so okay we want to talk about candy
crush but not for the reason that you're
probably thinking I mean we had to talk
about candy crush saga sooner or later
it makes over a million dollars a day on
just the app alone it eclipsed farmville
as the most popular Facebook game and
it's almost certainly the most played
game of this year in terms of raw hours
spent yes if you put together all the
hours spent on Call of Duty or League of
Legends I'd wager it still pales in
comparison to the total amount of time
humanity has spent poking away at candy
crush so the thing we actually want to
discuss today is this why is candy crush
so popular after all on the surface it
just looks like another bejeweled clone
so how come it's doing so much better
than PopCap's own bejeweled blitz which
while it does quite well isn't clearing
anything like the astronomical numbers
candy crush has been let's dig into this
well first we have to talk about pacing
in a previous episode we talked about
differences in kind and how they're used
to modulate a players interest curve and
this is something that candy crush does
substantially better than most of its
competitors in bejeweled main play mode
you're fundamentally performing the same
set of actions level after level you're
simply matching things in order to try
to hit a score goal but candy crush
gives you a plethora of goal types from
level to level
that combined with candy crush is
handcrafted stages means the player
experience is something different every
level each new stage is intended to
evoke in the player the thought I wonder
what the next level will be which is
immediately followed by the thought I'll
try it once just to see what they do
which is of course immediately followed
by 30 more minutes playing candy crush
now as a designer when we look at candy
crush it's important to note that the
crafting of the stages is just as
important in delivering the interest
curve as varying up the goals one of the
things that sets candy crush apart from
many of its competitors is that they
freed themselves from only using a
rectangular play space for a bejeweled
type game this in turn meant that they
were able to have actual level design in
this game which is essential to candy
crush because otherwise they'd have to
introduce new gameplay elements too
quickly and it would have resulted in
information overload for their audience
if every time they wanted to modulate
the interest curve they had to either
present the player with new goals or
give them some new mechanic to play with
it would at the very best prevent the
player from ever really getting
comfortable enough with a specific set
of mechanics to truly experience depth
of play and at worst it would just fall
into the incoherent and overwhelming
space that many games do when they toss
new mechanics at you or change up your
goal continuously in a desperate
attempts to keep you interested
so candy crush provides far better
modulation of their interest curve than
most match 3 games because they're aware
that getting
hazelnuts to the bottom of the screen in
the level that's shaped like an inverted
pyramid feels much different than trying
to do the same thing in the level that's
just your standard rectangle but none of
this would work without the random
factor very often you'll see match 3
games include puzzle levels but those
levels always start with all the same
pieces in the same places they're simply
a logic problem for the player to work
through the genius of candy crush is
that they have crafted puzzle like
boards for the player to play on but the
starting set of pieces the player gets
to solve the challenge with is
randomized and this means that when a
player loses instead of getting
frustrated or just deciding that they
don't know how they're supposed to beat
the level and giving up they're much
more likely to just hop right back in
hoping that this time they get a better
draw it also means that every time a
player has to replay a level they're
presented with a new and interesting
problem to solve the player doesn't have
to figure out how the designer wants
them to solve the problem but rather has
to assess the board they've been
provided and figure out how they want to
approach the challenge ahead of them but
all right so candy crush manages a much
better interest curve than most match
three games through judicious use of
play modes coupled with wildly varying
board types but that still doesn't
explain how they monetize so well well
it comes from the fact that candy crush
may be the most exquisitely balanced
free-to-play game I have ever played ask
any candy crush player and they'll tell
you that often they'll end up losing the
game when they're very clearly only one
or two moves away from a win that's
really hard to achieve in a game that
involves this level of randomness of
course the goal of that balanced design
is monetization you see when you lose a
level in candy crush they offer to sell
you a few extra bonus turns and the
while they don't make the numbers
publicly available I'd wager that this
is one of their best selling offers and
this isn't chance either if you look at
the two main gameplay modes in candy
crush it's quite clear that this is part
of the core design of the game in most
match three games the players goal is
simply to achieve a specified score on
any given level not so in candy crush in
candy crush score is secondary the two
main gameplay modes involve either
getting specific pieces to the bottom of
the screen or making matches and
specific squares on the grid you know
what's special about those two types of
mode what ties it into their
monetization so well it's the fact that
it's incredibly easy to see exactly how
close you were to winning when you run
out of turns score is a nebulous thing
it's not easily gras Keable especially
with all sorts of bonuses and modifiers
to factor in plus it's generally not the
thing you're staring at the entire time
when you're playing but with modes like
these it's right there in front of you
and you can't miss it you were so close
to more moves and I want to had it with
victory so tantalizingly near you're way
more likely to
buying those bonus turns there's a lot
that went on in terms of marketing and
corporate strategy to make candy crush
the phenomenon that it is today but
looking at it strictly from a design
sense the game success comes from the
fact that they created a much better
interest curve than most of the
competing match 3 games by abandoning
some of the standard conventions of the
genre and having custom designed levels
with enough randomness to allow players
to want to play them again and again
from there directly integrating their
game design and their monetization
rather than viewing them as two separate
things
took them over the top hopefully that
answers some questions for those of you
pondering candy crush's success and I
really hope it goes to show how valuable
building ways to modulate your interest
curve directly into your systems and
mechanics really is and I also sincerely
hope that by the time this comes out
candy crush has also proven that being a
complete jerk and wielding copyright law
like a club against smaller developers
is a great way to lose your sales
destroy your company's reputation and
prove to the world that you're worth
nowhere near the 7 billion dollars you
value yourself at get to you next week