Why is Candy Crush addictive?

I have a few quips about that question in this Popular Science article.

The point I was trying to make was that a game like Candy Crush both:

a) has a set of inherent design features that concern how easy it is to learn, time pressure etc..

b) is also a cultural moment, meaning that it is popular in part because being popular makes the game spread to new players. I.e. it’s popularity cannot be predicted solely from the basis of the design.

Hence “Why is Candy Crush so popular” cannot be answered exclusively as a design question, but the design is still important.