The not-so-sweet candy
Ever wondered who are the real winners of the wildly addictive candycrush?
THE next time you see a photograph of your Member of Parliament hunched over his iPhone or iPad during an official meeting, don’t jump to the conclusion that he’s working hard to help his constituents. It could be that he’s just playing a game of Candy Crush, a popular mobile game that involves matching brightly coloured candies as players progress from one level to the next.
It’s tough being an MP. You are forced to sit through all manner of boring meetings, listening to someone jabbering on and on and on about ... well, you don’t really know. Besides, who gives a toss? After 20 years of playing Candy Crush, you’ve finally managed to reach level 10,364, the one that no one else has been able to reach, ever.
Who cares if your constituents finally get electricity into their kampung, or the badly needed school, you’ve now crushed all other players who had hoped to be the first to reach this remarkable milestone. And who cares that the only way your wife can get your attention is by duct-taping a remote-controlled version of the game to her forehead.
And no, this isn’t a bit farfetched. Well, maybe just the duct taping part.
You see, British MP Nigel Mills was recently filmed playing Candy Crush Saga in a parliamentary committee session at Westminster, London. When confronted, he apologised and said he would try not to do it again.
If Candy Crack, as it’s sometimes known, can have such a stranglehold on an MP, what hope is there for the rest of us mere mortals?
Candy Crush is now played by an estimated 93 million people a day. No one knows how many man-hours are lost to this legal drug, but some people are so hooked that they play the game at every possible moment. They probably have nightmares about giant pieces of candy crushing them to death.
And they might as well be dead, because they are frittering away any hope of having a meaningful life with aspirations that don’t involve enormous jelly babies, and friendships that don’t involve questions like, “Hey Dude, I’ve used up all my lives, can you give me one of yours?”
I’m sure if I were to spend just one minute with this sweet poison, I’d be lost forever. My work would suffer, my friends would abandon me, and I would become a hermit feverishly stabbing at the keys on my iPad.
I would go for months without a shower and only stop to sleep when my eyes start shrivelling in their sockets, or my fingers snap off at the joints, like brittle twigs.
But I’m not alone. It seems that about 10% to 15% of the population also has an addictive personality. And this is exactly what the creators of Candy Crush were relying on during the game’s development phase.
Becoming addicted to Candy Crush is similar to becoming addicted to, say, crystal meth, or ice as it’s called on the street.
One of the ploys that ice dealers use to increase their business is to offer their product to potential users free of charge. So the unsuspecting targets take the drug, and since it’s possible to become addicted after only using it once, they return to the dealer and ask him for more. He will then probably give them another fix as a gift, but the next time they crave more, they’ll be expected to pay for it in full.
At that point, they’ll be standing at the top of a slippery slope that will take them right down to the bowels of hell. When the ice euphoria wears off, their desire to have another fix will lead them to do whatever it takes to get more of it.
Euphoria
Similarly, the app is free to download and play – and it’s seductively simple. Initially, you feel a slight euphoria as you make quick progress from one level to another, or so a junky friend has told me. Then before you get a chance to get bored, the game gets a little harder, and you eventually find yourself in a position where you have run out of lives and have to wait half an hour for the game to give you a new one.
Some people will see this enforced break as a good time to set the game aside and focus on living a real life. But hardcore players might not even be able to wait half an hour for their next fix. When they begin to feel jittery, they might just cave in and buy some extra lives from the developer. And this is how the pushers make their money. It is estimated that the company behind this game, rakes in a whopping US$875,382 (RM3.06mil) a day.
So you see, while you’re squandering your life and your dreams away, the dudes who own Candy Crack are getting richer and richer.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you who’s got the sweetest deal in this arrangement.
Check out Mary on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mary. schneider.writer. Reader response can be directed to star2@thestar.
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