Miss Pepper Panic Junkie

I count myself as a gamer, though one on the very bottom rung. Not the kind that bemoans the practices of EA, or whose ears prick up at the mention of Steam sales, mind you. I only know titles like "Assassin's Creed," "Word of Warcraft," "Uncharted," and "Red Dead Redemption" by reputation. I've watched my SO play through the "Portal" and "Mass Effect" games the way I watched by brother play through Mario installments when I was a kid. I appreciate the artistry and evolution of video games as a medium, but personally I stick to the very basic puzzle games. All I was ever interested in playing as a kid was Tetris.

So as an adult, my favorite time-wasters are casual games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga. And then there's the current one I'm obsessed with, Pepper Panic. The game mechanics for all of them are very similar. You match the gems or candies or peppers into rows of three or more to clear them from the screen. Some combinations give you boosters or result in neat-looking effects. Pepper Panic's gimmick is that you can set off big chain reactions to rack up points more quickly. By itself, it's no more satisfying to play than the later versions of Bejeweled or Candy Crush Saga, but there's the little matter of how I'm playing Pepper Panic.

Europe-based gaming company King specializes in these time-wasters, and is the producer of Candy Crush Saga, Pepper Panic, and dozens of other games. They're the biggest game producer for Facebook, and also have their own site, King.com. Once you sign up, you can access virtual pinball machines, bowling, pool, card games, and several other variations on the puzzle matching game. Like many of these sites, they offer free versions of many games, and incentivize the user to pay for access to premium content. I first went to King.com trying to find an alternative way to play Candy Crush Saga, which is only available through Facebook or mobile apps. No luck. King.com only offers the older version of the game, Candy Crush, which has the same basic mechanics but none of the carefully designed and progressively more difficult levels to play through.

Still, the bare bones version was better than nothing. I stuck around on King.com to play Candy Crush. And eventually I noticed the progress meter at the top of the page, telling me how many jewels I'd earned. It turns out that you can unlock features on the site by playing the King games to earn the site's form of currency, jewels. Play a game once, earn a jewel. Beat someone in a tournament game, earn two to five jewels. Play in a progressive tournament game, and earn up to 64 jewels if you beat opposing players six times in a row. Achieve a certain score threshold in a game, and earn more jewels - five, ten, twenty, thirty, and fifty depending on how high the score. Paying for a membership not only unlocked features, but sped up the rate of jewel collection.

And to my chagrin, it was the damn progress bar that got me. The accomplishments are meaningless, but I found myself working to hit each new jewel threshold. I get inexplicable psychological pleasure out of collecting achievements and leveling up, so I kept looking at the jewel count and trying to figure out ways to make my totals increase faster. I played through most of the other games on the site to collect the easiest achievements for them. Some games were easier than others, or had more opportunities for jewel collection. The most popular games offer Jackpot options. It's a tournament you can enter multiple times, and those with the highest top scores in the end walk away with a piece of a large jackpot of jewels, determined by how many people are playing for them. I wasn't good enough at Candy Crush to get much out of the Jackpots, but I was pretty good at Pepper Panic. With a little luck, I could come out of the Jackpot tournaments with 100-200 jewels at a time.

And this is why I've been playing Pepper Panic while watching "The Daily Show" for the past week. And while watching "Orange is the New Black." And while I'm waiting for the dryer cycle. And right before bed. I've gotten obsessed with similar games before so I know that this isn't going to last. I'll get bored enough with the game eventually that the progress bar will stop being such an incentive. I've nearly hit the jewel threshold that gives you the same features that a paying user would have, and they're really not much to talk about - fancier avatars, digital bling, and access to a few more games that look an awful lot like the free ones.

I should mention that you can play some of the games on King.com for actual money, including Candy Crush and Pepper Panic. There are versions of the Jackpot that would award a few dollars as well as jewels to the winners, but you have to pay to play. So not all of my fellow Pepper Panic addicts are playing for solely psychological rewards. I however, am hooked on the totally intangible gratification.
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