Humam Sakhnini on King video games, the pandemic and Crash Bandicoot

The gaming industry has proved to be a Covid pandemic winner, with millions of consumers looking for relief from lockdown boredom, a sense of escapism and a way to connect with friends and family at a time when social interactions are scarce.

Humam Sakhnini, president of King, the company behind hit smartphone game, Candy Crush, tells The Independent: “There’s always a traditional view of gaming as something people will do on their own – but this became the exception, not the rule.

“Gaming is providing two great things: one is entertaining people and the second one is giving an avenue for people to connect with each other through games and building communities.

“An issue we have seen across generations during the pandemic is isolation and gaming has helped minimise that.”

Sakhnini became president of King in January 2019 after serving as its finance chief for nearly three years. Under his leadership, the company delivered its best annual performance since its acquisition by Activision Blizzard in 2015, with revenues growing by 15 per cent year-on year to $503m (£363m) in the last quarter of 2020.

The Candy Crush franchise continues to be the biggest driver for the firm with 200 million players a month. The game now has more than 8,000 levels, up from 65 when it was first released and it remains the top grossing franchise in US app stores nearly 10 years after its launch.

“What’s so successful about it is, how accessible and challenging it is. You don’t have to be a gamer to play Candy, but if you are it will still challenge you,” Mr Sakhnini argues.

“The longevity of it comes from the ethic the company has put into it and its commitment to innovation in the franchise.

“The industry always equated innovation with new games. But, what we did, to challenge ourselves, was to ask the question: ‘how would you continuously innovate what already exists’. It means that when we’re talking about innovation, we’re now challenging ourselves to constantly iterate. I think that’s what keeps it going. There’s always something fresh and new.”

Sakhnini describes 2020 as a “defining moment” for the company. “I was not designed to lead a virtual company of 2000 employees and yet, overnight, here I am as the leader of a company that’s working virtually across the world.”

He argues that his employees’ resilience and their creativity as well as the accelerated digital adoption brought by Covid-19 is what pushed the firm forward.

“The rallying cry from our employees was ‘how do we engage more with our players’. We started putting more content out and redefining how we work. By the time the communities around us were in lockdown, we were already fully virtual.”

In addition to giving players free lives on Candy Crush during the lockdown, King also partnered with the UK government and health organisations to share public health guidelines via in-game messages – reaching over 340 million monthly active users.

Sakhnini says: “The other reason the business is doing great is because we are benefiting from an acceleration of what we already had.

“I don’t think anybody benefits from a pandemic – but, what we saw, is that it accelerated a lot of trends that were favourable to us. For example, buying from Ocado is not new, but what is new is that my 88-year-old mother does it. The pandemic accelerated the trend in the adoption and the same thing is happening in the game industry.”

Escaping lockdown into a world of video games is nothing new for the president of King.

Although he got into the gaming industry at the age of 40 – “pretty late” by his own admission – he first became a player whilst in lockdown during the civil war in Lebanon.

open image in gallery

“Games became a way for people to pass their time during the pandemic, it’s about coming back to something you like and enjoy doing, much like how I passed my time when I was in a lockdown back in my childhood.

“I grew up around the Atari 2600 and later played a lot of PC games in college in Canada, that was the big thing back in the day. So, it’s been a continuation of that community. When you’re a teenager, whether you are in Lebanon or Canada, you can find a lot of common things and gaming was one of them.”

Following his move to Canada, Sakhnini graduated with BA degree in Economics from the University of Western Ontario before working for the Department of Finance.

After a brief stint working at an investment bank, he went back to school to complete an MA in Economics from Queen’s University at Kingston, followed by an MBA degree from Yale School of Management.

He then became a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he stayed for eight years before the opportunity to work at Activision Blizzard – the future owner of King – as their chief financial officer came up.

“It was this massive coming home moment. By that time, I had built my skillset, from analytics to consulting by understanding how companies navigate, strategies and how to drive them into the future. Then coming into the game industry, which is super dynamic, it was a dream come true,” he says.

Being one of the people that led King through its acquisition by Activision Blizzard and taking over the president’s role at King after its long-time CEO and founder Riccardo Zacconi stepped down, remains some of the most challenging and rewarding moments of his career so far.

He says: “Becoming the leader of a company that is in great shape and taking it over from a beloved founder, by becoming the non-founder that leads it, is both daunting and challenging. How are you the second act to that?

“But it makes me proud because it’s all about defining the culture of the company and how to bend it to the next iteration.”

Sakhnini spent lockdown in his UK home with his wife and their twin daughters aged 11. Like most of us, his family had to find new ways of spending quality time together from playing board games to building robots.

He says: “Both my kids are very tech-savvy. I would have never had the time to build a robot – and by the way, my advice is very much don’t do it, it’s harder than you think and it takes a while – but spending that time with my kids was an amazing experience.”

Despite the company’s successful year, Sakhnini won’t have much time to rest on his laurels as it is set to be another busy period for King with the firm preparing to launch Crash Bandicoot: On The Run on mobile devices in March.

He said: “This year, we’ll continue to pour a lot of our heart and soul into growing our communities and our franchises. I’m personally very excited about the release of Crash Bandicoot. I have a lot of passion for it. It’s an iconic IP from back when I used to play that game 20 years ago, when it first came out.”

As someone who had a successful career of doing different things before landing his dream job, his advice to young graduates is to stop planning far ahead.

“A lot of young people coming in have a predetermined way of how their career should progress because of the way they’ve been counselled.

“I think it’s good to have plan but it’s also good to throw it out and be living in the present. When somebody is presenting you with an exciting opportunity, just say yes.”