COC: clashing of time

COC: clashing of time

The room, thought small, is light and airy. A writing table overlooks a square of lawn with flower borders. On the left side of the table, sharpened pencils have been placed on a past examination paper and other books are kept open.

It is 5am, everyone is sound asleep, but a student, Penjor is still awake and engrossed in his phone.

He is excited but tensed too. He is working hard to get three stars in his first and second attack. The battlefield is “Clash of Clans.” He is the leader in his clan and has five co-leaders, 10 elders and 20 members in his clan. His clan is known as “UNDERDOG”. 

Penjor and his members of the clan are among the thousands of Bhutanese who hooked to the online mobile game.  

Clash of Clans also known as COC. It is a fun, interactive game for many children across the country. A large percentage of the players are actually students. Clash of Clans is an online multiplayer game, where you can attack and defend bases. You can also create clans wars. This game serves as a distraction for the students and a waste of time.

COC was released for iPhone OS (iOS) platforms on August 2, 2012, and on Google Play for Android on October 7, 2013. It requires careful thinking, planning and managing of resources to be successful. Players must work hard to plan and build their village, set up the necessary defenses against enemy attacks and create a powerful army. 

Players enter into alliances with other players and form ‘clans.’ They attack other player’s villages and earn rewards such as gold, elixir and trophies used to advance their position in the game.

Like Penjor, there are many others who are busy playing the game during odd hours. Some of them play during the office hours, students at class hours irrespective of their ages and work places.

Today, children, young people and adults constantly competes against each other in this strategy game in a setting full of giants, kings, wizards, valkyries, archers, barbarians, spells and so on.

They also share the game with their siblings and family, spreading the game. Now schools, families, communities, and friends of a student play the game.

“Kuenzang is quick to defend the game. Playing is humans’ key way of learning. Many people have spent day’s playing cards and dice, but COC is a strategy game requires many mental processes that are a lot more complex than those required in lazy games.”

“You can never stop playing COC in one day,” said an office going man. “I was addicted to clash of clans for almost 6 months and I used to wake up and the first thing I’d do is to check my base and till I went to sleep again, I played the game almost all the time,” he added.

But some elders disagree. A father of Penjor said that the game is diverting attention. “I think this is the work of the devil, this game diverts our youth’s attention, so instead of going to class they will just play the game, one kid even asked me to play for his clan,” he said.

Some of the parents shared that any amount of time spent on gaming is a waste of time. They are wasting time than could be spent on studying, learning, working-out, and preparing for their education and future. But the time to study is replaced and cut by the time to establish a digital village that they can do nothing with, but secure friendship with fellow players.

A simple survey of a 20 student showed that almost all the students experienced negative feeling playing the game. Among them, at least 50 percent admitted having felt rejection, anger and even hatred towards other players and interruption in their studies.

There are others who realized that the game is taking away valuable time. Karma Yangzom, 19, said that she stopped after reaching “Town hall” level 10 because he couldn’t concentrate on his studies. “I couldn’t concentrate on my studies, didn’t have time to help my parents with household chores and time to talk to relatives.”