Last night my Panda Jam app stopped working. This is a tragedy. How am I supposed to save the panda cubs from
the evil monkey and return them to their mother? I had three lives left! I
could have SAVED THEM.
For those of you healthy souls out there who don’t play Panda Jam, Candy Crush, Words with Friends, or I’maddictedVille all of these game apps work basically the same way. You download this app for free and play a good deal levels or lives for free. At this point, you’re hooked. You can’t stop playing these games. So what’s 99 cents in the long run? Nothing. So you buy the next set of levels and when those are done the next. Now if that wasn’t a rip off enough, most of these games have a limit on how many “lives” you have. Panda Jam for example has five. Every time you fail to save the panda cubs from the evil monkey you lose a life. Then when you lose all five lives you have to stop playing. Every half an hour the game refills one life. But you can’t wait a half an hour. You have to save the panda cubs! You have two options you can pay ten bucks for more lives or you can beg your Facebook friends to give you more lives. This is marketing genius. You pay up, or you help provide Panda Jam with more customers.
There is one more way to avoid paying, or to hide from your Facebook friends that you have a gaming problem. You download more apps. For example my original addiction started with Words with Friends. The rationality behind it was, “I’m an English major, this game is good for my vocabulary”. That argument lost its validity when I started using words like “Hm”, “Qi”, and “Jo” to score points. How in God’s name is “Hm” a word? As time went on I found that my real life friends no longer wanted to play with me because I would play two letter words and rack up 70 points. I decided it was time to move on. That’s when I met “Candy Crush”. Candy Crush is a hugely popular gaming app that I see all of my “Junior” Facebook Friends playing. I would even get requests from them to get lives. So I took up playing it. I still didn’t want anyone to know how low I have sunk to play these games. I still feel hugely embarrassed anytime people find out I use to be addicted to FarmVille. I was so hooked on to FarmVille that when I went away for a week I planted crops that took a week to grow and asked my friend to feed my “animals”.
So I kept my addiction to Candy Crush private. I see people posting “I beat level 12 in Candy Crush” and I’m like… “I’m on level 147”. You’d think that is would stop me. It didn’t. I continued to play. Even when I ran out of lives I did not turn away. I simply would turn to other games and wait for the first life to refill itself. That’s when I met Panda Jam. I downloaded it while feeling abandoned by Candy Crush. It’s the most frustrating and annoying game on the planet. These panda cubs are trapped on the top of this multi-colored brick wall. You have to match three or more colors in order to break the wall and slowly move the panda cubs down. Once they reach the ground they run to momma and you beat the level. If it only were that simple. You also have to get enough points to make it to the next level. You may free Panda Cub in one move but you lose the level because you don’t have enough points. Then the evil monkey pops up and says in a very condescending way, “You must plan your every move.” Thank you evil monkey I will keep that in mind. In addition to gaining enough points to win a level you also have to win enough points to move on to the next set of levels. This means replaying several already won levels attempting to get to new levels.
Now, if you’re a healthy employed person you’re probably thinking “You put way to much thought into this, get a life”. But people, I can only get a life if you accept my Panda Jam request on Facebook! Being unemployed I have made a schedule around these games. I wake up in the morning and play them until I lose all my lives. Then I job hunt all day… of course every half an hour I have to stop and save the panda cubs or beat the next level in Candy Crush. It’s a vicious cycle. Even if I do manage to get really involved in a respectable project my phone dings with reminders. “Your Shark is Hungry! Feed him!” or “Dman C. has sent you a drawing!” or “ALL YOUR PANDA LIVES HAVE BEEN RESTORED COME PLAY!” It doesn’t take long to abandon what you’re doing to make the notifications stop, then once you start, you can’t stop.
It’s sad to think that we all have these powerful computers sitting in our pockets, capable of being a postal service, library, radio, phone, bank, endless information database, or even a way to find work. But most of us use it to look at cat pictures, snapchat, or play endless games of Candy Crush. My question is, if you’re all out there playing these games, why aren’t you giving me more lives?! The whole point of this post is my panda cubs need me!
For those of you healthy souls out there who don’t play Panda Jam, Candy Crush, Words with Friends, or I’maddictedVille all of these game apps work basically the same way. You download this app for free and play a good deal levels or lives for free. At this point, you’re hooked. You can’t stop playing these games. So what’s 99 cents in the long run? Nothing. So you buy the next set of levels and when those are done the next. Now if that wasn’t a rip off enough, most of these games have a limit on how many “lives” you have. Panda Jam for example has five. Every time you fail to save the panda cubs from the evil monkey you lose a life. Then when you lose all five lives you have to stop playing. Every half an hour the game refills one life. But you can’t wait a half an hour. You have to save the panda cubs! You have two options you can pay ten bucks for more lives or you can beg your Facebook friends to give you more lives. This is marketing genius. You pay up, or you help provide Panda Jam with more customers.
There is one more way to avoid paying, or to hide from your Facebook friends that you have a gaming problem. You download more apps. For example my original addiction started with Words with Friends. The rationality behind it was, “I’m an English major, this game is good for my vocabulary”. That argument lost its validity when I started using words like “Hm”, “Qi”, and “Jo” to score points. How in God’s name is “Hm” a word? As time went on I found that my real life friends no longer wanted to play with me because I would play two letter words and rack up 70 points. I decided it was time to move on. That’s when I met “Candy Crush”. Candy Crush is a hugely popular gaming app that I see all of my “Junior” Facebook Friends playing. I would even get requests from them to get lives. So I took up playing it. I still didn’t want anyone to know how low I have sunk to play these games. I still feel hugely embarrassed anytime people find out I use to be addicted to FarmVille. I was so hooked on to FarmVille that when I went away for a week I planted crops that took a week to grow and asked my friend to feed my “animals”.
So I kept my addiction to Candy Crush private. I see people posting “I beat level 12 in Candy Crush” and I’m like… “I’m on level 147”. You’d think that is would stop me. It didn’t. I continued to play. Even when I ran out of lives I did not turn away. I simply would turn to other games and wait for the first life to refill itself. That’s when I met Panda Jam. I downloaded it while feeling abandoned by Candy Crush. It’s the most frustrating and annoying game on the planet. These panda cubs are trapped on the top of this multi-colored brick wall. You have to match three or more colors in order to break the wall and slowly move the panda cubs down. Once they reach the ground they run to momma and you beat the level. If it only were that simple. You also have to get enough points to make it to the next level. You may free Panda Cub in one move but you lose the level because you don’t have enough points. Then the evil monkey pops up and says in a very condescending way, “You must plan your every move.” Thank you evil monkey I will keep that in mind. In addition to gaining enough points to win a level you also have to win enough points to move on to the next set of levels. This means replaying several already won levels attempting to get to new levels.
Now, if you’re a healthy employed person you’re probably thinking “You put way to much thought into this, get a life”. But people, I can only get a life if you accept my Panda Jam request on Facebook! Being unemployed I have made a schedule around these games. I wake up in the morning and play them until I lose all my lives. Then I job hunt all day… of course every half an hour I have to stop and save the panda cubs or beat the next level in Candy Crush. It’s a vicious cycle. Even if I do manage to get really involved in a respectable project my phone dings with reminders. “Your Shark is Hungry! Feed him!” or “Dman C. has sent you a drawing!” or “ALL YOUR PANDA LIVES HAVE BEEN RESTORED COME PLAY!” It doesn’t take long to abandon what you’re doing to make the notifications stop, then once you start, you can’t stop.
It’s sad to think that we all have these powerful computers sitting in our pockets, capable of being a postal service, library, radio, phone, bank, endless information database, or even a way to find work. But most of us use it to look at cat pictures, snapchat, or play endless games of Candy Crush. My question is, if you’re all out there playing these games, why aren’t you giving me more lives?! The whole point of this post is my panda cubs need me!
I used to be a Farmville addict ...then a Pet Society addict..then a Zombie Farm addict...but then... One day I just stopped caring about them...I am not even sure why... I still could have found time for then but I didn't feel like it... But when I was addicted it is very true...you HAD to harvest your crops and in your case thou HAVE to save those pandas...or clearly the world as we know it will end... Lol
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