Crushing it

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I recently reached a milestone in life that few others can brag about reaching — I made it to Level 10,000 in Candy Crush Saga. I’ll pause while you pick your jaw up off the floor.

That’s right! I have completed 10,000 different little puzzles that involve matching little digital candies to earn the points and lights and sounds that you are rewarded with for doing do.

It’s kind of a big deal… OK, maybe it’s not.

But I do enjoy the game. It’s fun, it makes me use my brain, and I can play anywhere, since I have my phone with me pretty much all the time. And it’s free — well, as long as you can resist spending real money on boosters and upgrades, which I can, because I am cheap and too proud to admit to the game that a level is too hard and I need help beating it.

I play other games on my phone too, mostly Sudoku and word

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puzzle games, like where they give you seven letters and you see how many words you can find using those letters in 60 seconds or whatever. That’s where I am in the world of video games, after decades of rescuing the princess or killing all the zombies or winning the WWE Championship over the last few decades.

It’s good to have some little distraction like that to relax or kill time. If the phone games aren’t your thing, you might do crossword puzzles or crochet or put little model cars together. Back in the day, my father-in-law had an old Nintendo that he used exclusively to play Monopoly against the computer opponents, since none of us would play tha actual game with (since Monopoly is unquestionably the absolute worst board game of all time — I will fight you on this).

I said all of that to say this: Currently, two different lawsuits have been filed in Jonesboro by the parents of two children who they say are “addicted” to video games.

These kids, the suits claim, have been victimized by the video game industry into spending money on these games and such. Look, I won’t say video games can’t be addictive, but if your kid is playing them and spending money on them to the point of it being unhealthy behavior… umm, that’s kind of on you, isn’t it? Maybe take some parental control?