(Sigh) My Game's Finally Ending

The message I've been readying myself for a few years now came:

This is the message that Electronic Arts supplied us players of their phone game, The Simpsons: Tapped Out. It essentially says that on January 25th, the servers will be turned off and the game will cease to function. After all these years...

Here's an in-game image of the literal sunsetting of our Springfields:

TSTO, as we degenerate players called it, was a sims game. A "sims" game is a game in which you simulate things: you have characters who can assign quests for various lengths of time and be rewarded with types of currency that helps you build your town. All of us TSTO players were little civic planners, civil engineers, mayors, and lords of electronic fiefdoms. I played this game a lot.

It was a few things to me. One: it was a way to feel more connected to The Simpsons, arguably the greatest show ever made. Two: it was the most involved I'd been in any video game since the N64's Ocarina of Time. Three: it was a connection for me and my good buddy Tony, something we would regularly update each other about over the years. And years is the right framework, as I played this game a lot.

When I started playing, it was March 2012, and the game was a few months old. The maximum level a player could reach was 21. You started with Homer and Lisa, and would quickly unlock Cletus and Flanders, and as each of their quests or tasks would get done, you'd be rewarded with game cash and experience points (XP). Enough XP and you'd level up. By the time I reached the game's max level, that level was 35, and it was the Halloween event in 2012, after about six or seven months of playing. Now the max level is 939, which incidentally is the same as Puerto Rico's area code. Like I've said, I've played this game a lot.

Leveling up was just another way to keep engaged with the game play. That changed over the years, the engagement factor. While I did play a lot---I jumped awake when we were deep in the "Keep Cassius Alive" phase of his life and asked Corrie if my game updated (her response was "How tf should I know?"); I'd jones for Wi-fi codes in Laos and Cambodia to log in an keep my Christmas event going while traveling abroad in 2013/14---I was emotionally ready to quit the game a few years ago.

I had over 600 characters, thousands of "skins" (outfits for existing characters), I reached the edges of my space and, because of my city-planning decisions, I had most of my town full. I had maxed out the in-game currency (over 4.2 billion game-bucks), and by farming the premium currency, I had over 15 thousand donuts, which meant I could purchase any item in the game they offered, unless they sold a character for real money (which they did from time to time).

When I first put down the Simpson's house, I tried to place it strategically (for me). I thought it would look cool at the end of tree-lined esplanade. It wasn't what I was looking for, and after placing the Flanders house next door, I questioned my reason for even playing it. It wasn't until I separated their homes by water that I realized what I was really trying to do: I would recreate my Springfield as Venice. And I would essentially place everything in a spot that wouldn't change over the years of playing. I made a forest, and eventually had to fill most of it in. I once had a large bay gashing my town, but it needed to be filled in as well. If only...

And I mostly kept to that over the ensuing years. When looked at in it's totality, my game is an artifact of updates and releases, including when I started farming donuts and buying all the premium items. 

And I made my town into a veritable Venice, with waterways everywhere.

EA did a few things to keep engagement up in recent times. They made it possible to spend large chunks of game currency, which made clearing everyone have a purpose beyond just staring at your phone. And they made it possible to take photos of your entire town and save them. Here's an early one from my town:

It's hard to make out what's happening, but with zooming while looking at it on your phone, it the resolution gets down to playing the game size. That picture above is the first one I took, and I'll post the last one I'll take, the one I'm going to print out large like a poster. We should have guessed something was up when EA essentially doubled the available space in the game, opening up an enormous block to the "west" of the mountain range. Then they made the announcement of the sunsetting of the game by January and started to release many items that hadn't been released in years, and started selling the one-time cash-dependent characters for donut currency.

It's the last flailing about of our little pocket civilizations. We were, each of us, as players, mayors or despots, lords of our realms, civic planners and town designers. Some hasty, some petulant, some loved water everywhere.

I'm really only playing still so I can finalize my town for my poster-sized picture. That final picture will be coming in a few weeks or months, but here is one of the later ones showing off how much area is open. I finally got my ocean and will be getting my forests as well:

It was a good long run. I loved playing it, and having four months (we were told on September 25th that January 25th was the last day) to finish up and process losing it has been helpful. I was nearly done a few years back, so I've mostly made peace with it.

Viva Tapped Out! Thank you EA for all the years, and I don't regret not ever paying for anything. I know y'all as a company may disagree with that stance, but that's how it was. Halloween events; Christmas events; the terrible bickering between players on the fan sites (thanks tstoaddicts.com!) during the pagan winter event right after the election of 2016; the glitches and broken panes and integrity issues with the game elements...all of it, the warts and issues, I'd say were all worth it. The Stonecutters event still probably reigns as the best event...maybe the Monorail (I'm biased against the Monorail event because it broke my game for a few months). I don't regret playing, and while I'll miss it, I'm comfortable with moving on.