About a week ago, my partner was playing a game on his cell phone that he told me was intensely fun. I was skeptical but given that I like to pass the occasional time by with a game or two on my own mobile phone, I took the bait. He told me it was a free app and that it’s name was Candy Crush Saga. After a quick search for it in the Apps, I found it and downloaded the game to my own phone. Within five days I had $20 less to my name, was definitely more irritable, and made the decision that I had to remove it.
Having already gone through previous incarnations of addictions with alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sex, and gambling, I never thought video games would become one of them too until I began playing this game. It’s methodology was simple, combining various elements of Bejeweled and Tetris, all one had to do was line up at least three pieces of candy to remove them from the board. The more pieces one could line up, the more candy that got removed. And for each level, there was a specific challenge that had to be achieved before one could move onto the next spot on a game board which really reminded me of that childhood great named Candyland.
As I started playing this game, my partner was already on Level 29 and had been so for several days. I should have taken his own frustrations as a warning sign, but unfortunately I didn’t and my ego got the best of me thinking I could do better than he was doing. The first bunch of levels were easy and it definitely hooked me. By the time I moved into the double digits for levels, they got a little harder and that’s when I learned that the game really wasn’t free if I wanted to move along quicker on the game board.
Candy Crush Saga capitalizes on this new drive that other games are doing now where the game initially is free but to move along quicker to those higher levels, a consumer can purchase “power-ups”. After sitting at one of the levels over and over again, I purchased something called a “lollipop” which basically just bashed a single piece of candy to remove it from the board. A set of three cost me $1.99 and did their purpose when they got me to the next level. There were other things that I noticed I could purchase as well such as donuts that cleared off all of a certain piece of candy from the board, sugar wheels that moved in certain directions to remove a set of pieces, and larger, more colorful pieces of candy that exploded in certain directions to remove a whole line of candy in a certain direction. Within a few more levels, I was back to being stuck and after numerous attempts to pass it, I was back to purchasing one of those “power-ups”. Suddenly, I couldn’t seem to put the game down and I was doing everything I could to get by one level after another.
I’m not sure what drew me into this game so fast but it definitely had elements that lured me in. Whether it was its bright colors, or the fact it was candy being played with, or its “crunch” noises that occurred at times, or its deep throaty male voice that occasionally said words such as “tasty”, “”divine”, and “scrumptious” when large amounts of candy were removed at a time, it definitely captivated me. What started out as fun and solely just a desire to catch up to my partner’s level turned into one urge after another to buy those power-ups and a refusal to put the game down. What was even worse was that Candy Crush Saga even had the ability to buy my way out of having to be patient by either buying more lives to keep playing the game or more “moves” when I ran out of them to get by certain levels.
By the time I got around to buying those $20 of “power-ups”, I made a vow to myself that I wasn’t going to pay a single cent to the game again. What’s funny is that a promise like that was no different than what I once told myself many eons ago when I said I would never drink another drop of alcohol again, only to be drunk yet again the very next day. While I did reach and surpass the level my partner had remained on for quite awhile, I got to level 35 and sat there myself for days trying to get by it without paying for those power ups. Over and over and over again, I’d get down to needing just one more piece of candy to be removed and it never would happen. After restarting the level over dozens and dozens of times, I made the best “power-up” move I could have made when I decided to delete the game, which ironically cost me nothing. Within 24 hours, I was a whole heck of a lot less irritable and felt much better.
With any of the addictions I ever fell into, just one was never enough. I could never have had just one beer, or one joint, or one pull of a slot machine, or one mega caffeinated soda, or one sexual romp or one of anything that qualified as an addiction for me. And sadly, Candy Crush Saga was the same. I lost count of the number of hours I dedicated to playing that game over those five days and if I took into account all those moments it occupied my brain both in playing it and when I was not, it consumed me just like any other addiction did for the complete time it was in my life. So essentially for those five days, one of my main thoughts was about getting pieces of candy removed off of a board.
It’s a good thing I have a much healthier relationship with God and myself today for I know when I am falling into any addictive-based pattern now. It’s always the same and it never feels good because everything else takes less priority in my life when I’m going down that path. Candy Crush Saga definitely was doing that for me. Thank God I no longer have that app on my phone anymore, as I learned there were at least 350 more levels beyond the one I got to, each of which were waiting to “crunch” my time, money, and energy away even more than it already had. And you know what, no game is worth that price!!!
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson