Student Corner Let's forget mobile game

By Lee Soo-bee

“Anipang,” a smartphone game, has caught on big time. About 70 percent of smartphone users have this game application on their phones and are in danger of becoming addicted to it.

Most of my friends play this game during their breaks at school. Even stars on TV talk about it on some programs.

But it’s so harmful that some people say it has to be put on a list of games to be shutdown. However, this claim may add fuel to an already overheated controversy.

How is it the nation’s top game? The intriguing game is made by Sundaytoz and provided by KaKao Talk, Korea’s most popular mobile messaging service.

There are 49 cartoon animals on a screen. The objective it is to line up three identical images of cartoon animals randomly shown on the screen by flipping them with a finger.

But the number of “hearts” needed to play the game is limited. A heart can be produced by waiting for 5 minutes or receiving it from other players or inviting non-players onto their Kakao Talk list.

This simple game is causing cases of addiction. It’s thought that the main reason for this is the limited opportunity to play the game and the ranking of the players.

I have also played the game before. The first time I tried it, I wasn’t absorbed in it. However, noticing how low my ranking was, I became competitive. When I spent all of my hearts, I became fretful and kept checking to see if they were restored.

I finally became one of those people who bother friends by sending them messages in order to get hearts. I can say this is a cunning business strategy by the game’s manufacturer.

Causing players to become addicted is the hidden intention behind this fun game. In this sense, the scheme has succeeded and most players are totally into it, wasting most of their time meaninglessly fiddling with their phones.

Looking from another side, there are others who are troubled by many inconsiderate players. Non-players fall scapegoats to Anipang’s users who want hearts. To avoid irritating messages, they have to download another application.

In addition, Anipang alienates non-players when everybody else plays and talks about it. It even negatively affects the relationship of both players and non-players.

More problematic is that the excessive absorption may harm our health. Looking at a smartphone for a long time obviously damages our eyes.

Experts say that staring at the screen for a long time causes eye problems such as dry eye syndrome. Worse, we can become addicted to the game and obsessed about getting the best score in spite of ourselves.

Anipang incites users to play it obsessively. Some greedy people even take advantage of others to get hearts. Those thoughtless people sometimes ruin the good culture of the game.

As a game becomes more popular, the side effects become more prevalent. More troublesome is that we just dismiss these bad influences.

Moreover, “Dragon Flight” and “The Game of Everyone,” which are smartphone games provided by Kakao Talk, represent a similar phenomena to Anipang. There are many attractive games that will take over if Anipang loses its popularity.

So I think more drastic measures to eliminate the side effects caused by these addictive games should be taken not only by the government but by all smartphone users.

We have to be cautious to make sure that we don’t become addicted to this game.

The writer is a first-year student at Gimhae Girls’ High School in South Gyeongsang Province. She can be reached at lsbhy@naver.com.