Mobile Game Caused Tipping Point

Everyone in America thought that Canadians were all pleasant, law-abiding people who got along with their neighbors. (Well, all of them except for Rob Ford, that is.) But a 51 year old man in Saskatoon has turned that stereotype upside-down after he shot and killed his neighbor’s dog. What’s more, the judge at his trial ruled that Candy Crush was at least partly to blame for Eugene Krawchuk’s overreaction. If this seems like a stretch, we have to sympathize–but wait until you’ve heard the whole story.

It seems that Krawchuk had been having an ongoing dispute with his neighbors, the Price family, for quite some time. Tensions flared after the Prices brought home a St. Bernard puppy named Bentley. Krawchuck testified during his trial that in April 2013, he was out on his property when he discovered Bentley attacking his livestock. Therefore, the defense claimed, Krawchuk justifiably shot and killed the “vicious” animal, despite teenage Lianne Price’s attempts to stop him.

But after the full story came out in court, the judge found several reasons to doubt Krawchuk’s word. In addition to the existing bad blood between him and the Price family, it was also reported that Bentley’s trespassing may have interrupted a game of Candy Crush Krawchuk was playing. Moreover, Krawchuk was found to have loaded his rifle before seeing Bentley on his property, meaning he was acting with intent to kill the dog regardless. Even worse, the Prices reported that Krawchuk tracked Bentley with his gun as the dog ran in front of Lianne, so that the young girl was actually in his sights.

After deliberation, the judge stated he did not believe Krawchuk’s claim that Bentley was chasing his animals. Krawchuk was found guilty of shooting a dog without a lawful excuse and of possessing a firearm without a proper license. He escaped a greater charge of careless use of a firearm, to the Price family’s disappointment. Nevertheless, the family told CTV that they were satisfied with the trial’s outcome.

Would you grab a gun if some mutt interrupted your game of Candy Crush? We don’t think Candy Crush was at fault here, but it certainly seems like an interrupted level could have been the final straw. We get annoyed enough when someone we actually like disturbs our crushing time. Let us know what you think of this case in the comments section below!

The Real Reason We Can’t Stop Playing

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been playing Candy Crush Saga for just one day or for the past year–after completing the very first level, you’ve had a taste of the obsession we all feel for these little chunks of digital sugar. There’s something about King’s brightly-colored grids of candy that makes Candy Crush addiction more potent than, well, actual candy. But what is it about this particular game that’s got our heads buzzing all the time? Science has the answer, as Anthony Carboni explains in a segment for Discovery News:

If you can’t access the video or were too busy making a color bomb in another window to pay attention to what Anthony was talking about, we’ll explain. The most basic way that Candy Crush addiction begins is by giving us a rush of dopamine, the chemical that our brains process in order to feel pleasure. When a lot of happy music plays and the level goes into Sugar Crush, we feel happy and accomplished. We want to replicate that feeling again–so we play another level. And another, and another, until it’s two thirty in the morning. Anthony notes in the video that by ramping up the difficulty, Candy Crush makes losing “hurt” us, but the truth is a little more complicated than that. In fact, since easy levels are placed in between particularly difficult ones, King adjusts the difficulty up and down to remind us how good winning feels right after we feel discouraged.

But that’s not really unique to Candy Crush–lots of games have some sort of risk/reward system. Basically any game that tells us we’ve done a good job after completing a level, mission, or whatever, operates on this same cycle of seeking dopamine. So Candy Crush’s “freemium” model steps in to seal the deal. King makes us want to play more to get the dopamine rush, but if we’re out of lives, we can’t play more. So we pay more than we would for a better game in order to get our “fix.” Not sweet!

How has Candy Crush addiction affected your life? Will you be making a change in your habit now that you know you’re addicted? Let us know in the comments!

It’s hard to imagine now, but King Digital Entertainment wasn’t always a juggernaut in the gaming industry. Back in 2003, it was a humble little start-up that published casual games solely on its Web site, with no aspirations toward Facebook integration or even mobile apps. At that point, co-founder Toby Rowland was content to slowly build up his brainchild and see where it could go. But in 2011, Rowland chose to leave King and sell his stake in the company for $3.1 million US. We may never know exactly why Rowland chose to leave, but it’s safe to say he’s kicking himself for doing so now that his share of King is worth close to a billion dollars.

 

But all the money in the world can’t compare to doing what you truly love for a living, so we’d like to think that Rowland is happy nevertheless. What is his new project, you may ask? Well, it’s not what you might expect. After leaving King, Rowland founded the educational website MangaHigh.com, where he currently serves as the company’s CEO. MangaHigh takes a unique perspective to teaching mathematics to grade school students by incorporating traditional lesson plans into a series of engaging web-based video games.

The idea of using games to teach kids unappealing topics is certainly nothing new–anyone who has ever played the Oregon Trail or Math Blaster series of games as a child can attest to this fact. But MangaHigh’s line of games is diverse enough to keep kids interested across a huge range of topics, from shapes and basic algebra to complex data and algorithms. The games are genuinely fun, too–even the super easy ones that teach addition and subtraction are brightly colored and involve ice cream (the punnily named Sundae Times), and others are genuinely action-packed, like Sigma Prime (above), in which you must defend the Earth from invaders by using ballistic factorials.

It’s a far cry from Candy Crush, and certainly not as lucrative, but we’re confident that MangaHigh is Rowland’s way of doing what he loves while making a difference in kids’ lives. These games might not be NP-hard, but they’re more than enough for the students they teach. Hopefully Rowland will make more than enough money from this venture to make his early departure from King worthwhile.

For more on this exciting development, read Jacob Aron’s article on New Scientist.

Inside the Legion of Female Fans

It’s no secret that Candy Crush is a worldwide gaming phenomenon without peer–just ask any of its 57 million daily players on Facebook. And we’ve long suspected that the game is especially popular among the older female population, but to be honest, that’s mostly because we get extra life requests from our mothers and their friends more often than anyone else during the day. But as it turns out, women really are Candy Crush’s biggest fans, and by no small margin either.

According to the Daily Mail, women between the ages of 25 and 55 are by far the most loyal demographic among Candy Crush players, a bit of data that can be attributed to a number of factors. For one, women who have to divide their time between childcare and a full-time job are in desperate need of a distraction from the stress that fills their day-to-day lives. Since Candy Crush requires a the player to devote all of his or her attention to the task at hand in order to advance, there’s no room in the conscious mind for thoughts of other commitments or stressors, leading to a period of calm for even the most frantic worker. It also doesn’t hurt that the game’s visuals and soundtrack are exceptionally soothing, inducing happiness and relaxation all by themselves.

But all these are factors that can get someone hooked, no matter what age group or gender identity they associate themselves with. According to Professor Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit,

“Candy Crush is one of those gender-neutral games….Unlike so many online games, it doesn’t involve killing, fighting or strong male characters or highly sexualized female characters.” Source: The Daily Mail

Taking a look at the state of video games as a whole, it’s virtually impossible not to see Prof. Griffiths’ point. The vast majority of games made since the 1980s either involve ultraviolent action or impossible standards of female sexuality, usually both. Those that avoid these unfortunate tropes are generally given little to no attention by the male-centric industry. One 23-year-old London resident told the Arab News that she enjoyed Candy Crush, but emphatically stated that she was “not a gamer.” Candy Crush and similarly designed casual games may be a huge step toward the democratization of modern gaming.