14 DAY TRIAL // If you think you have tried all the possible methods to quit smoking (and have failed), there is one last hope for you and it comes with a rather strange receipt: Ubisoft is planning to release a Nintendo DS game that is going to help you. No more smoking for you, mister or miss! Have a healthy life thanks to a little game. Or, at least, that's what Ubisoft claims.
The game will be based on the Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking method, and it will have the exact same name, so it will definitely not be the best choice for kids who made the mistake and developed this really bad habit and are now planning to quit without their parents knowing it. Still, for adults, it might be a good shot. Because, apparently, this Allen Carr and his method are pretty famous, since his book has been published in 50 countries and over 10 million smokers worldwide have already turned to his writing, clinics or DVDs.
"Ubisoft's creative team has worked hard to deliver a game that successfully communicates Allen Carr's Easyway method via play," said Christian Salomon, vice president of worldwide licensing at Ubisoft. "The player experiences a truly interactive engagement with the game through which he or she learns that it can actually be enjoyable to quit smoking."
What's his method, you might wonder. Well, Mr. Carr plans to remove the smoker's belief that smoking provides them any genuine pleasure, takes away the feeling of deprivation and therefore rids the smoker of the fear of stopping. Got it? Then quit smoking!
If you still think you can't (and, trust me, it's just in your head!), you'll have to wait a bit more for the Nintendo DS game, which will be released in November 2008. Players actively participate in the game's content as they input the details of their smoking habits and even select their own Allen Carr's Easyway coach to take them through the process of quitting. Or they could just say "starting tomorrow, I stop smoking" and they do it. That's what I did and it worked just fine.