AD

The Story of the Swedish Game Candy Crush

If we were to go back three decades, the early gaming scene in the 70’s and 80’s was run by three main big shots - the UK, the US and Japan. These countries ruled the roost in terms of what games were developed and sent to the market. During this time the Swedish game front was relatively quiet.

That was until the demo scene emerged.

During the early 90s, a subculture emerged in Sweden and a few other European countries by which the government subsidised the cost of home computer systems through local businesses. This scheme made it easier for employees to afford their own piece of technology for personal use. This opened up the floodgates to a booming industry of creatives who began to learn how to code, as well as developing various other creative computer skills. This event put Sweden on the map for a lot of technological developments and games.

The most famous game from Sweden is by far Minecraft – a game that is enjoyed by 140 million people across the globe. Other popular games from Sweden include Unravel, which has the advantage of allowing the player to explore Sweden within the game. And another game success is The Battlefield Series, which is a series of battle games set in both modern eras and during the World Wars. The open beta version of the most recent Battlefield 1 alone had 13.2 million players, which is the highest number of players EA has ever recorded for a beta version.

With Sweden’s technological developments, it is no surprise that NetEnt is one of leading providers in the iGaming industry. The Swedish company won an award in 2019 for being the slot supplier of the year, and so it is no surprise that NetEnt has become a household name for online gambling. Clearly, Sweden is not only great at developing games, but they are also great at providing content for what they call spelautomater (slot machines).

Another result of Sweden’s technological success is the game Candy Crush. Below, we'll take a look at the story behind Candy Crush and evaluate where the success it receives today has come from.

The origins of Candy Crush

The creative geniuses behind Candy Crush are King, a company who were founded in 2003. King is a video gaming development company that specialise in social games that utilise the freemium model. The founder behind the story is Riccardo Zacconi, an Italian businessman who had previously founded the world’s second largest dating company; today we know this company as match.com.

King originally began developing games for a web portal, as well as Yahoo and although it took some financial backing and some ups and downs along the way, today the company is a booming success with over 2,000 employees.

Fast forward to 2012 and the King Entertainment company was turning over a great deal of profits at this time. They had developed a particularly successful social gaming strategy and had the second largest player count around, with over 30 million users. Their success was comparable to Facebook who were the only company at the time to have more users on a social platform.

How does Candy Crush work?

To play Candy Crush Saga, players need to first download the app from the app store. For those that feel like the game graphics look familiar, King is also behind leading games like ‘Crash on the Run’, ‘Diamond Diaries’ and ‘Bubble Witch 3 Saga’.

Playing the game is easy. All players have to do is clear as many rows or columns of fruit as they can. You can clear up lines of fruit by lining up three matching symbols in a row. In order to get the symbols to match up, you must tap the fruit to make it switch places with a neighbouring fruit.

The objective of the game is to clear as much fruit as you can in the minimum time. For each row you clear, you will receive a specific amount of points. As you proceed through the game, each level will get harder and you’ll have less and less time to reach a certain level of points.

Things to note:

• You only have a certain number of moves for each level
• There is a progress bar in the top corner of the screen to let you know how you’re doing
• There’s a target number in the top right corner of the screen which indicates how many rows you should aim to clear within the time frame given

The success of the Candy Crush

At its time of release in 2012, Candy Crush ranked as the number three game on the entire app store. Google and Apple had also listed Candy Crush as one of their top recommendations too. During the month, King Entertainment registered as the top revenue creator for both Apple and Google Play stores.

For comparison, King had a total of three games in the app store, while Electronic Arts had over 800 in the Apple store and 121 in the Google Play store. In addition, Angry Birds maker had 30 apps on the Android app store. These relative comparisons show just how successful Candy Crush was.

Overall, while Candy Crush appears to be a simple game, the ingenuity behind it and the seamless user experience mean that it has become a timeless game that is still being downloaded and played, almost ten years after its initial release.