King – Live Operations

During my time as a game artist in Candy Crush Saga I’ve spent a bit more than a year in the Live Operations team. When designing a so called ”Live Op” from scratch, I started with coming up with a theme. When the theme/idea was defined and approved I made concept sketches which later turned into final art. The final art was then implemented in our fiction editor, in which I also added effects and animations when needed. We always test our Live Ops, to make sure that they are responsive and works well on all sorts of devices. They are usually later tweaked depending on the results from A/B-tests. A Live Op can be anything from finding UFO’s or chests filled with boosters on the map to a spring themed sale, or collecting starts to create a star sign after finishing a level.

A big milestone was when Candy reached level 5000. I was highly involved with the art for this project and I started with creating mood boards presenting different themes. We did agree on the theme ”fancy garden party” and I draw festive outfits for our existing characters and some new assets, like the tent, flamingo and the fountain. When the Live Op was ready and shipped, I delivered the final art to our marketing department for promoting. This Live Op performed very well and the art was featured in social media and in app stores.

Another project that I really enjoyed drawing art for and designing was a Live Op, in which you collect candies and travel between different sweet planets, like the ”pudding planet” and the ”licorice planet”. It was called ”Space Leagues”.