Alec Baldwin, champion Words With Friendser.
Alec Baldwin, the 53 year old actor, claims he was thrown off an American Airlines flight at Los Angeles because he refused to stop playing Words with Friends on his iPhone. The game, a form of Scrabble, allows you to play multiple games at once, both with strangers and with people you know. So are the airlines being too fascist about electronic devices? Or was Baldwin actually just being obnoxious? And can you really get addicted to Words with Friends, anyway?
“Flight attendant reamed me out for playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving,” tweeted Baldwin, quoted on The Independent
“He was violent, abusive and aggressive. Yelling, screaming, very ugly. It was unsafe to keep him on board,” quoted on The Independent.
Addicts are everywhere! Tim Walker in The Independent said that actually other passengers said he’d been talking on the phone, and became angry when asked to stop. Baldwin has a history of addictive gaming, said Walker, and suggested some other famous addicts: Angelina Jolie apparently loves the game Angry Birds. Labour MP Tom Watson has a thing for Modern Warfare 3 and Portal 2; tennis player Andy Murray has a yen for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which apparently even caused his girlfriend to move out for a while. It’s not all fun and games – actress Mila Kunis was so addicted to World of Warcraft, that she had to leave the game entirely. They weren’t on a plane, though; Baldwin claims he was singled out:
“In this case, while other people were still manipulating their own phones, this one employee singled me out to put my phone away. Afterward, we still sat at the gate. I pulled out my phone again, while others did the same. Again, I was singled out by this woman in the most unpleasant of tones. I guess the fact that this woman, who had decided to make some example of me, while everyone else was left undisturbed, did get the better of me,” said Baldwin in an article on The Huffington Post.
It’s their own fault! It’s not as if gamers set out to trap people like Baldwin. Margaret Robertson, a game designer, in The Independent said that “addictive” was a “loaded word.” Words With Friends isn’t “time-consuming, demanding or visually absorbing” – but it is a chance “to really get one over on your friend.” Some games can be “therapeutic.” Others, about “jeapardy and time pressure” require such precision that you can’t think of “anything else while you play it.” Most designers don’t set out to make a game addictive – gamers “see through that.” But what they do try to make are satisfying “gaming experiences.”
The airlines are wrong, anyway. Very satisfying for Alec Baldwin, clearly. The “comically volcanic actor”, said Gawker, is now trying to explain his ejection by blaming “questionable guidelines” over devices like iPhones. American Airlines say that they were “enforcing” rules prohibiting “activating gadgets once the airplane door closes” – even if it’s at the gate. Baldwin has suggested that you should go “overseas” for “more liberty”. Kazakhstan’s Air Astana is “basically a free for all,” for instance. American Airlines should take heed from Baldwin. There hasn’t been a single accident from “interference from an electronic device”, and tha ban is based on “an inconclusive 2006 study.” Apparently the pilots are allowed to used iPads, which backs up Baldwin considerably.
He’s got support! Sarah Anne Hughes on the Celebritology blog for The Washington Post said that at least Zynga, the company that makes Words with Friends was supporting Baldwin, tweeting “Hey @AmericanAir, don’t ground @AlecBaldwin for playing. A.B.S.U.R.D. is worth *at least* 11 points in @WordsWFriends.”
Toit, moke and peens. Tom Meltzer on The Guardian tried to become addicted to Words with Friends. He set himself a time limit, playing for an hour and a half; then, if he could, he “would quit.” He gets seven games going and “there is no spare time at all.” He loses “a lot” to people “using suspiciously odd words” like “ ‘toit’, ‘moke’ and ‘peens’”. But, he does manage to quit – though he wasn’t playing with his friends. If he did, he might have found it very hard to do so. Another Baldwin in the making then?