When it first launched a year ago, it was too
easy to overlook Candy Crush Saga. This free Match 3 game looked like Bejeweled
with a Candyland makeover, but after a year of topping the App Store charts, we
couldn’t ignore Candy Crush any longer. Here’s our long-overdue analysis of how
Candy Crush has crushed the competition to become one of iOS’s biggest
moneymakers.
The secret of Candy Crush’s appeal is in its
novel monetization system, which rewards patience by giving players an extra
life every half an hour, up to five total. This allows players to start playing
the game for free, trip up on challenging levels, and then either wait to
resume playing, or pay to continue. You can also send out requests for extra
lives to your Facebook friends, which allows the game to spread virally across
social media.
While these arbitrary time limits are designed
to disrupt your game, they also offer an extremely fair deal for players. Candy
Crush gets millions of users actively checking in on their app throughout the
day, and players get over 400 levels for free, if they’ve got the skills and
patience to power through them all. This is how Candy Crush has built an empire
that, according to one jealous app developer who we spoke to, earns King.com
over a million dollars a day.
Candy Crush also contains unique social
experiences that make it feel more personalized. As you progress through the
levels, you’ll be able to view the progress of your friends who have signed in
through Facebook. In addition to their placement on the map, you can see their
high scores, giving you an extra incentive to replay levels.
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