CrackBerry Fans Struggle With Second Addiction: BrickBreaker

For Meghan McGuire, a lawyer from Chicago, the uproar over texting while driving hit a nerve.

Not that she is guilty of that particular recklessness — she does not compose text messages at high speeds, she said. But she had been indulging her own mobile obsession.

She was playing “BrickBreaker,” the profoundly unsophisticated ball-and-paddle game bundled with every BlackBerry.

“I was only doing it at red lights and when I was stuck in traffic jams,” McGuire said. “After a while I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I am crazy.’ ”

While “BrickBreaker” may not be a social menace (at least if played while parked), the game is still having its way with a good portion of the obsessive BlackBerry-toting population. “I used to play before bed and fall asleep imagining the moves I could have made,” said McGuire, who hasn’t owned a gaming console since the Atari 2600 and cannot tell “Grand Theft Auto” from “Gears of War.”

“My boyfriend would get annoyed because I would wake up before him and start playing, and he’d be, like, ‘Stop clicking!’ ”

Like “Solitaire” and “Free Cell” in the 1990s, “BrickBreaker” is little more than a giveaway on a popular business device.

But as BlackBerrys become more popular — they account for more than 20 percent of the smart-phone market, according to a 2009 study by Forrester Research — there are signs “BrickBreaker” has grown into a global time suck.

The first-ever “BrickBreaker” tournament is being held next month on Long Island (Dina, Ali and Cody Lohan teamed up for the announcement at a news conference in July). On social networking sites, including Twitter, there is a steady stream of often delirious chatter in a variety of languages about the game.

On Facebook, more than 150 groups are now dedicated to the game, like BrickBreaker Anonymous and You Think I’m Doing Something Important, but I’m Really Playing BrickBreaker.

Bloggers who have written guides to the game say they are drawing big traffic numbers from all over the world. Carlo Maglinao, author of Techbays, a technology blog, says a series of posts last spring on how to play the game received more than 100,000 views — by far his most popular posts — and continue to get more than 500 hits a day.

The game has long been the secret shame among executives, the original users of the BlackBerry. Joel I. Klein, chancellor of New York City schools, told The New York Times in March that he was a recovering “BrickBreaker” addict who once scored close to 5 million points.

Jeff Peters, an account manager for a major telecommunications company in Houston, uninstalled the game in February after he found himself playing it during sales meetings. “It just became ridiculous,” said Peters (high score: about 600,000). “I just decided it was enough, and my life has been freer ever since.”

Mitch Weber, an anchor at a Fox TV affiliate in Topeka, Kan., recently tweeted, “Watching Meagan play ‘brick breaker’ on her phone for the 100th time.’’

He was referring to his co-anchor, Meagan Farley, who, he said, plays the game on set during commercial breaks.

And Ian Gomez (high score: 400,000), an actor who appears in the coming series “Cougar Town” on ABC and in movies like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” said he has been caught playing during dinner parties given by his wife, the actress Nia Vardalos.

“I’d be sitting outside the circle of guests, and they’d be like, ‘What are you doing over there?’ ” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘Just one more level, and then I’ll be a social animal.’ ”

The game itself hardly seems worthy of obsession. Ian Bogost, a video game researcher and designer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in an interview that “BrickBreaker” is a poor-quality “Breakout” clone, referring to the 1970s arcade game.

The player uses the phone’s trackball to move a paddle across the bottom of the screen, bouncing a ball into stacks of “bricks” that disappear when they are struck. Breaking particular bricks yields powers — the ability to catch the ball, say, or shoot the bricks — and each successive board becomes more complex.

The application is also notoriously buggy. The ball will occasionally disappear from the screen, or fall through bricks that should be impenetrable. YouTube is filled with videos of angry players providing evidence of high-scoring games abandoned because of such defects.

Protesters take to YouTube, perhaps, because it is unclear who created the game: Research in Motion, the company that makes the BlackBerry, does not disclose the names of developers behind applications, and declined to comment for this article. But Plazmic, a content development company that Research in Motion acquired in 2001, holds the copyright.

Gaming experts say simplicity is “BrickBreaker’s” most addictive element, the promise that mastery of the next level is never more than 10 to 15 minutes away.

“What you’re trying to do with casual games is present the player with something that they immediately sense is both achievable and a challenge,” said Garth Chouteau, a spokesman with PopCap games, which makes popular online games like “Bejeweled” and “Zuma.” “This is something I can do and obtain some small sense of accomplishment.”

PopCap, whose site had more than 3.6 million unique visitors in August and whose games have been downloaded more than 10 million times, estimates the casual games market at more than 200 million people; 40 percent of them are white-collar workers, the company says, and 21 percent play on mobile devices.

That last number, Bogost said, holds the key to why “BrickBreaker’’ is an even more pervasive time-waster than “Solitaire’’ once was: You don’t have to be at your desk to play it.

Technology does move on, and “BrickBreaker” may soon feel as dated as “Minesweeper.” The newest BlackBerrys come bundled with several other games, providing other diversions.

Bill Kelly, a partner in a Manhattan law firm who used to play “BrickBreaker” to calm his nerves during deliberations, said he has stopped because his new BlackBerry has a poker game that he prefers (and because a nephew deleted his best “BrickBreaker” game, 1.2 million).

McGuire, the Chicago lawyer, has stopped playing, too. “After three years of BlackBerrys, I have moved on to an iPhone,” she wrote in an e-mail message.

“My breakup with ‘BrickBreaker’ was rough, but I am getting more and more used to it every day,’’ she continued. “Also, I am now a safer driver.”



The New York Times

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