Inside the World of Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush Saga “Games Guru” Tommy Palm sits relaxed and attentive in the lobby of the Los Angeles, JW Marriot—right across the hall from an exclusive party thrown by social media behemoth Facebook. Tommy’s invited VIP-style, but he’s too cool to scurry in past the trio of people who just had their elbow rubbing dreams crushed by the doorman. Nope, Mr. Palm got this. Instead he sits back in a suit so fly it looks straight out of a spy movie and he cracks jokes about video games. When you’ve got a video game that’s topping the charts of iTunes, Google Play and Facebook, laughter has got to feel a lot different. "We already knew we had a hit on our hands with Candy Crush Saga," Tommy says after taking a swig from his bottled water. "We had a small competition on the team where we all tried to guess how popular it was going to get and no one even came close."

"Candy Crush Saga is played more that 500 million times a day on mobile alone. It's played by over 15 million people on Facebook and people saying that it's passed Angry Birds too so the assumption is that Candy Crush Saga is the most popular game in the world right now."

The type of quick success achieved by Candy Crush Saga doesn’t happen often, especially without stacks of money being poured into promotion. There weren’t any special cross-brand publicity stunts, celebrity endorsements or vanity add-ons. CCS got its recognition the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth. The odds of getting noticed in the flood of virtual world of puzzle games on both mobile and Facebook is slim. So slim that a game like Candy Crush Saga shouldn’t have become the household name that it is. It was its addictive gameplay and non-obtrusive social media philosophy that got people talking and eventually helped it to spread as the new big thing. Everyone is obsessed with "clearing the jelly" and wiping out the sugary obstacles from the game’s 350-plus levels. It wasn't a surprise over at King that the game would do well but they never imagined this level of fandom. "When you see the type of dedicated fan art and appreciation for the game, it reminds you of why you got into the games industry to begin with," Tommy says with a proud grin. "We've been very positively surprised by how big a phenomenon this is. In some countries like Hong Kong, we're really big. One out of seven people there is playing Candy Crush Saga."

It's a known fact that Candy Crush Saga is popular but the level of how widely recognized the title and company is boggles the mind. Who would've thought King had so much going on for so long?

Tommy says: Our corporate headquarters are based in London but the primary development studio is in Stockholm with others in Barcelona, Bucharest, Romania, San Francisco and a couple of other places around the world. We've been around for over 10 years now starting out with online games on king.com. Just in the past two years, we went from not being in any placement category on [Facebook] at all to being one of the top 10 developers in just a few months.

Now we have seven games on Facebook and four of those are in the top 12 which is pretty exciting. Candy Crush Saga is the No. 1 app on all of Facebook, iOS and Android in most major markets around the world. It's also the highest grossing application across the world too. Candy Crush Saga only went on mobile in November of 2012 and we recently celebrated its one-year anniversary of it on Facebook in April. It's a very new game for it to climb that quickly and gain that much interest.

In March, King passed Zynga as the No. 1 games company in regards to popularity with 70 million daily active users. Candy Crush Saga is played more that 500 million times a day on mobile alone. It's played by over 15 million people on Facebook and people saying that it's passed Angry Birds too so the assumption is that Candy Crush Saga is the most popular game in the world right now.

There are so many other puzzle games out in the vast video game wilderness but Candy Crush Saga has an irresistible quality to it reminiscent of Tetris.

Tommy says: Its a combination of many different factors. One being, that it's a true cross-platform game and it's so accessible from mobile devices. You can either play it on the go or if you're in the comfort of your own home and want to play for hours. Also, it's a social game that people can get into. When we look at the fans who post funny pictures on Instagram, we see they're using Candy Crush Saga as a social contest. It's extremely rewarding and I think most of the people who work at King feel the same way since we are fans of games ourselves.

We have a specialized recipe for making games where we can tweak them early on. We made a one-level game back in 2011 called Candy Crush. It was done by a small team of three people and we released it to our website community to get feedback. When we saw it was good, we took it to Facebook as Candy Crush Saga in April of 2012.

From high profile celebrities to the average person at home, Candy Crush Saga has made an impact. The game's fans are truly dedicated and love to show their loyalty.

Tommy says: Ellen Degeneres talked about us on her show, she was showing the game and comparing where the rest of the staff was on different levels. That wasn't paid for by us or anything: it was just spontaneous. You can tell she really liked the game. Now, we're actually seeing people doing manicure tutorials on how to make Candy Crush Saga fingernails, and recipies for making cakes out of Candy Crush Saga-themed game boards. We've also seem Candy Crush themed parties for families and kids and stuff. It's really great to see all of that promote the game without us being involved. There's a big YouTube video now, it's the "official" movie trailer for the game that we had nothing to do with.

Our fanbase is mainly women between 25 to 55 and we test on that target group. What we've seen is that if it works really well for them, then it's a very good base for any casual and social gamer, it's a game the entire family can play together.

From my perspective, anyone can be a gamer. When a game is really accessible and social, people who are discovering games for the first time can easily see the entertainment value it has. If you have a minute somewhere or you have to wait in line, [games] are a good opportunity to have a little bit of fun, and socialize with your friends.

Just as much thought went into creating the theme and characters of the game as creating a social media. Believe it or not, King's focus is not so much on the story but on the gameplay itself. Which most people would care most about anyway.

Tommy says: We want the main story to be told by the players themselves so we try not to overdo story and background just to have it. We'd rather have it as a little something extra instead.

The main character's name is Tiffie and her father is Mr.Toffee. They live in this world of candy where they need to help different creatures with missions in order to pass on to the next episodes.

In the past, we tried a bunch of match-three games but this time we wanted to do something around candy. Everyone likes candy and it has a positive relationship to people. They're colorful, come in different shapes and it fit our concept. Plus, we hadn't seen it done anywhere else. Candy works well internationally so we took candy pieces that we knew were popular in many regions of the world.

It's impossible for a developer to know it their game is going to be a hit or not and it usually takes years of putting out titles before one catches on. It took many failed games to come out before Rovio hit the jackpot with Angry Birds. The same can be said for King. Their win wasn't over night. The company released hundreds of games on its website before dominating the mainstream.

Tommy says: It's very hard to predict; even for experienced people that work in the gaming industry. It's so much about the details and everything coming together. It's like a movie, all the cast members, everything. On paper it looks great but once it comes out, that's when you really know if it's going to work. Currently, we have more than 150 games on King.com and from those, eight or nine made it to Facebook. Now we have three on mobile as well. We're focusing on making cross-platform games you can play across any device, and continue your progression.

When we create games, we only take the core game mechanics that are really popular. That way, we don't surprise the Facebook audience with a game that isn't good. We already know it's good. Even after we put it on Facebook, there is some tweaking when it comes to levels, difficulty, etc.

"I love getting Facebook game spam," said no one ever. While there's a good chance that everyone on Facebook has at some point gotten an invitation to Candy Crush Saga, King has done a great job of keeping the sharing system self-contained.

Tommy says: We've been very careful in working together with Facebook and making sure that the requests that you send to your friends are relevant. It would be something like passing a level that was really tricky or any other gamer's moment that you're really proud of. I think we've found a good balance where we're seeing people play and have their friends pick it up as well.

King has a hit game but the team doesn't plan on resting on its laurels. Most recently, they released Pet Rescue Saga to mobile phones and expect a similar explosion of popularity. Like Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Plants vs. Zombies and other games that took root on Facebook and mobile, home console ports like the Xbox and PS3 would be the next move. Surprisingly, it's not one that King is interested in.

Tommy says: One of the core things about us is that we want to have our games where the most players are. Compared to smartphones, the older style consoles are a much smaller audience so it's not a priority for us. In the future it might be possible for smart TVs and other things fitting for cross-platform games. It's very important for us that the games are easily accessible and takes less than a minute to start playing.

As far as Pet Rescue Saga, Players who love Candy Crush will instantly recognize the the levels and progression of the map, but it's a completely different type of puzzle. In this game, you need to save some very cute pets. We have 12 different types—from small piglets to kittens and puppies who need to be saved from the evil pet snatchers.