Here's Another Deleted Chapter of my Book

To make up for the fact that posts, podcasts and streams are all over the place right now I've decided to give you another bit of the book. The ever so infamous Simpsons: Tapped Out bit. I played this game from level 1 to level 939 for this. I will never get that time back.

Same disclaimer as last time, this is early draft stuff. Grammar is fucked, pacing is fucked and it's just a bit miserable. THE REAL BOOK WILL BE HAPPY I PROMISE.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out 

Developer: EA Mobile, Fox Digital Entertainment, Gracie Films 

Publisher: EA Mobile 

Platform: Android, iOS 

Release: 2012 

What’s it about?: Stand and Deliver, Your money or your time. 

I really don’t like mobile phones games.

While there are a handful out there that aren’t terrible, the majority of mobile games are built for one reason and one reason only. To separate as many people from as much money as possible. They’re the digital equivalent of shaking you upside down and taking what falls out. Even the Google play store allows you to sort by “Highest Grossing” but not “Top Rated”. I never understood that, who goes “I don’t want to play something people think is good, I want to play something that other people have spent lots of money on”? The criminally insane, that’s who.

One of the old gods of this world is The Simpsons Tapped Out. A game where you re-create the Simpson’s hometown of Springfield by building buildings, telling characters what to do and then not playing while they do it. Say you tell Homer to “Go Bowling.” He will wander over to the Bowling Alley you built, vanish inside and then emerge twenty real hours later with some money and experience for you. Use that money to buy new things for him to vanish inside and repeat until you die of old age. You cannot win, you cannot lose. The Simpsons Tapped Out is forever.

For me these games are the lowest of lows, constantly employing psychological tricks to get you addicted, randomising rewards so you don’t even get the things you want when you do pay and being totally devoid of any and all gameplay to maximise the audience. To me this is gaming’s dark path. Art and beauty wiped out for nothing but commercial gain. It’s a bit like The Valeyard from Doctor Who or the future in A Christmas Carol where Tiny Tim has snuffed it. It’s the darkest timeline.

That being said, I wonder what happens if you properly commit time to a game like this? What happens if say, I don’t know, you take someone with addiction issues who hates this kind of game and force him to play it for months while documenting it all?

I guess we’ll see.

Day 1 - Level 1

The game * opens with Homer Simpson playing Happy Little Elves ** on his myPad at work. He complains the game is slow and decides to spend thousands of real world dollars on it to speed it up. With what I’m sure someone thinks is satire out of the way the plant goes into meltdown and explodes wiping out every person, building and premium item from here to Shelbyville.

You’re then dumped with Homer in the middle of a field and told to rebuild Springfield. Mercifully the nuclear plant exploding has caused no actual death or devastation. Everything’s just been swept away unharmed and is ready to plonk back into the world at a moment's notice. Provided you’re at the right level and can pay for it of course.

Pay for it you will. The Simpsons Tapped Out has featured over 120 different currencies between launch and early 2017. Yes, that was some time ago, but even the people who edit the wiki have given up counting them. Mercifully only four of these seem permanent so I won’t need an economics degree to help play the game. This isn’t Eve Online after all.

Homer and I set about rebuilding the Simpson’s street of Evergreen Terrace. Buildings are placed and new characters emerge. I hit level 5 and the tutorial stops. Suddenly I need much more experience to level up and the option to spend real money on virtual scratch cards appears. It’s OK, the game assures me, it’s not gambling because you can’t lose. I feel L'appel du vide.

Day 2 - Level 5

There's some sort of Time Travel event happening. It’s only got a day left so I’m not going to throw myself into it, although it has provided me with a few new buildings for free. That’s nice of it. I think.

Oh, there are also now hundreds of rats pouring down my single street. I assume that’s due to the time travel. I squish the rats. They drop eye patches. I use the eye patches to buy a prehistoric plant. Lisa plays Sax silently in the background. Somewhere, a single tear falls from David Lynch’s eye, falls to the ground and turns into a 1967 Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Sedan.

Day 3 - Level 6

I’ve realised that I’ve been given around 100 donuts from the first few days of playing and I’m not sure what to do with them. I’ll never have this many again so I don’t want to use them to skip the wait times. Maybe I can buy a new character, or a cool display piece? I check the store. Most characters are 150 or more donuts. Bugger. However I have a few options. A hot air Balloon costs 55. The Squeaky voiced teen character costs 30. Maybe I’ll just save them.

Then I see it. “Mystery Box.” Just 6 doughnuts. What the hell, I’m not going to use them for anything else. Let’s see what I get.

A crap tonne. That’s what I got. A crap tonne. 3 new characters, new buildings and decorations including a bomb shelter, a car and an Itchy and Scratchy billboard. To buy all this separately would have cost 490 donuts plus 45000 in game cash. One of the buildings that I got, Lard Lad donuts, has a drop rate of just 0.001% according to the wiki. The Tire fire was just 0.002%! This is incredible! I’m winning the unwinnable game! Haha!

Hang on though… no… they’ve thought of this. This is the free win. They know I’ll try this. I bet they’ll heavily reward me so when I’m using my own money they can drip feed me the wins instead of giving it all at once like this and I’ll keep going. The first hit is free...

That can’t be right, that’s conspiracy level talking. Are EA evil enough to use the tactics of drug pushers in a video game? Maybe? At any rate I can find out. I’ll restart the game, start from scratch. A new Springfield. I’ll play back to this point and I’ll gamble all the doughnuts again and see what happens. There’s no way I’ll get all that stuff again, right? Right?

Right?

Day 5 - Level 6

As I sat there, looking at my 3 new characters, new buildings and decorations including a bomb shelter, a car and an Itchy and Scratchy billboard, I started to wonder if this is what Stockholm Syndrome felt like.

Day 7 - Level 7

I’ve found something. A website where you give people your account, they do “something” and you get loads of free donuts and money. Seems dodgy and you need to be level 15 to get their help. I’m only level 7. I’ll make a note of it.

Today I built a brown house about 15 times to farm money. It needs to be tapped every 5 minutes to get the most money out. I had to charge my phone three times.

Day 8 - Level 9

I’ve finally organised my town. Before everything was just getting thrown down and around at random but now the streets are all neat and the buildings are placed logically. I even bought a few benches and trees to decorate it. It’s nice. I like it. I like my town. It feels like home.

I opened the donut purchasing screen but closed it shortly after.

Day 9 - Level 11

I found a dark corner of the internet that seems to think that the free donut site is a ploy ran by EA to get people who won’t ever buy donuts invested in the game so they end up buying some. It’s a way of landing the unlandable. All that confirms to me is that the page is real. Free donuts here I come.

Day 11 - Level 12

Today I planted Corn. It takes 90 real days to grow. I marked the date it will be finished on my calendar in red pen.

Day 12 - Level 14

I added 100 random strangers as friends today. They’re not my real friends, they’re just inescapably trapped in a place they hate like me and banding together is helpful for progress. It’s pretty much just like being back at school.

One of these players is level 939. I don’t know how I should feel about that.

Day 13 - Level 15

Finally, I hit level 15 and submitted my username and password for the free donuts. I know you’re not supposed to share your password online but I’m desperate to progress. I have no idea what’s going to happen now. Either I’m going to be given an abundance of donuts or have my entire life hacked ***. Hoping the former. I’d take a mix to be perfectly honest.

Day 15 - Level 17

Haven’t heard back from the website yet but I’m checking for messages every hour. Last night I had a dream about a quaint donut store, but they’re only selling very expensive donuts and I don’t have enough money. Everyone in the store laughs at me and I run out, crying. No idea what it means. I think it’s about gentrification.

Day 19 - Level 20

Still no donuts. A police car went past my house today and I hid. I thought they’d found me. All I wanted was some donuts, now I’m a vigilante.

Day 22 - Level 21

Turning the game on today presented me with a message. Apparently I hadn’t logged off my other device properly. Huh? Other device? What’s the game on abOH MY GOD! DONUTS! THEY WERE HERE!

Well, no. Actually they weren’t. I received an email saying that EA had changed something and the donuts weren’t working. Instead they’d sent me some in-game cash and some buildings from old events. There goes the conspiracy theory I guess.

I changed my password ****, logged into the game and was blown away. Sure enough, there was $10,000,000 in unmarked bills left in the treehouse. That was nice, but more importantly was the thousands of buildings and decorations left in my storage. I was expecting a small handful, not enough to literally build an entire city.   

I think I might like this game after all.

Epilogue - Day 49 - Level 112

Today I’m going to bulldoze my Spingfield and start again. It’s lovely, but it can be lovelier. Flanders needs a better garden, Mr Burns needs a better location for his mansion and the stadium I built using isometric view trickery could be bigger. Much bigger. There’s so much I can do with the sheer amount of stuff this game has.

At it’s heart, The Simpsons Tapped Out is evil. It’s a digital mugging dressed in a well known white shirt and blue pants. However, there is so much art and animation going to waste here that would shine in a full price release. If EA released this game as a £40 city builder on PC I’d buy it without hesitation. It wouldn’t even take that much work to convert it. They won’t though because it simply wouldn’t make as much money as it does now. That’s a damn shame.

I’m not sure how long I’ll keep playing. I like designing and creating worlds in games and the sheer volume of objects in this is staggering. However, beyond that it’s an empty void of gameplay and addiction. It manipulates, twists and pulls at you until you unload a truck's worth of money into it. As much as it may pretend otherwise, it only has one thing on it’s mind.

It’s like the final scene in Shaun of the Dead. I know The Simpsons Tapped Out is a zombie but I’m willing to put up for that while I’m still getting something out of it. I just have to make sure that I keep myself from getting bitten. I think I can do it. Maybe.

Epilogue 2 - Day ??? - Level 939

I have spent £549.94 so far.

Fuck.

* Arguable.

** Imagine a cross between The Smurfs and being just the right side of copyright law.

*** Actually, I was playing this on a burner phone on a brand new account with a brand new email. I planned this like a fucking drug deal.

**** Safety first.