Sydney Morning Journal – Emily, a 30-year-old economist, became so addicted to Candy Crush Saga, a free iPhone game, that she would lie awake at 1am imagining her finger swiping across the screen to line up rows of brightly coloured lollies. Three in a row would deliver a satisfying squelch as they burst and moved the Melbourne mother-of-two closer to the next level.
Candy Crush Saga is a simple game but the hold it has over its devoted followers is complex and incredibly strong. They are reminiscent of gamblers who can’t help but feed another $20 into a poker machine or take one more spin of the roulette wheel. For Emily, the urge to play Candy Crush Saga was so strong that she would drive to work in the morning and before getting out of the car would squeeze in a few games.
“It had completely taken over my life,” says Emily, who asked that her real name not be used. “It was taking my mental energy and interrupting my ability to go to sleep. “I would be playing instead of interacting with my children.”
However, her low point was yet to come. Walking along, with her phone out in front, fingers swiping and her gaze fixated on the screen, Emily fell down a flight of stairs. A bruised hip and smashed iPhone screen later, she went cold turkey and deleted Candy Crush Saga from her phone.
“I was pretty horrified,” she says. “I thought, ‘I’ve definitely got a problem.’ ” Months later, enough time has passed for Emily to see the funny side of her obsession. And there’s some small comfort in her knowing she wasn’t alone in her enslavement to Candy Crush Saga.
Almost 100 million people played it in 2013, a staggering number of players only exceeded by the equally eye-popping $US1.54 billion ($1.65 billion) in revenue the game generated for its developer, King Digital Entertainment. While Candy Crush is free to download, King makes its revenue from users who buy new lives and extra features.
Still, most of these developers are one hit wonders, which explains the disappointing debuts of such companies as King and Zynga on Nasdaq. Zynga developed the widely popular Facebook game Farmville, where people can pay to tend a virtual farm.
