Sweet sweat

That's done it! I'm hooked again.

I wonder whether there have been any studies done on how or why certain electronic games are addictive. The most obvious example is gaming machines or poker machines. Now I would have thought the addictive thing about these is the gambling aspect - you stand to win actual money. This seems to hold up in that the people who get most addicted to them seem often to be desperate people- people on low incomes with little chance of ever getting the luxuries (or sometimes necessities) they need/want without some kind of a financial windfall. But this doesn't explain the addictive powers of some similar, non-profit-making games.

I don't find gambling for money addictive, because I'm always too aware that money is hard-earned and easy to lose. I rarely gamble at all and when I do it's always a very small amount and gambled in the full realisation that it will more than likely be lost rather than increased.

But there are certain electronic games that do have an addictive effect on me. About 7 or 8 years ago, I was introduced to Tetris. Do you remember it? All those little coloured blocks of varying shapes that fell down from the top of the screen. The object of the game was basically to fill as many rows as possible by fitting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. If you got too many of some of the odd shapes they would pile up on top of each other and once they reached the top of the screen, you were a goner. Tetris really got me in. I used to sit up till 2 or 3am staring at the computer screen, nerves on edge, trying to turn or move those pieces so as to get up to the next level. My breathing would be fast and erratic. I'd get wiped out of one game and no matter how tired I was, I couldn't resist having 'just one more turn'.

Well I eventually managed to get out of the clutches of Tetris - I think we lost it off the computer - and I really never gave it another thought until today when Daisy mentioned a game on her blog and I checked it out.

It's called Collapse and darn it if it's not a tetris-like game and after three goes I'm well on the way to being hooked again. This one's even better. It's less complicated - all the blocks are the same size and the object is simply to click on any grouping of three or more of the same colour to detonate them. This realigns the remaining blocks. Like Tetris, the game ends when any row of blocks reaches the top of the screen.

Collapse turns out to be a simplified Tetris combined with the addictive elements of pure destruction - it feels and sounds like popping balloons or bubble wrap - and tell me anyone who can resist popping bubble wrap?

For 10 minutes of mindless, joyful, childish destructiveness, I recommend it - just watch out you don't get hooked... well by for now, I'm back for another attempt at level 8!