Candy Crush Soda Saga will be ten years old in November, and is by any measure a hugely successful game. Yet it occupies a slightly unusual space in the mobile ecosystem.
Even as Soda Saga approaches its tenth anniversary, it is still rather overshadowed by Candy Crush Saga – and while Soda rarely grabs the headlines, it still pulls in numbers that’d easily make it a flagship title for most mobile game companies: Appmagic estimates suggest that while IAP earnings are broadly declining a little, King still makes around $17-20m per month from the game, with around 3m installs per month.
Soda Saga launched in November 2014, a very different time for the mobile business. King was operating more of a franchise model and releasing many more games than it does now, as Candy Crush Soda Saga vice president of product Paula Ingvar explains. “Soda was complimentary, yet slightly different, so Candy and Soda managed to attract a set of dual players that stayed loyal with both games.”
“We learned very quickly that there is room for more…it was not like launches in the past where there’s a new game and no-one plays the older version…” Ingvar continues. “That was not the case for us, and we actually continued on that franchise model – we launched a few other games like Jelly and Friends.”
Running a game like Soda alongside a giant like Candy presents a dilemma – how do you make the game different, but without diverging from what is clearly a winning formula? “It is a great question and one that we grapple with in terms of the strategy for the franchise,” says Ingvar. “It doesn’t have a trivial answer because both games are global and you know, honestly, outside of the King bubble, the games are more alike than not.”
“I think we tend to see the differences and sometimes focus on what makes the titles different. Whereas to the player, it’s almost like it doesn’t have to matter to them.”
Ingvar says that of the two, Soda is the one with a little more of a skill challenge, and perhaps pushes the humour a little more. “Candy also kind of carries the responsibility of the franchise more on his shoulders,” says Ingvar.
“We have more creative freedom…for Soda we can move a little bit more fluidly – a couple of years ago we were flirting a little bit more with arcade, a little bit with midcore, but now we’ve come come back from both of those and we’re like: nope, it’s casual, it’s events, it’s localization, it’s accessibility. I think we’ve become more and more articulate about what makes Soda Soda, focusing on things like the physics.”
The Soda team also looks at both big-picture data and direct player interviews and research to ensure the right decisions are being made. “Keeping it local and global at the same time is a good game development challenge,” Ingvar says.
As that 10th birthday approaches in November, the Soda team will naturally be running some special events to celebrate the milestone, and has been looking back at how the game has changed over time.
“We have done so much to the game and it has actually changed so much. You don’t realise because it’s sort of gradual,” says Ingvar. “But that is what it takes to stay relevant, stay fresh and keep the production values up to standard.”
King will fully reveal those 10th anniversary plans soon, and Ingvar is already looking ahead to the next decade. “It’s about the next 10 years and shaping that future and making sure that we’re fresher than ever,” she adds. “What is the mix between competitive elements, collaborative elements, main progression? We will see where that goes – there are multiple, multiple exciting tracks.”
