Ask Candy Crush Saga critics why the game is so popular and makes so much money, and you'll get a range of answers. At the more thoughtful end of the spectrum, they'll admit that the game is very polished and accessible, while pointing to its sophisticated psychological string-tugging to get people hooked, and paying.The more splenetic critics focus in on the latter point, often boiling it down to the suggestion that people who play Candy Crush Saga are stupid, easily-manipulated sheep who wouldn't know a proper game if it bit them on the nose.
I've had this conversation a lot over the last year, often with otherwise-reasonable people who are usually more than capable of accepting that not everyone likes the same games as them. There's something about Candy Crush Saga's success that is rubbing away at a raw nerve for many gamers. Really, though, if you want to find out why Candy Crush Saga is so popular and makes so much money, you should ask the other people: the ones actually playing it. Mums and dads, aunts and uncles. Grandparents, even. Housewives and househusbands. Commuters from office juniors through to CEOs.
Your non-gamer friends, especially. Even if you're not quite as aware of how much they're playing Candy Crush Saga and similar games since you figured out how to turn off their Facebook alerts begging for help. Candy Crush Saga's audience isn't just huge: it's hugely mainstream.
That, to me, is hardcore gaming. It's also a sign of the new audience that games like Candy Crush Saga have created on smartphones and tablets. They're not stupid: they just want to play games that are accessible, very polished, playable in short sessions, and which make their friends a factor without it being real-time multiplayer.
These are the reasons why Candy Crush Saga is so popular, along with some bold marketing tactics that saw King early into Facebook's mobile app ads, while also taking a high-profile punt on TV advertising.
Candy Crush Saga will continue to be a divisive game – and it's a fact that discussion of the game and its publisher online tends to be dominated by the haters – but it's not those people who King will be worrying about following its lucrative IPO.
The key to the company's future will be understanding what its current and future players want from games, including responding quickly if they start to show ennui with candies and Sagas.
King will have a lot of money to throw at that problem, but in the fast-evolving world of mobile social gaming, that won't be the only thing determining the company's future success.
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