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released in 2001, when I was only five years old, but I still remember playing, after watching my older cousin spend hours at a time on popcapgames. com playing Bejeweled, Zuma, and Peggle. I would watch patiently as she played through levels and levels of Bejeweled until she finally made a mistake and lost, at which point I would get to take a turn. Granted, my turn ended almost as soon as it began, but I still loved having my opportunity to play. When I got my first smartphone, Bejeweled was the first game I searched for and spent my limited App Store budget on. It has always been one of my favorite games because you can become a master of the game playing only 5 minutes a day. I can drop the game for days at a time and come back with my game paused on the same level. Bejeweled can get away with having more interruptibility than games like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood because the game itself keeps players coming back. They don’ t need to impose a time limit or have a cliffhanger to convince anyone that the game is worth continuing.
I remember the original Bejeweled so fondly; it seems almost sacrilegious to reinvent it in such a limiting way as Candy Crush. For me, one of the key characteristics of Bejeweled is the possibility of playing forever, so adding a limited number of lives and tempting players to spend money on it seems to go against the game’ s tradition. PopCap has been profiting for years off of the same casual computer games- Bejeweled, Peggle, Bookworm, and Zuma. Their website allows users to download these games for a one-time charge, and their transition to iPhone games mimicked that, with a one time fee to purchase the game and occasional ads within the app, but no in-app purchases. The ability to play the game without limits, without having to worry about how many lives I have left or having to invite friends to play in order to unlock new levels, is refreshing. I enjoy the fact that I can pick up my phone to play Bejeweled for a few minutes, lose track of time, and look up two hours later with no interruption, or I can choose to play in five minute bursts on my way to class. This is the epitome of what casual gaming should be- the ability to play a game of your choice at any given time, not having to wait for more lives or energy.
“ The prevalence of in-app transactions, in both Kim Kardashian:
Hollywood and mobile games in general, is a disappointing shift away from the decades-long standard of allowing players to enjoy a game for a one-time fee.”
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