About
Candy Crush Saga is a variation on a match-three game developed by King in April 2012. By January 2013, it had surpassed FarmVille 2 as the most popular game on Facebook.
History
Prior to Candy Crush, online match-three games were popularized in 2001 with the launch of the browser game Bejeweled[1] by PopCap Games. On April 12th, 2012, casual gaming company King[2] released Candy Crush Saga as on app on Facebook[3] with 65 available levels. In the days following its release, the game was featured on Gamezebo[4], Indie Social Games[5] and Games.com.[6] Within 11 days, the game had become the fastest-growing game on Facebook[7] gaining 1.04 million monthly users that week. By April 30th, Candy Crush Saga was seeing 4.2 million active users.[8]
In May, AllFacebook[13] reported that Candy Crush Saga’s daily active users had doubled, thanks to the game immediately showing a player’s Facebook friends’ faces on the game board and the way the game encourages gifting to one another. That November, King reported 5 million daily players before the game launched on Apple’s mobile operating system[14] that seamlessly integrated with the Facebook app. By January 2013, some mobile phone users reported changing the time on their device in order to get more lives in the game.[15] That month, the game attracted 9.7 million players[16], making it the most popular game on Facebook. As of September 2013, Candy Crush attracts more than 50 million players on Facebook per day[9] and is the top-grossing app in the Apple store for both iPhone and iPad.[10]
Gameplay
Each player begins with maximum number of five lives and must use one to play a level, in which they must swap up to six colors of candies, creating combinations of at least three in a row.. There are five different types of levels, including reaching a certain score, clearing spaces covered in jelly, bringing a special ingredient to the bottom of the board, reaching a certain score within a time limit and crushing a specific amount of colored candies.[11] Additionally, if players combine four or more of the same color candy, they unlock special candies that can further be combined to create new combinations resulting in different effects.[12] As of September 2013, the Facebook app has 470 levels and the mobile app has 410.
Impact
By May 2012, YouTubers began sharing their solutions to certain levels through video, resulting in more than 145,000 search results for “Candy Crush Level”[17] on the site as of September 2013. The game is also a popular topic of discussion on Tumblr[18], Reddit[19], Instagram[20], Buzzfeed[25] and Twitter[21], where “Candy Crush” has been mentioned more than 1.6 million times since its release.[22] In June 2013, the Candy Crush Saga Wiki[23] was created, and has gained more than 580 pages in three months. By July 2013, Candy Crush was bringing in approximately $633,000 per day in revenue.[24]
Search Interest
External References
[2]King – Company History
[3]Facebook – Candy Crush Saga
[4]Gamezebo – Candy Crush Saga Review
[5]Inside Social Games – King.com breaking into match-3 genre with Candy Crush Saga on Facebook
[6]Games.com – King.com goes for social gamers’ sweet tooth with Candy Crush Saga
[7]Inside Social Games – Candy Crush Saga dominates this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU
[8]Inside Social Games – Candy Crush Saga continues hot streak among this week’s fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU
[9]AppData – Candy Crush Saga (Facebook)
[10]AppData – Candy Crush Saga (iOS)
[12]Candy Crush Wiki – Candies
[13]AllFacebook – Facebook Users Sweet On Candy Crush Saga; Daily Active Users Double In May
[14]VentureBeat – With Candy Crush Saga launching on mobile, King.com says ad revenue has grown 10X in past year
[15]Kotaku – Infinite Lives in Candy Crush Saga Isn’t Cheating, It’s Time Travel
[16]Venture Beat – King.com’s Candy Crush Saga beats Zynga with top social-mobile game
[17]YouTube – Search Results for “candy crush level”
[18]Tumblr – Posts Tagged “candy crush”
[19]Reddit – Search Results for “candy crush”
[20]Statigram – Photos Tagged #candycrush
[21]Twitter – Tweet Results for “candy crush”
[22]Topsy – Tweet Statistics for “candy crush”
[24]Business Insider – Insanely Popular Game Candy Crush Saga Is Bringing In An Estimated $633,000 A Day
[25]Buzzfeed – Search Results for “candy crush”