Candy Crushed
On the first of July, Candy Crush wished me a happy 12th anniversary. I began playing not long after upgrading my phone and starting a new job where the commute was long enough to be boring on its own but too short to get into a book.
Three weeks after that anniversary, I stopped playing altogether. I’d reached Level 19,618, a handful of episodes from the end at the time. I had a few boosters and some gold in the bank but I was done. The reason? I read that Candy Crush developers were being laid off in favour of the AI tools they helped build. I’m fairly disparaging about AI in general, particularly large language models and art tools that steal work to train on and destroy the planet to compute, and I could not abide that people were going to lose their livelihoods for it. Yes, there are some good uses of AI, but making new levels of an unnecessary game isn’t one of them. And so I went cold turkey.
It was not the first time I’d done so. At around the 1,000-level mark I got so frustrated by tornado blockers that I quit for three years. It was only when I was switching phones and trying to decide which apps to keep that I tried again. The tornado blockers had been phased out and I was back in the game.
I didn’t pay anything until about 10,000 levels in. For those who don’t know, Candy Crush Saga operates on a freemium model where you can play for free but in-app purchases could get you boosters and special events, like unlimited lives for a period. I actually had it in my head for a long time that playing with boosters was a kind of cheating.
I don’t have an addictive personality, so paying a little now and again didn’t trouble me. Candy Crush provided a break between tasks and the fact that it only gave five lives at a time meant once the lives were done, I easily segued to whatever I was supposed to be doing next.
And then the pandemic hit. I became bored more easily and often played Candy Crush, Lily’s Garden and Two Dots in rotating succession to kill time between work, doomscrolling and chores. I then made it a goal to reach the end, to be one of the top players in the world. (Once upon a time, around the 3,000-level mark, I reached the end. It was a temporary state, seeing as it was an ongoing saga, but I felt I’d achieved something for a short while, until King added new levels the following week.)
When I heard the news of the developers being made redundant, I’d just bought a weeklong special pass so I resolved to play to 20,000, or maybe the end of the levels. But then I realised I had nothing to lose and everything to gain if I quit as soon as the pass period was over. And so I did. Level 19,618 is as good a level to end on as any other.
Two weeks on and I haven’t missed it much. Instead of half-playing, half-watching some light entertainment, I watch TV and I catalogue my zines, or tidy my room, or take inventory of my tea collection. I probably browse Reddit more than I should. I started playing Connections and Real Bird Fake Bird to break up my day. I haven’t increased my time in other games (Two Dots, Tents and Trees, Words) to make up for it. Which tells me I never needed it anyway. And I won’t put up with AI tools becoming the means to replace willing labour.
