You have to play Animal Crossing with your children, they say. It will be fun, they say.
They were wrong in so many ways.
Like many of you I found the game during its launch, and like many of you I thought it would be a blast of wind to share the same island with your loved ones, who would be able to participate and enjoy the same residents and events.
But man, playing a game for my kids has just become one thing.
Let me count the ways:
1. My daughter put her hands on the game before I did, and besides I found out that she was anointed Queen of The Island. Since I didn't pay much attention to the details of the island, unless I was happy you could do it all, I found myself playing every day wondering … where the whole game was. Why can't I build a shovel. Why this is not fun.
After about a week I had a diagnosis. He was getting the whole game, and I was just getting the basics. This requires an island reboot, burning everything down, because there was no way one of my two kids (usually limited to two hours of video games a weekend) had to deal with community services, or We are all still in trouble because of our fragile fishing rods.
2. However, when we were resumed on the new island, problems were just beginning to begin! Almost immediately I received a letter from my mother with three apples inside, which was the first time I had found an economy on my island. I planted them whole-heartedly, waited a few days for them to grow, increased the game to go check / expand my fields to find that they were gone. All three of them.
It turns out that my son was playing online with a friend, and one of them had formed, after which they disappeared, sold to maybe Nook.
3. I told this to my friend Kevin, and thankfully, he just got a few oranges, so he sent my way. I repeated the process: planted the tree, waited a few days, went back to prune it and then made some orange trees. And the procedure was repeated: I only arrived when the medicine was gone. It was only at this time that there was not only a tree, but also a part of my fence too, that I planted the tree behind in a brutal attempt for cultural security.
Right now the accused was my son, who would have been justice I knew he was stealing! He is just a small child, and he has no idea about property or ownership in a space like this. To him it's a video game, and anything he can see would be his, and my fence wasn't a blocking thing, it was the challenge.
4. Do you know how the kids always pull things out, play with it and never get it back? Well, it turns out that they did just that with video games. Any hopes I had of making a garden like the zen manifestation, weed-free, weed-free to grow efficiency and beauty, have gone. Large parts of our island are covered in weeds because they will not help wipe, there are deposits made of clay and stones everywhere because they "suck and we don't want", and for some reason they pick up random objects and just bury them, like dogs, in the dark.
What is this, precious remnant, I ask myself every day? No, bad background image.
This made Easter great even worse. My kids, just like everyone else, worked so quickly that all these eggs hurt in the asses, but unlike everyone else, they couldn't leave them alone to work. They kept scrubbing the trees, fishing and continuing to dig holes, only to … leave their eggs there. My whole island was covered with eggs. You know the intro Airport 2
5. And finally, we get to the money. We are a farming family, with all the harvest of pearls and addresses and pearls in that quick easy money. I use almost every instrument I make on an island infrastructure, to make all our lives better and easier, but whenever I take a break I try to get a few metals by picking fruit trees I planted, it's too late. They took everything, put it in their pocket, and ran to Nook and sold it all to share in their big bank balances.
Every time I show that they, too, can use the money to improve the roads and bridges on the island, I am told "no, I'm sorry, we have no money", or "that's boring", or "that is a job".
I was there to try playing the game as a means of escape. But these kids were able to bring my real-world problems straight to the island. Now I spend the whole day fetching after the confusion left by the kids and emphasizing mortgage loans, only to kick back now … clean up after the kids and emphasize the loan. That's fine.
And yet! With all this misery, I do all of this again (OK maybe without an island reboot, I want to add more to that earlier). If Animal Crossing give my kids new ways to use my shit, like in real life, and to give them opportunities to be surprised and entertained, like in real life.
My daughter keeps sending me letters explaining her new exits, or small deposits of iron because she reminds me of how important iron is to building things. And he signs all the letters – only one of the best alphabet – he has his real name, even though his character's name is right underneath. that. It's amazing.
I never caught my son's fishing, because I will be honest with you, by the year 2020, I live in the city and I hate fishing. In Animal Crossing, however, I teach to set the required fishing time, after which we will discuss and compare our latest catch in the museum. I've caught a shark, cool, but it's holding the sea, that is great. We get all the benefits of fishing, with no sun or worms.
Best of all, our in-game relationships are dissolved into the real world. I was doing breakfast the other day and my daughter praised my new wallpaper as she passed by, said nothing, as if I noticed I had new hair, and just kept going. It was lovely.
She is nine years old, and in those years we don't have much responsibility yet. Having this game to talk about has been a gift, at a time when gifts are available.
And while most of these posts have been on my child's fuck-ups list, I can see that the biggest, most important one that's been in the throes of all my problems, is with me. My former islands have been my islands and mine alone. For me to expect anything approaching that remote experience while sharing an island with two children under 10 was tricky.
It's not my island at all. It is our island.
So yes, living on an island with my kids has sometimes been a huge pain in the ass. But for many others it is a wonderful touch, rewarding and touching. It seems appropriate if Animal Crossing it is able to duplicate the experience of being a mortgage servicer, it is also good to extend the parenting experience.
