Decline Activision Bought Candy Crush Devs, King for USD$ 5.9 Billion

[FuriousGamer87]

I know people who literally spend thousands of dollars on these mobile games.

It's a bizarre addiction I've seen in people, much like the obsessive need to post inane shit on social media. My suspicion is it has something to do with our overstimulated society and people who don't know how to just do nothing for a short time. They can't just spend a moment alone with their thoughts or they will see just how empty and devoid of joy their life really is. They need to be entertained/distracted every second of the day and spending a few bucks on a mobile game is "fun". Those few dollars start to add up after a while.

Old webm is old but still relevant.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Disney also bought Marvel for around 4bil and Pixar for over 7bil. Pixar and Marvel probably have already made all that money back with their movies/animations and Lucasfilm will likely make back those billions in couple of movies too. When will Candy Crush make back those 6 billions?

King has a revenue of over 2B and an operating income of 600M. That's not an outrageous P/E ratio.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Thinking King will never crash is like thinking Jonathan Taylor Thomas will be winning Oscars in his 50's.

 

[Endemic]

This sheds some light on Activision's purchase: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3749786#post452265530

It gives them a strong foothold in the mobile market.

 

[Douchebag]

Old webm is old but still relevant.

Woah Woah.

This makes way too much sense. And sums up ''hardcore'' gaming as well. Or all MMOs for that matter.

 

[Douchebag]

I don't understand Candy Crush. There's a ton of free Bejewelled kind of games out there. Why would someone regularly pay to get more 1ups here when they can have unlimited ones in those free games.

 

[Archibald]

This sheds some light on Activision's purchase: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3749786#post452265530

It gives them a strong foothold in the mobile market.

This seams like veryoptimistic views, I found this comment on Gamasutra more relevant:

In the interview, Mr. Kotick gushes about how 60% of King's customers are female. This is what he should be gushing about. King knows far better than the people at Activision how to make games for women. This is even more important than their knowledge of the mobile space, because it is a prerequisite to sustainable success in the mobile marketplace.

When Activision execs recently asked me how I would improve their "Call of Duty" franchise, I told them "Make it gender neutral". This was not the answer they were looking for from this game economist. But if there is one $6B lesson they will learn in this merger, that's the one they need to learn.

Another lesson they are going to learn is that when they talk about "Having 500 million customers", this is not a monogamous relationship. When a consumer downloads your heavily promoted product, there is no commitment involved. It is not like the retail space. The retail space is disappearing, which is why Activision felt they had to buy their way out of it. That's not a show of strength, that's an admission that they could not adapt to changing consumer demand using the people they had employed at the company. So an injection of fresh talent was required.

"But when we looked at King, we saw four great franchises with lots of potential..."

Potential for what? Are you going to make a movie? These games are all extremely similar to each other, and all use the same mechanisms and business model. Which I have detailed enough in previous articles to earn a visit from King.com lawyers in 2013. Reskinning isn't going to work because the market is flooded with other products using precisely the same models as King.

Remember those "500 million users"? They are using hundreds of thousands of other products every year also. Tinder is "Free to Play", but when you sell yourself on Tinder you don't have to pay $1.32 for every person that "swipes right" on your picture. If you did, you could go broke pretty fast. Having "more users" in the current environment may sound totally awesome from a retail perspective, but that horse is on it's last leg. The horse King is riding is on it's last two legs, as evidenced by their rapidly imploding revenue numbers. Getting more customers to charge you $1.32 is not beneficial unless you are offering them something they can't get anywhere else.

I'm not seeing that.

The problem that King has is not with their IP, marketing, distribution, or analytics. The problem is that their business model undermines the reward mechanisms in their games. Consumers don't have to know why they feel better when they don't spend, but it does not take them long to figure this out. They can learn this lesson from another product using the same model and take that with them. It is not a King-specific problem.

I think it is great that Activision is spending $6B to get schooled on F2P and the mobile space. But if you keep learning the lessons 3 years late, no amount of money is going to give you the education you need in time for you to put it to good use.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ick_pony_says_Activision_CEO_Bobby_Kotick.php

 

[FuriousGamer87]

This seams like veryoptimistic views, I found this comment on Gamasutra more relevant:




http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ick_pony_says_Activision_CEO_Bobby_Kotick.php

The gamasutra article is pretty retarded and full of butthurt.
And all of the points are easily refuted. So many assumptions and no valid fact to back up anything.
Also wtf, "game economist" . "gender neutral",

Do remember that the alcohol, smoking and gambling industry, three industry which use addiction and pleasure to get $$$, have been reskinning their stuff for centuries and full of retards trying to close them down for equally as long.
And at present? All those industry are still chugging on strong.

 

[Archibald]

What butthurt? And yes, F2P space is full with economists creating models how to skin maximum amount of cash from people.

 

[Astral Rag]

Further expanding beyond consoles, Activision announces a film division
At BlizzCon, the company also unveils a trailer for the Warcraft movie.
by Nathan Mattise - Nov 6, 2015 10:18pm CET


At its annual BlizzCon, Activision Blizzard announced that it will launch an in-house TV and film studio to bring many of its popular franchises to screens of many sizes.

Reuters reports the first project will be an animated TV series based on Skylanders, but Activision said Call of Duty wouldn't be far behind. The Associated Press reports that Justin Long, Ashley Tisdale, and Jonathan Banks are already on board for Skylanders Academy and that the project is aiming for 2016.

Call of Duty is a "near-term" project, however, according to Reuters. Activision said this would be a movie franchise first with the possibility of a TV adaptation down the line. The AP put a date on this project as well, writing that it'd be "ready for deployment" in 2018 or 2019. "Our releases will be consistent with the high adrenaline, bad-(expletive) action that fans expect from this franchise, but we're going to deliver this intellectual property to the broadest movie-going audience," Activision Blizzard Studios co-president Nick van Dyk said, according to the report. "This will be tent-pole action-adventure of the widest appeal."

Activision already has a bit of its intellectual property heading to theaters. At BlizzCon, the company also showed off the first trailer for a film based on World of Warcraft. The movie, due in spring 2016, is happening through a partnership between the Blizzard Entertainment unit and Legendary Pictures. (Sadly, it's no longer the Sam Raimi-directed project we all got excited about six years ago.)

Gaming companies also becoming film and TV companies is no longer novel. Ubisoft is co-producing an Assassin's Creed film slated for December 2016, and Microsoft famously tried (and kinda sorta failed) with a Halo movie back in 2006. More recently, that company announced and then killed Xbox Entertainment Studios, but people associated with that division's Halo TV series have publicly said it's still coming (despite being announced way back in 2013).

At any rate, Activision's scripted entertainment ambitions are further proof that the company is looking to expand beyond its console-gaming core. And the move comes just days after the company announced a nearly $6 billion acquisition of Candy Crush-maker King. In light of today's news, never say never... Monopoly, Battleship, and Tetris have done it.

A Call of Duty cartoon?

 

[Cyberarmy]

Call of Candy Chrush cartoon!

 

[Tehdagah]

Spryo cartoon.

Kinda.

http://www.twinfinite.net/2015/11/06/activision-announces-skylanders-academy-cartoon/

 

[Severian Silk]

Why hasn't bethesda made a Fallout cartoon yet? I'm sure a lot of codexers would love it.

 

[Archibald]

Call of Candy Craft cartoon!

Fixed.

 

[sser]

I know people who literally spend thousands of dollars on these mobile games.

It's a bizarre addiction I've seen in people, much like the obsessive need to post inane shit on social media. My suspicion is it has something to do with our overstimulated society and people who don't know how to just do nothing for a short time. They can't just spend a moment alone with their thoughts or they will see just how empty and devoid of joy their life really is. They need to be entertained/distracted every second of the day and spending a few bucks on a mobile game is "fun". Those few dollars start to add up after a while.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gon-age-inquisition.96838/page-5#post-3729111

Spoiler

Yeah, but there's something about those MMO mechanics that goes beyond that. It took me a while to click to it, but once you see it, it's there staring you right in the face.


Pokie machines. They're fucking pokie machines.


There is no area of gambling that have seen more research focused on swindling people out of their money, that makes more profit and does so from the most vulnerable members of the community than electronic slot machines. There's an incredible amount of science behind it - you could almost say that casinos have driven psychology research for the past 20 years in the same way that porn accidentally created the modern internet. They're meticulously crafted to create addiction - the lights that flash when someone wins a token amount calibrated at just the right level to stimulate mood, the timing of the small payouts given just the right amount of unpredictability to create a rush instead of feeling like a slog, rigged odds buried under tons of visual and aural cues that suggest a completely different system to that which controls the odds beneath the hood (showing graphics of cards as though you're actually playing poker instead of feeding coins to a fixed algorithm that guarantees overwhelming losses), just enough selection and button pushing to make the psychological reinforcement mechanisms tick over while remaining repetitive enough to be hypnotic, the timing between the button push and the animated response - nothing is left to chance.


Okay, so some people are weak, lots of us play cards with friends, few of us develop a gambling problem - it's not like it's a physical addiction like booze or drugs, hey? Well, there's truth to that - gamblers only have to beat the addiction itself, they don't have to take on the double whammy of addiction and withdrawal sickness simultaneously. But pokies addiction isn't just gambling addiction. These machines are designed to create a chemical response, manipulating the body's own production of opiates (the natural function of opiates in the body is to make you crave food, so you don't ignore that hungry feeling and starve - even the body's natural opiate output is designed to override your decision making and reinforce necessary behaviours) and dopamine (ie the stuff that cocaine simulates). Unless you're naturally inclined towards gambling addiction, or you just lack willpower, you can play cards every week and never become an addict. Pokies might not create withdrawal symptoms, but they still function more like drugs than card games - it doesn't matter who you are, or how much willpower you have, if you play them long enough or often enough, the chemical mechanisms will kick in and you'll become addicted.


Look at the design of electronic poker machines, then look at what has become the standard MMO mechanics. Hidden drop rates with just the right level of unpredictability and false audio visual feedback, the timing, the use of lighting and animation, the big 'you're a winner' symbols at constant but not quite predictable intervals, the timing between button press and effect, fuck even the actual gameplay. I wouldn't be surprised if they even have the same algorithms running under the hood!


That's why, in computer games of all places - one of the most innocent hobbies around, one so innocuous that parents trust their kids to play them unsupervised - you've started to get people talking, completely unprompted, about feeling like they're addicted. It's why people play MMOs for such absurd hours that they damage their jobs and social lives until they only associate with other addicts...even though they recognise all the while that they aren't having fun for over 95% of their play time. It's why they wait in queues for battlegrounds and instances that they're grinding for the 100th time instead of going 'fuck it, I'll do something else and play when it's less busy'.


Sure, people have always liked crap computer games (fuck you too 'Ghosts and Goblins', the 8 year old in me still wants his quarters back), but this shit, no this is entirely new. Even during the arcade era, with the flashing lights and rigged time limits, there was nothing that resembled this kind of behaviour - there were people who spent way too much time on it, but never this widespread feeling of not having fun yet feeling compelled to play them anyway. Now, designers boast about how good they are at creating 'just one more click, click click' gameplay, not even realising that they've dropped 'fun' from their design goals, or that they've been relegated to making fake animated poker cards.


They crossed the fucking line when they introduced real money auction houses. Once they did that, gambling addiction wasn't just their game design anymore, it became their business model.


I'm not saying we should be playing the world's smallest violins for the poor MMO addicts. There is always a point where you can feel an addiction kicking in, before it takes hold, and people dig their own graves. But fuck, man, this is an industry that makes entertainment for kids. There are 10 yr olds all over the world playing this stuff, and I don't blame their parents because whilst there's a place for games aimed at adults, gaming's soul has always been that you can make money by bringing fun and joy to children. Developers forgetting that is one of the biggest drivers if the decline, and it's why AAA developers with their gritty sexy game plots had their asses kicked by minecraft. The same way that comics went to shit when they decided that their market was pathetic man-childs instead of actual kids and adults who aren't ashamed of indulging their inner child.


Parents expect their kids to be at risk when they're crossing the road, playing football or sneaking down to the park to smoke pot, but for all the media scares, if there's one time parents expect to be able to take their eye off the kids so they can do the vacuuming, it's when they're playing a computer game.

 

[Turjan]

I actually had to look up "Candy Crush Saga". Not that I haven't heard about that game, but I've never actually seen it. Not sure whether that's a blessing or just a sign of how out of touch I am. Probably both .

It looks a bit like Bejeweled to me. Which to me makes it clear that this acquisition is not about the games, but the monetizing aspects behind them.

 

[Lyric Suite]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...gon-age-inquisition.96838/page-5#post-3729111

One of Azrael best posts. And to add insult to injury, there's nothing substantial to the rewards you get in an MMO. The coveted object is valuable only because it is coveted by others also. When a new expansion is released, the object no longer has any value. And personally, i think in a way those type of games is what ruined single players RPGs for many people. Who cares about getting the big bad weapon in a game like Baldur's Gate, when an online RPG has the added value that the object you obtain is valuable to others as well? The addition of the human element has increased the pleasure factor in the reward mechanics, so that to progress in a single player game feels quaint and sort of pointless by comparison.

 

[Archibald]

I think it appeals to them due to social aspect and not due to some shit loot being "valuable".

 

[FuriousGamer87]

I think it appeals to them due to social aspect and not due to some shit loot being "valuable".

Social aspect yes, but the loot is also important in that it helps them to "show off" their achievement to their peers, in a sense.
But I don't see this happens only on women, but also men.
But my experience may be flawed since my social contacts are mostly male.

In general, having something that make people feel that they are better than others and able to show if off to others mean a lot to them.
Apple and all luxury brands understand this concept very very well.

EDIT: Didn't Xbox, Sony and Steam also realize nerdy male gamers also love this stuff and lap it up hence all the hoo haa about achievements that can be show off in your game account?

 

[rado907]

Guys, what the fuck is a Candy Crush? Some kind of a Bejeweled clone? Also, what is a game economist and why does it think that selling shooters to womyn is a good idea?
Science is baffled.

Edit: In the interest of science, I went to Wikipedia and found Candy Crush. It is indeed a Bejeweled clone (and Bejeweled is probably a clone of some other "game") with hideous graphics.

It all somehow makes sense... I guess that all of those people out there who watch the stuff on TV are the same people who play Candy Crush.