Facebook breaks down just how Candy Crush Saga blew up

For those that follow the scene, King.com came out of nowhere earlier this year to challenge (and defeat most of) the greats on Facebook. Taking its own casual games and applying a social layer to them, the European social game maker soared to second place, just behind Zynga. The change of hands interested Facebook so much as to put one of the companies more recent releases, Candy Crush Saga, under the magnifying glass.

According to Facebook, Candy Crush Saga grew 100 percent in May to more than 2.7 million daily players. (Today, the game boasts 3.4 million daily players, and it's growing.) That translates to the match-three wonder having driven 800 million game plays to date. That's all well and good, but how does Candy Crush Saga do it? That's what Facebook is interested in.

Basically, it boils down to the fact that this version of Candy Crush, much like all of King.com's games on Facebook, brings friends into the game in a way that's more enticing than a bar at the bottom of the screen. Fostering competition by making progression on the leaderboards a personal matter certainly helps, too. As for the gifting bit that Facebook mentions in its analysis, I don't know about you, but pandering to gifts is the last thing to get me back into a game.

If anything, what Candy Crush Saga does right, according to Facebook, is indicative of a sea change in social gaming. What we're seeing is a move away from the simulator games of old to more action-oriented, perhaps even cerebral games. Games like these seem to stick better these days, so expect to see way more where Candy Crush came from than, say, FarmVille.

Are you digging Candy Crush Saga? Are you tired of simulator-style social games? Sound off in the comments. Add Comment.