THE man behind megahit game Candy Crush thought the game would be dead within six months of its launch in 2012.
Sebastian Knutsson, one of King’s co-founders and original designer of Candy Crush, admits that success was down to luck.
Talking to The Sun seven years on as staff were putting the finishing touches on the festivities to mark the release of the game’s 5,000th level Knutsson revealed he initially thought the game would be played for a matter of weeks before players moved onto the next thing.
“When we launched it, we thought that six months later it was going to be dead and we’d have to come up with the next idea,” he confessed.
“To be honest, we had great timing when we came out,” he admits.
When it launched on Facebook no-one thought much of puzzle games, big-budget console games were seen as “the big games” and “casual games were something you didn’t really talk about,” he says.
“Being part of that zeitgeist and making that happen has given it a permanence in people’s minds,” he explains.
According to Knutsson, the magic that has driven the game’s success comes from “that blend of fun and frustration where you feel really good about beating something.
CANDY CRUSH is a variant on a 'match three' puzzle game.
Match-three games are the most popular type of video game in the world, and have a really simple premise.
You start with a board of coloured tiles, and you can swap any tile with its neighbour.
If that swap gives you a line of three or more of the same tile, those tiles vanish and, most of the time, more tiles drop in randomly from the top.
What happens next varies by level and by game – as does the end goal.
In Candy Crush, the ’tiles’ are coloured sweets, and each level has its own goal.
You’ll get bonuses for clearing more tiles in one go, or matching more than three with one swipe.
It gets more complicated as time goes on with more things blocking your swipes and more ways to clear those blockers, but the core gameplay never changes.
Designed well, as Candy Crush is, and they are the very definition of ‘easy to learn and difficult to master’.
Most of these games are free to play – but make the money to pay the developers by giving players the option to buy tools, like extra lives, that will make the game easier.
Knutsson, after getting a degree in finance from the Stockholm School of Economics, founded King in 2003 with five others, including the son of notorious businessman Tiny Rowland.
Nine years later, they released Candy Crush on Facebook, a game Knuttson himself had designed – and within two years the nerdy Swede was worth over £200 million.
Candy Crush Saga, as the original game is known whether you’re playing it on Facebook or on your mobile, is still raking in over £60m a month, and being downloaded by a million new players every few weeks.
While the “vast majority” of players never pay a penny, some spend hundreds on the game, with one last year dropping £2,000 in a single day.
It is possible to spend over £90 in one transaction in Candy Crush, this is good value because it represents a “volume discount” on something that will last players a long time, according to Knutsson.
“In a lot of games with expensive products you might buy a gun or a car, that you use instantly. In our case you buy ‘boosters’, but to use them you have to play for a long time to actually use up.”
“There’s a difference between buying a cool bragging outfit in Fortnite where you can buy as many as you want – in our case you’re going to have a full account and it’ll be a long time before it’s time to buy again.”
Put together, the mobile app experts at Sensor Tower reckon King trousered over £1 billion last year from the four games in the Candy Crush franchise, taking the game’s total earnings to around £3 billion.
The company went public in 2014, with the company worth £5.6 billion – making Knuttson’s shares worth over £300 million.
He is now the company’s Chief Creative Officer, overseeing all their games.
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