“I knew a person who went out and bought a new iPad and then spent $100 dollars the first day on Candy Crush,” says Ritchie, “because if he couldn’t get past the level after 2 or 3 tries, he would just pay to get past it.” It’s a huge, casino style business for them.”Īnd just like casinos, the so-called “free-mium model” is built around whales: People who shell out hundreds of dollars in a weekend on their ‘ free’ game of choice. “They employ psychologists the way casinos do,” says Rene Ritchie, editor in chief of iMore. “They do a lot of testing to see when users stop playing so they can optimize the game to make it a little easier to keep them on the game longer. Using our impatience or addiction to squeeze money out of us is nothing new. “Impatience is one of the game mechanics that the game developers will jump on,” says Blau. You can play Candy Crush five times and then you have to wait half an hour to play again… unless you pay $0.99. Pain points are things like not being able to get to level 36, or having to wait. “T here’s lots of different types of game mechanics that cause different pain points.” I think that’s the point,” says Brian Blau, an analyst with Forrester Research. I held out for six weeks, playing level 35 over and over again until I cracked. Then, Candy Crush said I had to pay to get to level 36. For a couple months, I advanced from one level to the next… until I conquered level 35. I started playing Candy Crush last summer. King Digital brought in more than half a billion dollars last year, $0.99 at a time. The game is free to download and to play, but it turns out, Candy Crush is a pretty sweet product. The company makes the highly popular (and highly addictive) smartphone game, “Candy Crush Saga.”

King Digital Entertainment announced it was going public today.

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