Candy Crush Saga doesn’t exactly inspire the notion of being a competitive game, but that may be an assumption driven by the fact that most of us aren’t King’s target demographic. Mobile gaming has grown as a platform since the birth years of social gaming, the genre of games that King and other developers have helped establish mobile gaming. Nowadays, devices like the iPad Mini 6 can handle more demanding games, such as Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile, but simple games like Candy Crush Saga still hold an audience. It’s this audience that executives at King may be trying to engage when influencer Khloe Kardashian announced she would be hosting Candy Crush Saga’s first North American tournament. 

In a bizarre promo for the event, Khloe Kardashian mentioned her nails, not eating them, and announced herself as the host for “America’s first Candy Crush All-Stars tournament.” The entire video feels like getting into a violent car accident and simply walking away. Candy Crush Saga’s Twitter page would follow up this announcement with a video tutorial for Khloe’s nail design and look, created by nail artist Chaun Legend. It’s a little difficult to understand how Khloe Kardashian’s nails tie into the Candy Crush Saga tournament, competitive Candy Crush, or the tournament’s format overall. Still, I understand why these are details King feels are pertinent to Candy Crush’s community. 

According to an article published by The Guardian, King senior executive Alex Dale told British MPs that Candy Crush Saga’s core market is women aged 35 and older. According to Video Game Stats, Candy Crush Saga’s player base skews more towards women as 58% of Candy Crush Saga’s players identify as women. According to research from the University of Southern California, 70% of in-app purchases for Candy Crush Saga were by users identified as women in 2017. However, the high percentage of users that identify as female doesn’t correlate a fascination with the Kardashians. 

Perhaps what could be compared between Candy Crush Saga and Khloe Kardashian is the virality of both entities. A brilliant post by Michail Katkoff, product manager at Supercell, breaks down how virality is incorporated into Candy Crush Saga’s fundamental gameplay loop. Progress in Candy Crush Saga comes with the ability to observe, be observed, collaborate, and compete, with levels showing users their performance compared against a leaderboard and their friends, should they connect Candy Crush Saga to their social media presences. 

Users are encouraged to assist friends by sending them hearts which are used to attempt new levels. Candy Crush Saga also encourages users to ask friends for help to keep playing, which allows them to avoid the tedious cycle of playing and waiting built into Candy Crush Saga’s gameplay loop. It’s this process of exchange, collaboration, and familiarity that helps Candy Crush Saga integrate itself into a user’s social life online.

Whether you like it or not, the Kardashians are viral. News bits about their lives and activities are bite-sized and easy to follow, making them units of cultural information that can easily be swapped and shared. It’s perhaps this same notion of virality that surrounds the Kardashians that influenced King to bring Khloe Kardashian on as the host for Candy Crush Saga’s first official tournament in North America. It inspired this article, after all. 

Regardless, we wish the best to Khloe Kardashian in her new esports career. Those interested in seeing the top Candy Crush Saga competitors play in North America’s first All-Stars tournament should log into the app on September 23. The extent of Khloe Kardashian’s involvement isn’t clear, but she’s featured prominently on the app’s branding on both App Store and Google Play right now. Should any more news develop regarding Khloe Kardashian’s esports career, we’ll be sure to let you know.