This week on The Product Experience, we revisit a great conversation with Todd Green, now President of King – the studio behind Candy Crush. Todd shares how he thinks about building products that are not only globally successful but enduringly fun.
Todd takes us behind the curtain on what it really takes to build for mass audiences, create fun at scale, and grow empowered product teams.
Key takeaways
- Fun can’t be optimised: Building successful games (or products) requires capturing something visceral. Metrics help, but “fun” starts as a feeling, not a number.
- Audience motivation matters more than demographics: Instead of targeting by age or gender, King focuses on why people play – whether it’s for calm, connection or challenge.
- Legacy products need product management too: The real work starts when a product survives beyond launch. King invests heavily in balancing new features with legacy complexity.
- Good product leaders own the business: At King, product leads (executive producers) are responsible for P&L – it's a full-stack role across delivery, team, and outcomes.
- Sharing insights is a team sport: King has full-time roles and informal networks dedicated to transferring learning between game teams.
- Ethical responsibility is core: King prioritises player wellbeing and long-term satisfaction – not just engagement – as a business principle.
- Building great managers is a product in itself: Todd sees first-line manager development as one of his top priorities for sustaining culture and performance.
Key chapters
- 00:00 – Intro and Todd’s promotion
- 01:40 – Todd’s media roots and time at Fremantle
- 06:15 – Digital bibles and global format sharing
- 10:50 – Lessons from the Susan Boyle YouTube moment
- 13:40 – Shifting to King and the discovery of fun
- 18:30 – Motivations beyond boredom
- 22:45 – Building for a massive, diverse audience
- 26:40 – The product structure at King
- 30:10 – Keeping Candy Crush fresh after years at the top
- 35:05 – When to launch a new game
- 38:50 – Ethics and responsibility in game design
- 42:20 – Why qual and quant both matter
- 45:10 – How King shares knowledge across teams
- 48:00 – The hiring landscape and talent challenges
- 51:00 – Growing new managers and inclusive leadership
- 54:10 – Closing thoughts and Todd’s reflections
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
