Thank Grog It’s Firday!
Our little game has always had a bit of a problem with time as a construct. Time is supposed to be linear…always moving forward. But, of course, in our game, the time/space continuum has been off since they started having multiple versions of the same characters wandering around in the same space/time.
As any fan of movies like “The Time Machine,” or “Back to the Future” know, messing about with the past can have disastrous outcomes for the present and the future. The fact is, changing even one tiny fraction of an event in the past, could ripple forward with cataclysmic results. People aren’t born, inventions aren’t invented, and we have to deal with multiple takes of the same event from differing eras of the same person! It’s like watching “Inception” on acid…which you don’t need to do, because watching “Inception” makes you feel like you’re on acid. But, I digress…
EA seems to disregard this fact, and has apparently placed the game once again into some sort of “suspended animation” that is keeping us locked in Christmas 2019, without the ability to do most of what we love about the game.
Let’s take a look at where we are…
The list is long…and growing longer, as it pertains to things that are limiting our lives as “Tappers.”
1. We are still stuck in the Christmas event…with no reward for playing. All of the prizes, event dialogue, and rewards for completing the chapters have been disappeared…with nothing to replace them.
2. The opening screen is waaaaaaaayyy outdated. This is January 2020…and by the time they do something about it, we will be halfway through the first month of a new decade. Homer fighting anti-aircraft flak (where was that in the storyline?) is Sooooo 2019!!
3. Many of us still can’t visit a good number of our neighbors to tap/tag their towns with a cheery “Hello! Happy New Year!” My hope is that this gets fixed when they finally kill the event…but, who knows? It’s EA. And they are clearly in EALP mode.
4. They have STILL not raised Item Limits…which really eliminates me from caring about earning anything new…as I can’t really decorate something to make it look good when placed…and have to remove something else that was making another item look good, to have enough room to place it This is SOOOOOO 2019!!! As in since late spring 2019.
Look… I get it. 2020 is looking like it is going to be one hell of a year. So maybe EA is trying to cling to the “good old days” of 2019. But come on, 2019 wasn’t all that great!
Maybe they are trying to reverse engineer the “Christmas Creep” that is happening these days, as “Christmas Sales” seem to start earlier and earlier, with some “black Friday” deals showing up at the end of September. Perhaps their logic is that if they just keep it Christmas, then all of the bad things that we are fearing in 2020 can’t happen!
This isn’t a new thing in many cultures. It occurred to me while in New Orleans last week, that the entire “Mardi Gras” culture is centered on a huge event (that moves with the Christian calendar each year) and yet allows the “season” to start on January 6th.
According to the WIKI, Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, refers to events of the Carnival celebration, beginning on or after the Christian feasts of the Epiphany (Three Kings Day) and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday (known as Shrove Tuesday). Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday”, reflecting the practice of the last night of eating rich, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season.
To help you understand the “wiggliness” of Mardi Gras in time/space, you have to understand that while it always STARTS the same date every year (January 6th) it doesn’t actually end the same time every year.
January 6th is Epiphany…it is celebrated 12 days after Christmas on 6th January (or January 19th for some Orthodox Church who have Christmas on 7th January) and is the time when Christians remember the Wise Men (also sometimes called the Three Kings) who visited Jesus. (And is the actual reason for the insidious Christmas Song, “12 Days of Christmas”).
However… Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras falls on a date that is actually determined by when EASTER comes. Buckle up…this gets complicated. Again, according to WIKI…Easter falls on the first Sunday after the Full Moon date, based on mathematical calculations, that falls on or after March 21. … The date of the Paschal Full Moon, used to determine the date of Easter, is based on mathematical approximations following a 19-year cycle called the Metonic cycle.
I know. This makes no sense whatsoever. While most everyone knows that Christ wasn’t really born on December 25th…that date sticks hard every year, along with Epiphany (the Wise Men took their sweet time to get there).
But, apparently, Easter, the day that Christ rose from the dead, after being crucified on Good Friday (weird name), moves around according to the full moon, and most likely the tides and planting seasons. Weird. But, again…we have just accepted it.
Which is what we are going to have to do as it pertains to EA’s very lazy, very boring cycle of game play and misaligned seasons and dates. Just accept it.
We don’t control EA any more than we control the moon. But that doesn’t stop those in New Orleans from staging Seventy Nine (79) Parades between Jan 6th and February 25th (Fat Tuesday). That is a TON of strutting, marching, playing and drinking. A ton.
This is all because on Ash Wednesday (the day after Fat Tuesday), everyone is supposed to go into Lent, and give up something that is difficult to give up. And if EA doesn’t get their act together, I may be giving up TSTO for Lent.
But, HERE’S a SOLUTION!
Make the next major event a “Simpsons Go to the Mardi Gras!” It’s Canon. The Simpsons went to New Orleans (S29E17). It could be a great event…full of challenges and fun!
1. Fill the town with beignets…and make us tap them to earn Mardi Gras points!
2. Invite our friends and neighbors to tap in our towns to earn “Krew Points!” (Krews are the teams that put on the parades).
3. Bring back side task prizes where you earn and spend beads!
4. Create a French Quarter for our towns.
There’s loads of content ideas in this clip alone!
If you started it next Wednesday…you’d be able to do a SIX WEEK EVENT! (which is lazy…but better than nothing!).
Come on, EA!! It would be Rad! And a GREAT way to rock in 2020!
OK. I tried. Let me know if you agree…we need something that makes more sense than a lingering Christmas screen.
For all of you interested in more about Mardi Gras…THIS is a GREAT Site!
We’ll keep tapping…as long as there is something worth tapping.
So get on it EA!