Candy Crush---Game Addiction Happiness

An annotation for Eliana Dockterman's "Candy Crush Saga: The Science Behind Our Addiction"
Candy Crush---Game Addiction Happiness

          According to the article published in TIME Magazine's technology and media section, which was written by Eliana Dockterman, it simply analyze the players' addiction within the game into several different aspect of discussion. On the one hand, from the interview with Tommy Palm, who is one of the game's designers, Dockterman then realized what tactics King (the creator company of Candy Crush) used. While on the other hand, Dockterman also called a few psychology experts and players to understand the back-story on why Kings' tactics worked so well to make Candy Crush so irresistible.

          "Perhaps the most genius element of Candy Crush is its ability to make you long for it."(Dockterman) Since you can only get five chances, or say, lives at a time, thus, when you run out of lives, you will have to wait for another thirty-minute increment to continue the play. Owning to the fact that the game actually constrains its players from getting more lives, it urges its player even more to yearn after it. And also, that effortless constraint test the humanity of which people have a stronger desire to thing they aren't able to get in reach. Another reason that deals with humanity is that human are suckers for sweet talks. Even though we all know the truth, which “Good advice jars on the ear.”, and "Bitter pills may have wholesome effects." But still, we tend to be hoodwink by the flattering speech. For example, once you made more than one matches of the candy role in one move, words will pop up on your screen accompanied by a voice that says, "Sweet" or either "Delicious" consider how many combos you complete. Dr. Kimberly Young, a pioneering expert on internet and gaming addiction, called this a "Positive reward". In addition, she believed that it is an essential feedback for player immersion, for that people will feel better about himself or herself.

          Besides, for the humanity part King deals with their tactics, there is also psychology factors they managed to affect. For example, many people might questioned," Why choosing candy instead of other symbols, such as biscuit, fruit, or even cute animals?" or questions like, "While there is so many similar games available, why Candy Crush?" Palm gave a direct response to those questions, "Many people have had a very positive feeling about Candy since they were kids." Thanks to the happy memories with candy during childhood, players therefore coincidentally tied the positive association and pleasures derive from eating into the game, and moreover, it lead out their inner child. With Psalm later on continued, "And it (candy) makes for a real nice visual game board with a lot of color and interesting shapes." For the homepage seemed like a traditional Candy Land Board, and with the game pieces designed as candies, players incline to believe they are transported into an entire Candy Land experience, which is far away from reality.  

 

Reference:

Dockterman, Eliana. "Candy Crush Saga: The Science Behind Our Addiction"TIME.  

         15 November 2013. <http://time.com/>

Clarify my Thoughts

      Honestly, before the teacher and student conference, I was not pretty sure about my topic for the issue paper. On the one hand, the first topic I wrote as first draft was ”The relationship of happiness and the society”, which mainly discussed about what happiness means to each one of us in our daily life. However, the later on theory researches I did on the field of “happiness” show more consideration between the individual matters with happiness, rather than the whole society. Thus, it seemed that I am leading the ship off course. On the other hand, after noticing the fact that to discuss happiness in the philosophy way was not what I want, I got the idea of changing topic.

     However, after so many weeks of writing about ”happiness”, and the discussion whether with classmates during classes or with teacher in the meeting, the problems I mentioned above previously did not seem so unsolvable.

     Firstly, I thought I was writing something too far away from my original issue. Yet, the truth is, by skimming through the research I had done, there is actually a pattern, which could be follow. I said that my annotation focus more on individual relation with happiness, but from the division of different aspect of happiness, which was quoted from Aristotle, the first and second annotation mentioned qualified explanation on pleasure. By the examples given in each work, there is also a clear notice that I talked about pleasureness more on the concerns of virtual reality and sensations. Then, why not write about game addictions?

     If we look at game addictions, there is actually various situations for us to probe into. For example, why does a person get addicted to video games? Why does winning maters so much in games? Why sensation will people get? How long will the sensation last? Questions involves in all kinds of field are revealed in this simple incident “game addiction”.

     Therefore, after the conference, despite of solving my problems in writing the issue paper, I also realized my own defect. I had to be more curious. Though observing others from a distance will not need to undertake or add so much personal feelings. Sometimes it seemed a bit disconnected from the world and others (for instance, my behavior in the interview with foreign student). But I am glad that I have the chance to notice this problem of myself whether during the expository writing course or the presentation and communication course.