To Block, or to Crib, That is the Question

tangytuesday

If you are on Facebook,  you’d be knowing that there are two types of people out there on this social networking site : Candy_Crush

  • Gamers : The ones who play Facebook games viz Candy Crush Saga, FarmVille, Mafia Wars etc
  • Non-gamers : The ones who hate these games and gamers with a vengeance.

I have played FarmVille, Hidden Chronicles, day and night for 3 years, non-stop. But then almost 3 years ago, one fine day, I gave up on playing these addictive games just on a whim and since then, there’s no looking back at these virtual farms or finding hidden items in the British Kitchen or Tut’s Tomb. I have been in both these categories, though I don’t hate these games and gamers with a vengeance! And that’s because, I can empathize with these gamers.

These Facebook games are social games i.e. you can’t play them in isolation, you need a lot of friends to play with you, and you need to help each other too. And when you need gifts or ‘energy’ to play, you ask your ‘friends’. Now incidentally or intentionally, some of these game apps do not have filters. I mean, when you click to ask or send gifts/energy, a list of all Facebook friends in alphabetical order appears. Now segregating and selecting only co-gaming friends from the list of some 200-600 (or more) Facebook friends is tedious. So, a gamer selects all or let’s say 15-20 friends per request and sends the game request. So, the request goes to gaming as well as non-gaming friends.

Also some games have things-to-do like, “Invite new friends to play Dragon City and get the exclusive Chimera Dragon’. (And guess, how many new friends you need to invite… Just 200!!) Now, when one is playing  Dragon City, having that magnificent, limited edition Chimera Dragon in your Dragon City is a MUST. So, you as a dedicated and ardent gamer leave no stone unturned to get it and invite ALL the friends in your Facebook list!

Now when these game requests for gifts/energy reach the non-gamers, all hell breaks loose. The result is a deluge of  status updates on being fed-up of receiving Candy Crush or Mafia Wars or other Facebook game requests! Candy Crush is the hot favorite for both the gamers and non-gamers these days, though. Some updates are polite, some are helpless appeals and some are plain rude and even threaten to unfriend the gaming friends.facebook_game_requests_540

Now, I find these updates very amusing! Whenever, I see such updates, I wonder, why should a simple one line few words notification about a game annoy or irritate people so much? What could possibly happen if you received a couple of requests each day?

Then I realized, there must be some reasons for we have so many people getting upset about receiving these unwanted game requests. May be the pings of these game requests on their smartphones distracts them and wastes their time and in turn drains the battery of the phone. Or may be they were expecting to see a notification about the number of ‘Likes’ or comments on their latest update or picture or link and all they get to see is a useless, game request! Pretty valid reasons actually, to be irked about, you may say!

Now, if you are upset or annoyed about something, what’s the best course of action? To have a crib fest on your status update or to find a solution to it?

If you type, “How to stop receiving game requests on Facebook”, Google the God, provides about 25,30,000 results in 0.31 seconds!! I wonder, why this option is never explored. Also, a little bit of scouting the Facebook settings can give you that Eureka! moment!

But then we all are different, I mean the gamers as well as the non-gamers. We all have different needs and act differently too! Also I believe, everybody has a right to be who they are. We cannot force others to behave differently if they disagree with us. And the reason why we are all different is to allow us to; to keep learning about each other so we can keep working with each other and live with one another.

So, while gamers should play the games that they love and enjoy, the non-gamers should do what gives them peace and happiness… a crib fest or hit block app!

PS : For those who have no time or inclination to explore the Google links or scout the Facebook settings… To block the unwanted game requests, Go to Settings → Blocking → Block Apps → Type the name of the app to be blocked!! Yes, it’s that simple!