By: Allison Ipema
Recently, there has been an explosion in Block Blast players at Delavan-Darien High School. There is a good chance that if a student is on their cell phone, they are playing this game. It is one of the newest crazes to hit the student body, but why? Why is this simple mobile game plaguing students all around the building? What makes it so addicting?
Block Blast is a free game on the App Store. It consists of an 8×8 grid in which players are to place blocks to create full rows in order to clear an area and score points. Blocks are randomly generated in groups of three, and the goal is to have enough space for each block. The premise is simple: place blocks in rows and try to earn the highest score you can. However, the game is not always as simple as it seems. A sense of strategy is involved, or else the player may quickly run out of space before the points can begin to rack up.
Some students have voiced their displeasure with the difference between Block Blast for Android and Block Blast for iPhone. Android users are forced to begin the game with preplaced blocks, which can sway the player’s chance of earning a higher score. On the other hand, iPhone users are able to start from scratch with a blank grid. Most of the Android users who were included in this investigation stated that they wished the pre-placement of blocks would be a feature removed by the developers.
Nearly all of the students contacted during my research had the game installed on their phones. In addition, in the span of collecting data, many students were playing the game during lunch and free periods. This increasingly proved how addicting the app is, and how most of the student body has gotten swept up in the trend. There was one question, however, that stuck out the most: who has the highest score?
Upon analyzing the data collected, the results showed that many students’ highest number of points resided somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000. However, there were a few outliers in which scores were way above 6,000. For example, Emma Meinen, a freshman, has garnered a total of 25,553 points. One student’s score, though, stuck out the most. It was one that nobody else within the building seemed to have surpassed. The student with the highest score in Block Blast was freshman Jeremy Johnson, with a high score of 27,909. Although he had the highest amount of points, he no longer has the app installed on his phone. In a very brief interview, I asked him why he deleted it, and if he would ever reinstall it. He responded by saying that he deleted the app because he would spend an average of two hours a day playing. He stated that he would not reinstall the game.
All in all, this basic mobile game has become a major trend within Delavan-Darien High School. But is this a trend that is to be forgotten in the near future, or is it here to stay? How much Block Blast is too much? Only time can tell, but one thing is for certain: the student body has been swept up in Block Blast’s addictive mechanics with no sign of faltering.
thecometeer