I was thinking recently about how I went cold turkey on the Clash of Clans.
I started playing this freemium mobile app in November 2012 –about three months after it hit Apple’s App Store. I have four accounts. I would play on three different devices: an iPad mini, and iPhone six, and a Google Pixel 2. One day, I just didn’t want to even look at the game anymore.
I wondered about that, and this is the first time I’ve tried to articulate what happened there. Months have passed since the last time I played. I don’t even think I’ve played in 2019.
I played that game a lot. I put in a ridiculous amount of hours. I couldn’t tell you how much money I spent, and I have no intentions of ever finding out — unless I decide at some point to discuss mobile app addiction. Honestly, I really don’t want to know how much money.
I think that I started to feel the resentment from the time that I was devoting to it not so much the money. Ever so often, I’ll look at my own iPhone 6 and iPad mini, and I think about the game. In those moments I’m reminded of that really shameful feeling of resentment. To be frank, I’m reminded of feeling like sh*t.
I thought about selling the accounts, but I just don’t want to have anything to do with that world right now. It used to be a really cool escape, but in a way, it kind of had the same satisfaction as eating half of a large pizza. Ya know?
I don’t know. It makes me think of overeating pizza, because time is just way too valuable to trade it on something that doesn’t give you anything in return — like most of the ingredients in restaurant pizza.