Category — Games

King Charles in Pippin croons that “it’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.”  And while that may be true for war, it is most definitely true for level 158 of Candy Crush.  Here is the thing, I don’t mind working my ass off towards a goal, knowing that all the brainpower I am putting towards solving a problem or completing a task will pay off in the end.  But I hate luck-based situations.  And level 158 of Candy Crush is a luck-based board.

It’s one of those levels that frustrate me because it feels a lot like infertility: there is nothing you can do to make those candies cascade as you need them to cascade in the same way that a person cannot make an embryo implant despite the New York Times misusing that word every time they write about IVF.  A doctor cannot implant an embryo; she can only transfer it.  Which means that treating infertility is like throwing spaghetti at the wall with the goal of making the pasta (or embryo) stick.  Sure, you can do things to up the chances that the wall will hold the pasta such as using a non-glossy paint or not washing the starch off a strand of spaghetti, in the same way that you can do things to up the chances — such as building a beautiful lining or taking PIO injections — that the embryo will burrow in and stay for nine months.  But ultimately, it’s luck, it’s chance, it’s doing the same thing over and over again until it works.

In other words, like this level of Candy Crush.

Is that, perhaps, why this game has such a hold over me?  Because my mind is so accustomed to lather, rinse, repeat?  To failing and failing and failing, but still trying again anyway?

For those who don’t play (or haven’t reached this level yet), it consists of a two-sided board.  Candy from the left side falls into the right side, and the goal is to move a single nut or cherry to the bottom of the right board.

At the bottom of the right side are two pieces of candy encased in licorice.  There are also two chocolate machines on the right side, generating chocolate with each move.  The point is to use striped candies to blow apart the chocolate and licorice on the right side of the board.  It’s not that there isn’t skill involved, but it sort of doesn’t matter how smart you are, because if you can’t make those horizontal striped pieces, you pretty much can’t win this board.

And I had a lot of rounds where I couldn’t make a horizontal striped piece at all.

As I was rounding on that point where I just wanted to give up on Candy Crush because I was no longer having fun, I had a board where I could break one of the licorice pieces in the first move.  My second move created a speckled doughnut.  My third move dropped that doughnut on the right side of the board via a cascading of candy.

And then everything fell into place, like getting asked to prom, getting a college acceptance letter, and passing your physics test… all in the same day.

In 9 moves, the board cleared with little effort and my nut dropped out the bottom while I tossed my head back in relief.  I had 11 moves leftover in which fish and striped candies ratcheted up my score.  I took a screenshot of my victory.  I’m not ashamed to admit that.  Well, yes, I am ashamed, but I’m pretending that it’s totally normal to take screenshots of my Candy Crush victories.

When Josh walked in the door, I asked him how his day was, and then volunteered that I had passed Level 158 of Candy Crush.  I reported on it as if it were my job, a fantastic break at work that will change our lives for the better rather than a random level in an iPhone game.

“What made you finally pass it?” he asked.

“It didn’t take any particular skill,” I remarked.  “It was just luck.”

“Smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.”

There are times in your life when you want to be smart; when you want to be able to see the solution, make things happen, have the great idea.  I can’t think of anyone who has succeed in their chosen endeavour who didn’t have a type of brilliance in their back pocket.  And then, there are times when you just want to get lucky.  When you want all the elements to fall into place, ensuring success, because intelligence is little help in these situations.

Would you rather be lucky or smart (and no, you can’t pick both)?

So you know how when the Wii became popular, emergency rooms were filled with Wii-related injuries?  Perhaps they are still filled with Wii-related injuries, but I haven’t heard about this phenomena in a long time.  So either we’re getting better at playing Wii or newspapers are bored of writing Wii-injury stories. Regardless, I started to notice recently that my jaw hurts after playing Candy Crush, especially the timed levels.  And if the timed levels contain bombs, forget about it — my jaw is el fuego after a life or two.

I realized what I’m doing to make my mouth feel as if it’s being pushed out of alignment while I line up candies, and it seems to be two-fold.  One, I lean my cheek on my hand, grinding my teeth together as I play.  Two, I get so tense trying to beat the clock that I press my tongue against the inside of my teeth.  Especially my lower teeth.  I will probably need a retainer by the time I get to level 150.  I AM DESTROYING MY JAW FOR A GAME.

At least with the Wii, you are up, you are active.  You are sort of virtually bowling as you dislocate your shoulder.  I am doing nothing but moving around colourful balls on a screen.  Candy Crush should be safe from game-related injuries.

The worst part is that I don’t stop playing, though I  am now trying to be mindful of how I’m holding my jaw.  To solve this problem, I am playing the game with my mouth wide open, as if I am locked in an eternal scream.  Imagine my head tilted back, shrieking like Lilith at that skinny Candy Crush man, with no sound escaping my lips.  Imagine Hungry Hungry Hippos with the button controlling their gaping maw forever depressed. Pretty picture, no?

And that’s how I’m playing Candy Crush from now on because god-forbid that I actually stop playing the stupid game.  I am now on level 135 even though I said I would stop at 100.

The twins got to go to Apple camp this year — a two-day free computer camp held in the Apple store.  While they were learning how to make movies, the parents got a class on parental restrictions.  Imagine my glee when I learned that I could turn off in-app purchases on my phone, effectively ending those tempting pop-up offers from Candy Crush asking if I wanted to purchase extra moves, lives, or lollipop hammers.  I’ve yet to spend a dollar on the game, but even I don’t have an iron-clad will.  It’s really hard to say “no” during those times when I’m stuck on a level for days (my last one was level 125 — that was a killer).  I could see myself buying a few extra moves if I was a few steps away from clearing the board.

So I stopped it.

One click.

Done.

No more options for chattering teeth to eat through the licorice.

[If you want to do this on your device, go into settings, choose restrictions, set a pass code that is different from your phone’s pass code, and then scroll down to turn off in-app purchases.  In the same place, I also switched over iTunes to require a password for every single purchase instead of allowing unlimited purchases for 15 minutes once I put in my password.  There are also dozens of other limitations you can set in that area.]

My friend sent me an article the very next day about how Candy Crush parts you with your money that riffs off of the original post on Gamasutra. It’s not exactly rocket science.  Offer to sell someone 5 extra moves before the game begins, and they likely won’t take it.  Offer to sell them 5 extra moves for a paltry 99 cents when they can clearly see that they’re 2 moves away from winning, and they’ll reason that 99 cents is still less than a cup of coffee, and the purchase will allow them to move on with the game.

See, easy as taking candy.

In-app purchases also means that you’re so far removed from seeing your money float out of your hand.  The money is deducted from your iTunes account, and even that barely feels like real money (even though it is).  I mean, it’s a code on a gift card and it’s numbers and it’s the immediacy of the purchase.  All I have to do is click a button; I don’t even have to open a wallet.  I’ve already felt that danger with iBooks, purchasing new books instantaneously and starting to read them seconds later from the comfort on my living room.  So I didn’t need an article telling me just how dangerous in-app purchases could be.  I’m not particularly worried about the Wolvog and ChickieNob — I’m worried about myself.

Of course, the part about it being more of a money game than a skill game is also interesting, considering how often I get stuck.  Perhaps I just like this point because it allows me to still see myself as intelligent; I’m just at the mercy of a game that is trying to get me to purchase a booster.

Early game play maps can be completed by almost anyone without spending money, and they slowly increase in difficulty. This presents a challenge to the skills of the player, making them feel good when they advance due to their abilities. Once the consumer has been marked as a spender (more on this later) the game difficulty ramps up massively, shifting the game from a skill game to a money game as progression becomes more dependent on the use of premium boosts than on player skills.

See, it’s not me.  It’s them.

There was no a-ha moment reading that article; simply a lot of head nodding, especially when it said that “King.com was generous enough to point out that their target demographic for CCS is middle aged women. 80% of their players are women, only 34% of their players are under the age of 30, and only 9% are under the age of 21.”

In other words… me.

Which made me doubly glad that the Apple store taught me how to turn off in-app purchases.

I am sure that game programmers will only get smarter, figuring out go-arounds for all the safety nets that other software creators put in place.  But for now, no matter how much I want 5 extra moves, I cannot get 5 extra moves.  I know because I tested it, clicking on the button and smiling hugely when it told me that the purchase failed.

And if you were wondering how lucrative in-app purchases can be, Candy Crush brings in $633,00 per day.  I am obviously in the wrong profession.

I have now hit the moment where I have spent just as much time thinking about Candy Crush as I have playing it.  It’s sort of like attending summer camp.  It looks like fun and games, but I’ve learned a lot of valuable, after school special-type lessons about myself by lining up images of candy on my cell phone screen.  It’s brought out my self-loathing as well as made me understand the joy of playing with others.  And that’s one to grow on.

Poor Lori has already listened to all of this so she gets a pass on this post.  Actually, what am I saying?  You can all take a pass on this post if you wish.  I mean, it’s not as if part of the Candy Crush TOS is that your friends all need to listen to you philosophize about how a game has destroyed your self-worth.

Actually, has anyone read the TOS?  Is that in there?

*******

Sometimes, at night, I dream about combining doughnuts with striped candies.

I dream about boards of candies exploding in orgasmic jelly-blasting shudders.

I’ve never been a gamer unless you count Infocom, and on that count, I’ve never played a game that other people have been playing at the same time.  I am usually so far behind the curve that I only start playing a game once everyone else has already finished the game, or I’m playing a game that no one else has chosen to play.

This is my first time playing a game while others are playing the game, and I have dozens of people around me who are bemoaning the difficulty of the same boards.  I finally get why people like to play things together.  Or, at the very least, adjacent to.  It’s the number one reason why I don’t want to give up the game.  Because I get that giving up the game would be the simple solution.  But I would then miss out on the social part: the texting with friends about that damn multiplying chocolate.

Playing this game is like hanging out with friends while crushing candies with the zeitgeist.

And that zeitgeist is sort of like that roly poly guy everyone had in their dormitory at college who never seemed to go to class but was so much fun to hang around that you helped him out with his term papers because you didn’t want him to be kicked out of university since then he wouldn’t be around anymore to come up with all of those great bat-shit insane ideas.

Didn’t we all have a happy stoner like my Tommy-D* (to distinguish him from some other guy who was a lot less fun but also named Tom)?

Anyway, at the same time, playing the game at the same time as everyone else is making me feel like shit about myself because I seem to get stuck on levels much longer than other people.  I tell you that I’m stuck on Level 70, and then you tell me that you’re stuck on Level 86.  But when I come back and tell you that I’m stuck on Level 86, you tell me you’re stuck on Level 320.  See, I only advanced 16 levels, but you advanced… well… a lot.  And perhaps the fact that I can’t quickly do the math in my head to tell you how much more points to the fact that I’m really not a smart person.

I always thought of myself as decently smart.  Like middle-of-the-road smart.  But Candy Crush is making me think that I’m really really terrible at strategy-based games.  And everyone else is great at strategy-based games.  I feel like I’m failing a basic test of intelligence.

Either that or I’m playing a lot less than everyone else.

On good days, I think that I must be playing less than everyone else.  My friend told me that to boost my self-esteem.  “Mel, you just play it less than everyone else.”  Do I?  Once she told me that I’m playing it less than everyone else, I considered playing it more.  I mean, however much I’m playing, increase it… ten-fold. (Yes, I chose to make the jump a multiple of ten so the math would be easy to do in my head.)  If I’m playing it a half hour every day… I need to increase that to 300 minutes or… crap… there’s that math again… 60 minutes in an hour… so that’s 5 hours.  5 hours.  I need to essentially get a job playing Candy Crush if I’m going to keep up at all since it takes me so much longer than the average human being to pass a level.

I’m only somewhat being tongue-in-cheek about this.

On bad days, I think that I must be playing it the same amount, except I am stupid.

Today is July 4th, a day of freedom (at least here in America).  I’m going to spend it relaxing.  Which means reading books and going to the park with the kids and maybe… just maybe… beating Level 92.  Because by fuck I am stuck on Level 92 and I really really really can’t figure out how to solve this one — if you have any ideas, please tell me.  Just don’t tell me that you’ve jumped to Level 920**.

* I just Googled Tommy-D, whose name has been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, and he looks like a really successful, smart guy now.  Not like an embodiment of the zeitgeist at all.  I think it’s because he’s shaved off his straggly, pot-leaf-studded beard.

** Please also don’t tell me that Candy Crush only goes up to 300-something levels.  It was just so much easier, mathematically, to stick a zero on the end of 92 and make your hypothetical level 10 times mine.  Take pity on my feeble mind.

This is obviously for the other people playing the game.  Everyone not playing Candy Crush, feel free to ignore.  And for the love, if you haven’t started playing, DON’T.  I really wish I hadn’t started this.

So.

How the hell does one win this level without combining the doughnut (that brown ball with the coloured flecks) with the striped candy?  When I can do that, it obviously clears a large chunk of the board.  But I’ve only gotten that a few times.  Is there any way to win this without getting the doughnut/striped candy combo?  Should I try to clear the top first or start at the bottom so I get the cascade effect?  Or should I be aiming to clear the chocolate while it’s still contained by the licorice, or clear the whipped cream from the middle before I tackle something else?

With every other level, the priority has been clear.  With this one, I can’t tell what to worry about first.

How the hell do I pass this level?  I’ve been on it since I wrote that last post about level 70.

I am now understanding that this is going to happen every few boards, and I hopefully won’t waste your eyes bemoaning this game.  But this is for my health.  I’ve told Josh that I’m trying to stave off Alzheimer’s after reading about this study.  I’m hoping Candy Crush counts since it is about spatial relations and strategy and… OKAY, I know this isn’t really that mentally stimulating, but please, for the love, I need to pass this level.  And then I promise not to bother you until I reach the next one I can’t pass.