King’s Todd Green on how the Candy Crush Saga has remained on top for 12 years

• Candy Crush Saga is one of the most downloaded casual mobile games, fuelling over 200 million monthly active players globally across King’s game portfolio
• The game itself now offers over 17,000 levels

After over a decade of Candy Crush Saga, perhaps the puzzle game by which all others are measured, remains King’s flagship title and one of the most successful mobile games of all time. The game receives frequent updates, and now offers over 17,000 levels available to players.

Now, there are even more ways to play, as King recently released Candy Crush Saga on alternative app stores.

In a new interview, Candy Crush franchise general manager Todd Green discusses what has kept Candy Crush Saga a viable success for so many years, from its LiveOps strategy to the All Stars tournament. We also discuss other games in the franchise and what to expect next from the team at King.

PocketGamer.biz: How did you first get into games?

Todd Green: Growing up, I played a lot of video games with my brothers, so I had a passion for games from an early age, especially games like GoldenEye and Diddy Kong Racing. I worked in TV and radio before joining King and I’ve been here for nearly 12 years, most recently as the GM for the Candy Crush Franchise - time really flies!

King knows mobile games like no other, and I’ve been proud to see the company and its games grow and thrive during my time here. I’m very excited about all we have planned for the future.

What can you tell us about Candy Crush's evolution? How can you explain the game's long life so far?

It’s incredible to see the game's evolution, from its early days on Facebook to becoming one of the most iconic, widely played mobile games.

Candy Crush Saga now boasts more than 17k levels and more than five billion downloads. A decade ago, the success of games was typically short lived - but fast forward 12 years and Candy Crush Saga is still thriving, while Candy Crush Soda Saga is also turning ten this year.

The franchise’s continued success and longevity is really unusual, but a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep gameplay fresh and engaging, attracting new players while still retaining current ones.

For example, the Candy Crush Franchise is so much more than just a match-3 game now; it’s really growing into an entertainment platform. Our hard-working teams are finding new ways to excite and delight our players on a daily basis. 

And how do you ensure that the game remains a viable success after so long? What measures do you take to retain players and still attract new ones after all this time?

We have over 200 million monthly active players globally across King’s games portfolio and a really diverse player base - from the commuter playing a few levels on the way to work to the busy parent with a few minutes to spare. We really want to make sure we’re appealing to all of our audiences and keeping the game engaging for everyone, but of course, we want to continually attract new players, too. 

With this in mind, there’s a lot of care and craft that goes into our games to keep them thriving. This, of course, starts with the game development itself. We’re constantly innovating to develop creative, new, and exciting levels for players, but we also ensure that our existing levels are optimised so that new players can enjoy the best possible experience.

This involves constantly honing and improving existing levels based on player feedback so they deliver the right balance of challenge and reward, keeping gameplay as satisfying as possible. 

Our games are always live, meaning that we get immediate and frequent player feedback, which is invaluable in understanding what works and doesn’t work for our players so we can then adjust accordingly.

AI is also becoming a valuable asset for our game developers. It assists in level testing by enabling our testers to play and evaluate multiple levels simultaneously. This enables developers to receive valuable insights, helping them speed up the process of making gameplay more creative, responsive, and adaptive.

In addition, we’ve also worked hard to evolve Candy Crush Saga beyond core gameplay and develop our mobile games into an entertainment platform. Our partnerships are great examples of this and range from launching the Jonas brother's new single to collaborating with Barbie to celebrate its film premiere last year, including exclusive in-game content and surprises for our players.

We also recently hosted our annual Candy Crush All Stars tournament, which had a record-breaking $1 million prize pool and a live showdown finale in Los Angeles. We try hard to make sure that there is never a dull day in the world of Candy Crush!

What about the other games in the Candy Crush world? Is there anything you can tell us about those and the overall strategy for expanding the franchise?

As always, we are applying a 'test and learn' approach and will refine and retest our games based on the feedback and data collected.

Our aim is to continuously improve our games so that we can deliver great content and experiences over and over again. We can do that through live games as well as new games. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to share more with you in the coming months. 

Could we see another match-3 Candy Crush game? Or something in other genres, or something mid-core? 

We’re very fortunate to have a true phenomenon IP in Candy Crush Saga. Our match-3 games are the cornerstone of the company, and I’m sure we will find lots of ways to excite and delight players for many years to come through match-3. But we’re always testing and innovating fresh concepts that we hope they will also enjoy.

And is there potential for introducing new IP? Is that something the team are planning?

That idea is always exciting, but we can’t do everything at once, and we still have millions of players who love our other IPs too, like Farm Heroes Saga, our Bubble Witch Saga games and Pet Rescue Saga. We’ll continue to try to strike a balance based on what players tell us they want.

What does the Candy Crush Saga LiveOps pipeline look like? How do you target what users want and then implement that? 

The entire game is in live operations mode - every day, we try to better understand what players want and then change, edit, or add to the experience to serve them even better. Aside from the very basics - it’s a match-3 game with a series of levels and a Candy theme - we intend to keep improving every element of the game over time. 

We rarely preview what’s coming up in the game because we think that the moment of discovery when you open the game and find something new is a rare and beautiful thing. It shows the player that there is someone on the other end of the phone who cares about them and their experience with the game. But any players reading this can rest assured that we have a whole bunch of new and novel ideas in store for them that we hope they will really love.

One of the most visible new experiences that we have introduced lately is the Candy Crush All Stars tournament. The 2024 edition was fantastic, with an epic final in LA that was hosted by Brie Garcia, who is a WWE Hall of Famer - a true competitor.

The winner took home a life-changing $500,000, our biggest prize to date. And we were thrilled that over 15 million players competed through multiple rounds - completing 2.2 billion levels and collecting no fewer than 11.4 trillion candies!

With current market challenges, such as rising development costs and tougher UA, how does King aim to stay ahead of the game? And how are things looking as we head toward 2025?

We’re always focused on the player and aim to deliver experiences that we know will resonate and help us realise our mission - making the world playful. The broader environment is challenging, but challenges create opportunities. 

We try to keep it simple by focusing on our strengths, such as innovative design, a deep understanding of our player base, and a commitment to quality that has become synonymous with the Candy Crush brand.

That means a wide range of people working closely together across the company - the game teams, marketing, central technology, and everyone else.

We’ll continue to concentrate on the players above all else, and everyone at King is focused on understanding how to better serve them with great content and experiences.