'But we're investing most of the teams in King in other IPs and other games.

'There's more stuff to do around Candy,' he confirms. But Knutsson's comment hints at something different: more Candy Crush games. King already has a pipeline of other 'Saga' games coming to mobile, with Pet Rescue Saga and Papa Pear Saga already available, and Farm Heroes Saga on its way. At least, that's the way we like to think of it, and that means we can look at extending the game, considering whether we should do additional games within the same universe,' said Knutsson. While speculation about an IPO for the company has cooled for now, it appears to have more plans in store for its flagship game in 2014. King has already extended Candy Crush Saga in one unorthodox direction in 2013: onto people's feet with a range of branded socks. It's a natural evolution for consoles to try to support that.' It's a level playing field where the best games win out, and users select those winners. But my guess is you're going to see some really big free-to-play games go up on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. 'We've had it in Sweden with the classic gaming press: people who cover PlayStation and Xbox. But the classic console industry has always looked down on it,' said Knutsson. 'Most new mobile developers have embraced free-to-play pretty quickly, and for us coming from Facebook to mobile, part of the experience was always free-to-play. It's controversial in some quarters: tens of millions of people are happily playing Candy Crush Saga, with a significant chunk paying, yet there are some vociferous critics in the traditional gaming community who hate the game and the business model it represents. 'Dreamworld was giving something back to the fans that would appeal to everyone: a nice Christmas gift where they can replace the levels they've always hated and play it in a new form with a gameplay twist.'Ĭandy Crush Saga's rise to the top of the app store charts came as part of a wider trend of free-to-play games that made their money from in-app purchases.

We have millions of users, and some are stuck on early levels that they find really hard, while others are at the end asking for the next episode,' said Knutsson.

'We're trying to do a new release every two weeks or so. Meanwhile, King now attracts 282m monthly unique players across all its games. Candy Crush Saga has grown too: it now has 485 levels, plus a recently-launched 'Dreamworld' mode that enables people to play through them again in a different form. Candy Crush Saga has now been downloaded more than 500m times on mobile devices, and played 150bn times across web, Facebook and mobile.

We disproved that by making a game that hit the top and kept growing.'Įxceeded? Just a bit. 'We exceeded our ambitions by quite a margin! The truth in the industry at that stage was that casual games could never be the top game: you could have a nice hit, but you could never be number one.

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