The fascinating story behind the explosive success of Candy Crush

What does “time well spent” mean for games like Candy Crush?

If you own a smartphone, chances are you know and maybe even the game’s latest incarnation, . What you may not know is the story behind the franchise: How an Italian entrepreneur put all his cash on the line as a co-founder of King, the company behind the game, in the early 2000s, with an idea of how to re-invent gaming for the online world.

That person is Riccardo Zacconi. He’s guided the company through the many phases of online gaming (desktop, Facebook, mobile, and more), taking King public and eventually selling it to gaming giant Activision Blizzard in 2015. In this episode of MashTalk, Zacconi talks about that journey, his thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg, and what the future holds for mobile gaming now that people are starting to question all the time they’re spending on their devices playing games like, well, Candy Crush.

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