Despite being over a decade old, King’s Candy Crush Saga remains one of the biggest and most well-known games on the market. Part of the titke's key to success is its dedicated stream of new experiences and content for players.

Now in its fourth year, the Candy Crush All Stars tournament begins today. It offers a huge prize pot of $1 million and is set to be the largest casual mobile gaming tournament to date.

PocketGamer.biz got the chance to speak with Luken Aragon, King’s VP of marketing for Candy Crush Saga, to discuss the return of the competition.

Aragon shares how player feedback was the original catalyst for the tournament's creation, how its popularity helps ensure brand longevity, and what makes the 2024 edition the biggest yet.

PocketGamer.biz: The Candy Crush All Stars tournament is back for 2024 - how do you feel about the fourth edition? Can we expect it to be even bigger this year, and are there any changes this time around?

Luken Aragon: I’m hugely excited about the 2024 Candy Crush All Stars tournament, and I can definitely confirm it’s bigger and better than ever before.

In fact, it's set to be the world's largest casual mobile gaming tournament in history. We have an incredible prize pot of $1 million, which is the biggest prize pot to date for our Candy Crush All Stars tournament.

We’re working with sporting legend turned actor John Cena to create great content that elevates the drama of Candy Crush All Stars.

We’ve also developed a custom AR-branded effect that will enable TikTokers to create their own ‘Candified’ video content. We’re even going one step further by bringing this content to life on digital billboards in iconic locations such as Times Square in New York.

Also, for the first time ever, King and Warner Bros Discovery are partnering to broadcast the ultimate game highlights show.

So, it’s safe to say that there’s lots going on, and this year’s Candy Crush All Stars will be truly unmissable.

What do events such as this do for the overall Candy Crush and King brand? And how much of a role do you think they play in keeping old players engaged and attracting new ones?

We’re constantly looking for ways to keep our existing players engaged while seeking new ways to surprise and delight players and expand our audience. The Candy Crush All Stars tournament has been hugely successful and impactful in both these regards and continues to go from strength to strength.

In addition, Candy Crush All Stars has been designed in such a way that we want to welcome more players to Candy Crush, and we think this is a great starting point for any new player.

Going beyond core gameplay and introducing experiences like Candy Crush All Stars has been really important in maintaining Candy Crush Saga’s success and relevance.

We know lots of our players love competition and they love coming together to go head to head; the tournament fosters a real feeling of community.

Its popularity with players can be clearly seen in the results. Last year’s Candy Crush All Stars tournament saw more than 18 million players get involved, with over 300 billion candies collected. We’re hoping the 2024 tournament will exceed that, and we believe we have everything in place to help us achieve this.

I personally believe that immersive player experiences, such as Candy Crush All Stars, are instrumental in bringing our community together and are a part of the reason why, almost 12 years on from its launch, Candy Crush Saga is still one of the most popular and recognised games in the world.

What goes into making the All Stars tournament happen? How do you ensure it’s a hit with players, other than, of course, the promised potential of winning the prize at the end?

There’s a huge amount that goes into making the Candy Crush All Stars tournament happen, but the secret to its success is listening to our players.

Each time we’ve brought Candy Crush All Stars to our players, we’ve worked hard to improve the mechanics by adding new and surprising elements that we believe current and future players will enjoy.

We first launched Candy Crush All Stars in response to player feedback, which indicated a desire for more competition. Now, after several years, we can build on what we learned from previous tournaments, doing more of what players like and less of the things that don’t resonate.

The other key element to making the tournament a hit with players is to ensure the experience and content we deliver is authentic and cohesive to the quality of the core Candy Crush Saga game. With this in mind, the marketing team works closely and collaboratively with the product teams and games studio to make the tournament as fun and integrated as possible.

We imagine and solve problems together to create powerful experiences that we know our players are going to enjoy. We hope this will be felt by our players who get involved with Candy Crush All Stars this year.

You mentioned that players' feedback helps shape the game's content. How do you listen to this feedback and then implement it in a way that best fits the game? 

As I mentioned, we launched Candy Crush All Stars because we knew that our players wanted more competition. We really are player-centric at King, everything we do is with our players in mind.

The benefit of working on a live franchise is that we get more immediate and frequent player feedback. This data is invaluable for understanding what works and what doesn’t work; we can adapt and plan accordingly.

Candy Crush Saga is a live game, and so is this tournament, so we’re always testing and learning to ensure that our players' experience is truly the best we can deliver.

When we look at the purpose we set out to deliver with Candy Crush All Stars, it was designed to bring our community together and have fun in a competitive but accessible environment.

Currently, we know that tournaments are popular with our players. They love the excitement of going head to head, the sense of occasion, and the immersive nature of the event, which is why we’ve dialled up these elements for 2024.

And what about the future? What is the vision for this event and the continued Candy Crush legacy?

Looking to the future, we’ll continue to put our players at the heart of everything we do at King. So, if our players want more Candy Crush All Stars, we’ll always do our best to deliver. We will continue to find new ways to surprise and deliver unexpected and fun experiences, with a player-first approach.

Our main focus will be on growing our live games and harnessing our technology, using player feedback to deliver the most engaging and enjoyable experiences possible. This is all in line with our ongoing mission: Making the world playful.

Finally, is there anything else we should know about the event or about Candy Crush in general?

The Candy Crush All Stars competition kicks off on Thursday, March 28th, and you can play anytime and anywhere you want.

All players will have the chance to compete in the qualifiers until April 5th, which will be followed by multiple knockout stages with a series of leaderboard challenges set to decide the 10 finalists.

And in line with the epic prize, there will also be an epic live final. After the month-long tournament, 10 players will be invited to battle it out in Los Angeles, to claim a share of the $1 million prize pot and be crowned the 2024 Candy Crush All Stars Champion.

It will be life changing and I can’t wait to find out who wins!