Thread by @twoscooters

Do you want a thorough core loop breakdown of either of the two most recent games in the Candy Crush franchise?

I’ve been working in mobile games for almost a decade and you have no clue what you’re talking about.

This is why I say F2P mobile game design is like pop music. Aspiring pretentious indie musicians think any idiot can spew out a top 40 hit, but it turns out making something millions of people dedicate millions of hours to is more complex than you think!

I’m going to bed soon, so I’m not going to go into detail about Candy Crush in particular, but here’s a quick breakdown of the last few years in mobile gaming, for people who think games *like* Candy Crush are more casual than, say, CoD.

2012ish: King and Supercell in particular really started incorporating emotional UX into every single part of the game experience.

A crying heart when you run out of lives! Celebration on the post-spend success screen! Just shocking levels of polish on previously-ignored screens

Sounds small, but that was the beginning of really looking at the investment players had in otherwise-simple experiences. More mobile studios became more heavily reliant on data. The “casual” gamespace swelled, making UA costs skyrocket.

What’s cheaper than new users? Retention.

Breaking down the systems of a modern “casual” puzzle game, you’ll find something reaching the depths of a JRPG. (Unless we’re talking stuff like Love Niki, which is a hardcore PvP CCG)

Because depth and complexity is how you retain players. But players got tired of it.

But bc of bullshit ideas that “casual” and “hardcore” are gendered genres and not, you know, ADJECTIVES, no one calls Soda Saga a “hardcore Match-3.” Instead, the systems-light games that were made as backlash to the over-systemification of casual games were dubbed “hypercasual."

And now that UA costs for ad-based systems light “hypercasual” games are skyrocketing, people are moving towards trying to find juuuust the right amount of system. And calling those

(ugh)

hybridcasual.

All of this ridiculous jargon, so many arguments over whether a game is hypercasual or hybridcasual or whether casual games exist any more, specifically because of the backlash that would come from a Certain Kind Of Person if the industry were to say, “damn, this game is core."