When you do theater there is a lot of down time. Like the military one of the mottos is “hurry up and wait.”
With technology being the way it is that time is often filled by cell phones (most actors don’t want to carry around something as large as a laptop or a tablet). Needless to say over the last few weeks I have seen countless hours of Solitaire, Words With Friends, Facebook and Twitter.
The one that particularly amazes me is Candy Crush.
As I watched one of the actors play in a space of a few minutes he spent over $5 on the game. According to a recent article [1]Candy Crush players make the company over $633,000 a day (or $230 million a year).
That’s a lot of money spent at the push of a button.
Companies spend billions of dollars in development trying to figure out how to get us to spend billions of dollars without thinking. In an era of one click buying a song, movie or television, the slight twinge of pain we get from spending cash has been replaced by the non-commitment of a button.
I’m not sure what the psychology of the game is (as a non-player I can’t understand) but money is money. Whether you choose to spend $5 on fast food or $5 on games, what is the quickest $5 you spend? And have you found a way not to spend it?