Join Todd Green, the President of King, best known for Candy Crush, as he shares fascinating insights into crafting successful games. He emphasizes that true fun is about feelings, not just metrics, and discusses how understanding player motivations is vital. Todd reveals the importance of managing legacy products and the ethical responsibility to prioritize player well-being. He also highlights the challenge of recruiting talent in gaming and stresses the critical role of developing great managers to sustain company culture.
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Viral Moments Transform Business
A viral moment like Susan Boyle's YouTube clip can't be optimized but can massively expand business impact.
King realized YouTube's potential only after a fan-uploaded clip hit 100 million views, sparking a new strategy.
insights INSIGHT
Fun Starts as Feeling, Not Metrics
Fun is an elusive, visceral feeling that can't be fully captured by metrics alone.
Product discovery at King focuses on quickly validating whether something truly feels fun through iterative testing.
insights INSIGHT
Motivations Over Demographics
King targets player motivations (calm, connection, challenge) rather than traditional demographics like age or gender.
Motivations reveal more commonalities among players across diverse audiences than demographics do.
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What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19
A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19
Randy Silver
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.
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