Stuff Meets… King’s Todd Green

Playing games on his phone is an important part of Todd Green’s enviable job as King’s General Manager… In this interview we talk to him about everything from Golden Eye and Diddy Kong Racing sparking his love of gaming through to keeping Candy Crush Saga engaging ten years on with collaborations including Barbiemania, Saweetie and the Jonas Brothers. 

Games have been part of my life for decades. 

I’m one of three brothers and we played a lot of videogames growing up – we especially loved Golden Eye and Diddy Kong Racing on the N64. Years before I moved to King, I worked for a TV company called Fremantle and when they brought Canadian gaming firm, Lucia, I became the go-between, bridging the two companies. I went to visit a gaming studio in Montreal and thought it was amazing – I knew then I wanted to get into gaming as a career.

I look after sister games Candy Crush Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga. 

Candy Crush Saga is the original, but Candy Crush Soda Saga has been around nearly ten years. Soda has some unique features like reverse gravity, gummy bears and square match which creates a Swedish fish to help with tricky puzzles. 

Most of my time is spent keeping these games engaging and entertaining for our players. Players are split between those who enjoy playing on their own for a brain break and never want to play online, and those who enjoy the community aspect of the game and want tournaments, to see others playing online and to meet up to play with friends.  

The mobile gaming market is very competitive, so we must be doing something right to have a game which is over 10 years old.  

We have such varied players engaging with Candy Crush Saga – young and old, male and female, in all seven continents – so we need to be doing an abundance of activations to keep them all engaged. If that is a partnership with Barbie, or a tournament like Candy Cup, which will go live later this year, the diversity of content means we try to make something for everyone to enjoy. 

When Barbiemania hit last summer, we wanted to offer our fans the chance to be part of it. 

We recorded a massive 1.2 billion views of Candy Crush Saga’s Barbie takeover, with 425,000 players watching our exclusive footage from the movie ahead of the premiere. 

We set up themed quests so that players could help Barbie escape the Candy Kingdom and get back into the real world – mirroring the plot of the movie and gave people the chance to collect limited edition candies – 400 billion of which were collected in just a fortnight. In all, it drove the most engagement we’d ever seen for a Candy Crush partnership.

It’s truly epic to see Candy Crush turn up in places that really matter to people.

We offered exclusive access to the Jonas Brothers’ new tracks, and created a Candy Crush stage at Mighty Hoopla festival that was just incredible – with Candy inflatables dancing around the crowd between sets. Saweetie helped promote our All-Stars tournament which saw millions of people register to play to get the chance to win some amazing jewels. 

Most recently, we partnered with the designer Christian Cowan, who is the designer behind costumes for Lil Nas X, Lady Gaga and Doja Cat, and created a ‘wearable seat’ for people who love to Crush on their commute. We made our Paris Fashion Week debut with a line of pin-on pockets for those who need space for their phone on-the-go.

If I don’t play the games every day, how will I understand them? 

I have played our games every day since I joined King, and I played a lot of King games even before I knew they were hiring in London. I enjoy finding 10-20 minutes for myself each day to play the games I work on. I’m really enjoying playing Farm Heroes Saga – I worked on it at launch and it’s the first ever UK mobile game to reach a lifetime revenue of above a billion dollars. 

I think it’s important to see what’s out there, gauge the landscape and not become complacent – another reason I play lots of games on my iPhone 15. I play all King games on an iPhone 6 too, as it’s important for me to see how they run on an older device. That, and just the fact that most of the time they’re really fun! 

I’ve just got a Garmin smartwatch, a robot hoover and an Xbox…

My favourite device is the Kindle – I love the fact it’s single use, which makes it easy to focus on, without being distracted. I’ve also started wearing a Garmin Forerunner 245 GPS running smartwatch, which means I don’t have to carry my phone around with me to keep track of my pace. I did a 10K trail run last weekend and run to and from the office when I’m commuting – it makes me feel fresh and ready to go. 

At home, I’ve just got myself a robot hoover and a few weeks ago, when King was acquired by Microsoft, I got an Xbox and have been really enjoying playing Age of Empires 4. 

Find out more about King games here. Like gaming? Check out the best gaming consoles of 2024 here and the best gaming chairs you can buy here.