20130713 case study of candy crash saga
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Speech for Taiwan Game App Developers' Club on July 20th, 2013
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20130713 case study of candy crash saga
- 1. Case Study of <Candy Crash Saga> What We Taiwan App Developers Can Learn Christina Hsu
- 2. Agenda Basic Data of <Candy Crash Saga> Post Mortem of <Candy Crash Saga> Best Practices for Creating and Distributing Games Cross Platform Breaking the Success Formula of <Candy Crash Saga> What We Taiwan App Developers Can Learn Q&A
- 3. Basic Data of <Candy Crash Saga>
- 4. History Release: Facebook : April 2012 Mobile (iOS & Android) : November 2012 Records: Over 10 million downloads in 1st month Number 1 game on Facebook (January 2013) 10+ million DAU, 45+ million MAU (March 2013) The highest-grossing app in the Apple and Google app stores (April 2013)
- 5. Developer / Publisher About King.com Welcome to King.com, the largest skill gaming site in the world, where you can play free games online in competitive tournaments in categories such as puzzle, strategy, word, action, card and sports games. King.com was founded in 2003 with the goal of becoming the premiere destination for skill gaming on the internet. We currently have more than 150 addicting games in our portfolio and we are constantly developing new and exciting on line games.
- 6. Levels Total Levels FB: 425 Mobile: 365 New levels to be announced in July 2013
- 7. Post Mortem of of <Candy Crash Saga> Game Developer Conference, March 2013
- 8. Session &. Speaker Session Candy Crush Saga Postmortem: Luck in the Right Places 25-minute session of <Free to Play Design & Business Summit> Speaker Tommy Palm Games Guru, King.com 20 + years experience
- 9. The Formula of Success ?
- 10. Chances
- 11. Before Candy <Diamond Digger> Pre-Candy in 2011
- 12. Game Play of Pre-Candy Basic & Combo
- 13. #1 Game on Facebook
- 14. The Formula of Success = A*
- 15. Accessibility <2005 vs. 2013> 1st time gamers
- 16. More Accessibilities 75% of those who completed all levels do not pay Short sessions for you to play and kill time
- 17. The Formula of Success = A*N
- 18. Never Ending <lots of levels> A very long game
- 19. More Never Ending Against your ideas of casual games, it’s difficult!
- 20. The Formula of Success = A*N*C The index shows how social it is
- 21. Campfire Index The Aisle Effect
- 22. The True Definition of Social is Hashtag on Instagram
- 23. Qiotes from the team
- 24. Next Challenge
- 25. The Formula of Success !
- 26. Best Practices for Creating and Distributing Games Cross Platform Casual Connect Europe, February 2013
- 28. 10 M 20 M 2011 Now Daily active users (FB)
- 31. 3 platforms are shaping the future
- 32. 1. Facebook
- 34. 3. Tablets
- 36. Play everywhere Game State -Progress Game State -Progress ?
- 37. Game creation Hit driven Risk elimination
- 39. On Facebook: the ‘Saga' “Saga Framework”Proven Game
- 40. FB connected users are MUCH more valuable * Retention * Engagement * Likelihood to pay
- 41. My five cents 1. Small multi talented teams working agile 2. Rapid prototyping/testing 3. No tutorials 4. Respect data 5. Intuitive game controls
- 42. Intuitive Controls YouTube: Bullfrog playing Ant Smasher Mouse Touch Screen Joypad
- 44. PRPR Word of mouthWord of mouth Feature by AppleFeature by AppleFacebook trafficFacebook traffic AdsAds Cross promotionCross promotion
- 45. PC: Facebook App discovery mainly viral (AppData 2012) 43% 19% 18% 10% 6% 4% Friend Invite Advertisement Don’t Remember Word of Mouth Newsfeed Other 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Column1
- 46. Mobile: App discovery driven by App Stores (Nielsen Q3 2011)
- 47. Over 50% of smart phone users are connected to Facebook More than 500m of Facebook’s monthly users use mobile
- 48. Facebook enables cross- platform viral user acquisition Desktop to mobile Mobile to app / app store App to desktop
- 49. Facebook enables discoverability both on canvas and mobile Notifications News feed and Timeline Bookmark Ads
- 50. Social Light social layer Facebook is great tool for game developers 50
- 53. Recap Casual Games Cross platform Truly Social These games will be the dominating brand creator of this decade!
- 55. Breaking the Success Formula of <Candy Crash Saga>
- 56. King made Candy Crush Viral -Candy Crush merges virality with mobile -It lets you see the progress of your friends.
- 57. Goal-oriented play encourages player retention It keeps players hooked through its goal-oriented level structure. -Its level system gives players solid attainable goals -Taking the old match-three formula and adding enough twists (such as unique tile grids, level goals, etc.) -Big-fish-little-pond effect
- 58. Organic & Endless Monetization -Candy Crush’s virality and compelling goal-oriented gameplay make it built for monetization. Its players are too busy trying to outdo their friends and/or finish every level. So to them, throwing down a few dollars here or there isn’t that big of a deal. This is organic monetization and it works. -King.com has created a win-win situation: either players boost King’s profits by spending 99 cents to replenish their spent credits, or they drive Candy Crush’s customer engagement and retention metrics by requesting lives from their Facebook friends while waiting for a refill.
- 59. Candy Crush syncs across platforms Christopher Foley: -a data analyst and game analytics expert at Kontagent -founded two video game companies and was a lead programmer at Sony Computer Entertainment America -a Caltech engineering and applied science graduate and holds a master’s degree in complex adaptive systems and an MBA. -Contact him at Linkedin.com/foleyfoleyfoley.
- 60. What We Taiwan App Developers Can Learn
- 61. Easy to Pick-up IF YOU NEED A TUTORIAL TO EXPLAIN YOUR GAME, THEN PERHAPS IT’S NOT REALLY CASUAL AND ACCESSIBLE TO THE MASS MARKET.
- 63. Jump Out from Comfort Zone THIS BUSINESS IS ALL ABOUT RESHAPING AND CHALLENGING THE WAYS WE WORK. NO ONE CAN AFFORD TO STAY IN THEIR COMFORT ZONE FOR LONG.
- 65. As More Platforms as Possible
- 66. Paradigm Shift in Taiwan
- 67. Thank You
- 68. Q &. A Find Me at: www.facebook.com/christina.hsu.37 ( 徐志瀟 ) (Christina Hsu) Chris_9801 Chris_9801 ( 貓奴 Chris 鍋貼 ) Christina Hsu
Editor's Notes
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.
- Even though we have been around for a decade it was not untill the start of 2011 when we started making games for FB This is a graph on the number of Daily Active Users on Facebook according to AppData. During this period we have launched 7 games on facebook. The next important milestone is when CCS launched for mobile device. You can really see the impact on the slant of the curve.
- In fact CCS has become so popular that it is now #1 on FB. We celebrated that recently with this infographics. It states trivia like that the game has been played more than 100 K years when adding together the playsessions Or that more then 1 trillion candies have been crushed in the game since launch. But it also reveals one important thing that is a key to the success 69 % of the gamers are women. Not only is that rare but it is also important from a social perspective. I will come back to that.
- We also revealed that the game was downloaded 10 M times in December the month after the launch. We are now recruiting heavily to continuing to meet the demand from our fans. [The king model]
- But first of all I want to Touch on three platforms that are changing the foundation for player out there
- It has never been as simple to play with your friends Facebook games are reaching a large population of first time gamers The game are FREE The 2:nd platform…
- Is the smartphones… Steve Jobs never sat out to change games. He was never very much into game from what I understand. But the Smart phone revolution that he started with the iPhone certainly changed the landscape of gaming forever. I had been working with mobile games for almost ten years when this happened. There was no working mobile games market before this. One big factor of this change was the accessibility of the multi touch screen. The simplicity and the innovation in user interface. That is important for my talk. The third…
- Is tablets. In many aspects similar to smartphones but also very different. This device can be dedicated for gaming in a whole different manner. As a game developer it is important to respect this as a separate platform from smartphone. Especially because the usage pattern is different.
- The growth for Smartphones and tablets are spectacular. This curve show the number of devices sold. The Red curve is PC, then blue is smartphones. And the yellow curve is tablets. It clearly shows the enormous potential of cross platform games. If you game runs seamlessly on all these devices you have a lot of potential ahead of you.
- Casual Games fits the profile! The same game / accessable on multiple devices. This is what I am referring to when I am talking about cross platform today. Here is a exampel of Seamless play that I will be using as a case study today. BWS.
- Why is creating games so fascinating? It is the ultimate manifestation of civilization Understanding how the brain works The job is a result of total integration of design, music, graphics, programming Team work & planning Small teams part of Kings success Game are an extremely hit driven business where it is important from a business perspective to eliminate risk.
- At King.com we have an way of removing the guess work: 150 catalogue + 15 new skill games/year on king.com 12 weeks/3devs, sub $100k investment per game 11m unique testing ground surfaces best gameplay winners wrapped into proven “envelopes” for fb/mobile
- winners wrapped into proven “envelopes” for fb/mobile
- That is not strange. It is just a lot more fun and meaningful to play together with your friends. So even if we allow people to play offline completely, we try to encourage players to connect and play with others.
- If I was to select my 5 most important aspects of making great games it
- One of the most difficult aspects of cross platform is changing input device. One general thing that can be said is that; the simpler the control the more easier the adaptation to new platforms Direct control is a super intuitive way of controlling a game. No layer of abstraction! If the controls are simple (like one button etc.) taking the game to another platform with another input method is much easier.
- This is one of the greatest differentiators: So how do you get people to find your game among the thousands of games out there? This is almost the holy grail in the digital marketplace. One of the most important resources a game company has is the active user base, the network of players in your games. They can be used to drive the new releases to the Famous top list.
- This is the top free list for iPhone. You app does not end up here by coincident. It take somewhere around 150 K download per day to get to the Top Free list. The extra downloads you get by being there makes it worth trying to make it there. As with any marketing a broad approach is better. You want to use all channels at once as being on the top list gives a lot of extra downloads. I will talk mostly about Facebook as that comes natural to King
- Facebook app discovery is mainly driven by the notification system in Facebook
- But on mobile the most important channel is the App Stores. Here it is not either possible to buy visibility.
- The FB client on mobile is huge. It is a great tool for mobile App discovery.
- FB enables cross-platform viral user acqusition. Say that your friend is playing a x-platform game on the pc/mac. They send some coins to you. When you log to FB at your mobile device and check your notifications you see… If you do not have the app -> App Store. Othervise straight to the App. (This works the other way around as well)
- 1. Facebook enables discoverability both on canvas and mobile. This is a extremely valuable source for user acquisition.
- It helps you identify who of your friends that is playing
- The true definition of social is when people are actual doing something together. And that is the greatest potential with cross platfrom games. To remove all obstacles so that anybody who wants to can join. If three people at the table all talk about a TV-Series and you have not seen it you are much more likely to see it of course.
- Fans The fact that the game works great for women is a key to make it accessible for the entire family. Many guys that have tried to introduce games to their girlfriend or mother finally have a game that they can play together. This type of user generated marketing is the “priceless”
- Conclusion: Casual games has a brilliant future ahead. Accessibility is a key to make games into phenomenon’s Social - Truly Social is when families can talk about the game during the dinner table These games will be the dominate brand creator of this decade
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.
- My talk today is about creating and distributing games to that spans multiple chanels. Such as PC, Tables and smartphones. I will uses both BWS and CCS as examples. This picture here is a example of a marketing picture that we took for our Facebook fan page. I personaly directed these two models here playing the game. And I used to think that making games was difficult.