time, while waiting for your friend who’s running late because he/she lost track of time while playing candy crush 😉