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Comment by loganu | Hacker News Reader

That was my first reaction. I played Draw Something for a week or so, 3 years ago. I know many people still play Candy Crush Daily. The purchase to get Draw Something was probably premature, whereas this is a more established market.

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I can't help but wonder how much this has to do with the style of game. As far as software enforced rules go, Draw Something is VERY open, where a game like Candy Crush only accepts input that moves the game in the direction of their choosing (towards purchases usually). Most of my experience with Draw Something comes from watching a child play, and by "play", I mean they would write the word out. I failed to find a way to convincingly explain that this ruins the game. At 8 years old, it's extremely difficult to explain why someone should be following rules that the software doesn't enforce.

Certainly it beats Draw Something in sticking power, but are people still going to be playing Candy Crush in five years, ten years? There's a lot of other companies I can buy for five billion dollars and be confident that they'll still be selling stuff in a few decades' time, but this one doesn't fill me with confidence.

Worse news: the thing that they sell is something that people regret buying.

very few people are going to be playing anything for five years or ten years. few games last that long. activision's world of warcraft has defied all expectation. by all standards the graphics look extremely dated. ea has been making sports games with annual refreshes, and this other major studio that makes the assassins creed series are also doing the same thing - large AAA-level open world games with in app purchases AND annual refreshes, which seems to be the way forward now in video game profitability.

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