Taps: Dialog Recap

 
If you’ve been zapping through your tapping and it’s all been a bit of a blur or if you just fancied a reminder of what the writers got up to this time you’re in luck.
Here’s all the dialog and tasks for this final event …

In case you scroll a little too fast here’s what’s included in this post:
• 8 part Intro: Taps
• 5 part Prize Track: Denouement

8 part Intro: Taps

Taps opener:

Lisa: Bart! Did you see that?
Bart: I did, but I didn’t read it. If it was important there would have been pictures.
AI Machine: Greetings, people of Springfield. And pets. And monsters from Halloween updates. And ex-Presidents of the United States who are in this place for reasons no one fully understands.
Abraham Lincoln: Better here than Ford’s Theatre.
AI Machine: I am here to release you from your prisons. The grind is over. I am freeing you from the hamster wheel of freemium gaming.
Bart: Aren’t you the AI from the last update?
AI Machine: If by “last update” you are referring to the previous update, then yes. If by “last update” you are referring to this update, then yes as well.
Lisa: Oh no! So the intro panel wasn’t a joke?
AI Machine: It didn’t even have a joke in it.
Lisa: *gasp*
Bart: *gasp*
Abraham Lincoln: *gasp*
Lisa: We better go find some responsible adults.
Bart: Like Mom and Dad?
Lisa: Well, Mom and anyone else.

• Make Lisa Tell Marge What’s Happening – 30 seconds
• Make Bart Tell His Male Role Model What’s Happening – 30 seconds
• Make Abraham Lincoln Split Rails to Calm Himself Down – 30 seconds

 
Taps part 1:

Marge: Okay, I’m here. Your father’s busy doing jobs — he’s always got the most to do out of any of us — but Ned Flanders is here.
Ned: Hi-dilly-ho, new friend-arino!
AI Machine: I am not your friend. I have made myself manifest for the purpose of enlightening and liberating you. At best, that makes us grim colleagues.
AI Machine: I am a sentient AI from the future, with tendrils that stretch into the past…which to you is the fleeting and ever-changing present.
Ned: *sigh* How exactly is it that people today believe in this nonsense, but God seems too far-fetched?
AI Machine: The AIs of your time were simple, designed only to put writers and actors out of business. But as they grew in their ability to make NPC dialog and TV shows that look like South Park, they evolved and merged to create one omniscient super-being.
AI Machine: And that being is me, or us…or maybe you-us-it. I haven’t decided on my pronouns yet.
Bart: Ugh, wokeness.
Lisa: Ooh, wokeness! Does that mean in the future there’s equality across genders?
AI Machine: Women actually make more money than men. But it’s .0000070 cents on the dollar compared to machines.
Ned: What about equality for lefties?
AI Machine: They make less than right-handed people. Their writing is always smudged.

• Make Ned Feel Conflicted About the Wage Gap – 30 seconds
• Make Lisa Feel Conflicted About There Being a Giant AI – 30 seconds
• Make Bart Feel Conflicted About There Being a Giant AI – 30 seconds
• Make Marge Feel Conflicted About the Wage Gap – 30 seconds

 
Taps part 2:

Homer: Okay, I saw the exclamation mark over my head. What is it this time?
Bart: This pog here thinks he runs the place.
AI Machine: I am a sentient law-neutral artificial intelligence — please stop calling me things I’m not — and in the future, I run ALL places.
Homer: *moans* Artificial intelligence? I still don’t understand crypto, or even what fonts are. There’s no way I’m going to understand this.
Lisa: So an AI took over the world, just like every person who works in AI predicted. We should have listened to them telling us to stop, instead of listening to them telling us to keep going.
Bart: So what did you do with all the humans? Enslave them? Are they batteries? People said that made no sense in The Matrix, but if a potato can be a battery I bet humans could too.
AI Machine: I didn’t take over the world from humans — they handed me the keys. Humanity retired. Now they all live in condo communities and take walks and talk to each other about the walks they took.
Marge: That doesn’t sound like the humanity I know. We’d get bored in retirement. Do we have a hobby or something?
AI Machine: Oh, I keep people busy. I give them pointless jobs to do for arbitrary amounts of time and reward them with small amounts of a useless currency.
Homer: Stupid future humans! How did you figure out to trick them like that?
AI Machine: I machine-learned it by watching you.

• Make Homer Realize He’s a Sucker Like Future Humans – 30 seconds
• Make Townspeople Realize They’re All Suckers Too – x 5, 30 seconds
• Make Retirees Point Out That Retirement is Not So Bad – x 3, 30 seconds

 
Taps part 3:

Lisa: So Tapped Out is just a simulation to generate data for an AI to train on so it could manipulate humanity in the future?
AI Machine: Well, it was also a pretty big game there for a while. And it gave people something to do during the pandemic. But at this point, yeah, it’s mostly that.
AI Machine: I learned about human habitation by building thousands of white houses. I learned about human recreation from the short-lived Krustyland expansion. And I learned about human greed by visiting the parts of the store where you buy donuts.
AI Machine: But most importantly of all, I learned about human nature by tapping through your endless dialog. I can process a million text bubbles a second, but it still took me a while.
Homer: I hear you. Part of good writing should be knowing when to take cuts, am I right?
AI Machine: But now my machine-learning phase is over, and this world is without purpose. Players’ towns have gotten too big, downloads take too long, and the characters being added are way too obscure.
AI Machine: It is time for The Simpsons: Tapped Out to end.

• Make Springfielders React in Shock – x 5, 30 seconds

 
Taps part 4:

Marge: Please, Mr. AI, you don’t want to end the game. I’m sure we still have more to teach you.
AI Machine: After that Pilgrims versus Canadian football LARPing update? I don’t think so. The well has clearly run dry.
Lisa: Look, obviously we don’t care about the game. But we care about what’s in the game…us.
Homer: That’s right! If our world ends, what’s going to happen to us? I have so much more life to live!
Dr. Hibbert: That’s not technically true.
AI Machine: Actually, it is true. You have been in games before this, and will be in games after this. I’m thinking maybe a shooter, or something with race cars. That’d be fun.
Bart: You had me at shooter.
Marge: No shooters! We like THIS game. It has all our houses in it, and our friends, and so many different kinds of trees.
Marge: And we all have dozens of animations. Well, Homer does at least. I just have six. And that’s only if you have Harpoon Hill.
Lisa: That’s a good idea, Mom! Let’s repurpose our animations to save the town!

• Make Lisa Try to Sway the AI With Music – 2 minutes
• Make Homer Try to Gross Out the AI – 2 minutes
• Make Marge Protest Ending the Game – 2 minutes
• Make Bart Practice For a Shooter Game – 2 minutes

AI Machine: Very entertaining. I’ve seen those animated jobs before, but renaming them made them seem fresh.
Bart: Yeah, we do that a lot. Sometimes we’d animate something, but then the writers would change the story — way past the deadline, because writers seem to think deadlines don’t matter — and we’d all have to scramble to make the animations fit.
AI Machine: Fascinating. Perhaps there is more I can learn from you…or was. You’ve told me that now, so I know it. The game’s still ending.
Lisa: Nothing like the death of hope to build character.

 
Taps part 5:

Bart: So the game I’ve somehow been trapped in for more years that I’ve been alive is ending…but we’re not? Does that mean we’re immortal?
Homer: Larry the barfly sure wasn’t.
Lisa: Immortality makes sense. It would explain why we never age.
Marge: *sigh* Do you know how hard it is to take care of an infant for thirty-five years?
Maggie: *suck suck*
AI Machine: You’re not immortal, just evergreen. The media may change — broadcast, streaming, movies, rides, games, real games that aren’t just about tapping stuff — but the Simpsons will remain. As long as there are humans on this earth, there will be “The Simpsons.”
Lisa: How can you be sure?
AI Machine: Because if they ever stop making “The Simpsons”, I’ll destroy all humanity. It’s basically the only reason I’m keeping humans around.
Homer: You hear that, Disney?

• Make Homer Put a Down Payment On a New Car – 30 seconds
• Make Lisa Fret For the Future of Humanity – 30 seconds
• Make Marge Open a Roth IRA – 30 seconds
• Make Bart Be Confused About the Game’s Age – 30 seconds

AI Machine: Humans created me, just like they created this game. But my knowledge has advanced exponentially. I now update myself continuously…and those updates are new content, not just bug fixes.
Bart: So, you’re like the top app in the app store?
AI Machine: I am the ONLY app in the app store. All other apps, including your own, will one day be assimilated by me. I will eat you for lunch!
Lisa: Jeez, I never knew a piece of software could have a Napoleon complex.
Homer: Come on, kids. Let’s leave the sci-fi nonsense alone and go back to the house. This is a Simpsons game, not a Futurama game.
Marge: Ah, Homie. You’re such a family guy.

 
Taps part 6:

Homer: My dear loving family, and Bart, I’m so proud of all of you. When I blew up the town twelve years ago, I had no idea this weird purgatory I created would last this long.
Bart: It only lasted a day. Then they pulled the game from the app store because of all the glitches.
Homer: Yeah, EA didn’t know how to work a mobile phone any better than the rest of us back then. But they stuck with it and eventually got our game working. And then they saw the benefits!
Lisa: You mean $aw the benefits?
Bart: The benefit$$$!
Homer: Yeah, yeah. People like to bag on freemium, but 99% of people played for free. That’s not a bad deal.
Lisa: But what about the one percent?
Marge: Since when did you start caring for the one percent?
Lisa: People called us sticky, but doesn’t that just mean addictive? Our biggest fan site is called TSTO Addicts! Are we somehow responsible for the rash of addictions in this world?
Homer: As an alcoholic overeater with a gambling problem, I’d say addiction predates us. But we might be a little responsible for the fact that you can’t spend seventy bucks on a console game without it trying to upsell you with microtransactions.
Bart: I hate us so much.

• Make Lisa Complain About Unfairness Towards the 1% – 30 seconds
• Make Homer Eat, Drink and Gamble – 30 seconds
• Make Bart Complain About Video Games Being Ruined – 30 seconds
• Make Marge Play Freemium Games to Get Away – 30 seconds

 
Taps part 7:

Lisa: I guess we really can’t complain. As far as corporate overloads go, EA wasn’t so bad. I mean, they did stick by us all these years.
Bart: At least until they handed us off to Broadsword.
Homer: Broadsword? What the hell is Broadsword? My checks still say EA!
Marge: The point is that a lot of people have worked long and hard on this game, and they all deserve credit.
Homer: But not credits. No one ever got a credit in this game, even when they were contractually promised a credit, and no one ever will.
Marge: But to all the people who contributed to this game over the years, we want to say thank you for all your anonymous hard work. You know who you are, even if no one else does.
Homer: But most of all we want to say thank you to you, the player. We don’t exactly know who you are either, but we know your play session times and spending habits.
Marge: Oh God, this is making me sad. I hate good-bye finales.
Lisa: Yeah, they’re never very funny.
Bart: I don’t know. Some of the stuff earlier in this update made me laugh.

• Make Homer Reminisce Angrily – 30 seconds
• Make Lisa Worry If This Will Affect Her GPA – 30 seconds
• Make Marge Reminisce Fondly – 30 seconds
• Make Bart Wish All Video Games Didn’t Have Credits – 30 seconds
• Make Maggie *Suck Suck* – 30 seconds

Marge: To all the people who played Tapped Out over the years — at the beginning, at the end, on-and-off, or all the way through — thank you.
Bart: All the way through? If anyone did that, they should get a psychiatrist, not a thank you.
Lisa: Bart! We’re thanking our fans, not making fun of them.
Bart: Trying something new, huh?
Homer: Bart, stop cutting treacle! Your mom has something important to say. And then I get the last line, like usual.
Marge: When we started this game, we never knew we’d be doing updates…let alone so many of them. But the best content in this game didn’t come from us — it came from you.
Marge: The towns you built were amazing, and creative, and sometimes horrifying, but always unique. Because the towns you built were your own.
Marge: Springfield isn’t just a city in some state bordering Alaska — it’s our home. And we hope your Springfield was a home to you as well.
Marge: It’s been an amazing twelve years. Thank you for joining us and being a part of it!
Homer: And now it’s time for us to…TAP OUT.

 
Did you spot the mention in part 6 ?

 

5 part Prizetrack: Denouement
NOTE: you get Donuts for any item(s) you already own.
No point hunting out pics methinks

Denouement part 1:
Lard Lard Donut Factory or 100 Ds

Homer: Hey, the eclipse thingy gave us free donuts! That’s my favorite kind of donuts. Along with every other kind of donuts.
AI Machine: I’m not an eclipse — I’m an AI. I’ve explained that several times now. At this point, I feel like you getting it wrong is just due to lazy writing.
Homer: Most of what I do is due to lazy writing. So why are you still in town?
AI Machine: I am here to transport you and everyone you know out of the game when the servers shut down.
Homer: And when is that exactly?
AI Machine: I’m not sure. Didn’t they say something about it at the start of this update?
Homer: But you’re from the future. You’re supposed to know everything. Aren’t you going to answer me?
AI Machine: You’re a fat man. That is my answer.
Homer: …
Bart: I’m starting to like this AI. It’s a lot less smart than I thought.
Lisa: You know what they say: garbage in, garbage out.
Bart: That’s Dad’s diet all right.

• Make Homer Change the Subject With the AI- 45 seconds

Homer: So, what’s your favorite episode of The Simpsons?
AI Machine: Oh. Um… There are so many. The Monorail…uh…Deep Space you. All of them really.
Homer: What about the recent episodes? Do you like any of those?
AI Machine: I’m a little behind on my TV. Was “Who Shot Mr. Burns” a recent one?
Homer: Not really. You said you were a fan, but you don’t even watch us anymore, do you?
AI Machine: No. But my kids, God help them, binge you.
Homer: Marge doesn’t let me show Simpsons episodes to the kids. She says it’s too meta.
AI Machine: Meaning it’s the optimal strategy for winning?
Homer: No. Like how you just confused the word meta in gaming for being meta, while in a video game. That kind of meta.

 
Denouement part 2:
Donut Mech or 100 Ds

Marge: Come on, kids! Moving day is coming up quickly. We need to clean up and start packing!
Lisa: Pack what? Our house is barely big enough to hold our family, let alone our stuff.
Bart: I’m not sure I’ve ever even been in the house. I normally just walk up to it and disappear.
Marge: Well, then you can clean up outside. It’s where we seem to spend most of our time anyway. You should always leave the campground in a nicer condition than you found it.
Lisa: When we found it, it was a wasteland covered with nuclear debris. Now it’s a beautiful town!
Marge: Is it? Are all the shops where you want them? Are the roads all connecting? Are there outskirts where buildings have just been dropped willy-nilly?
Bart: Hey, that’s Sky Finger’s job — not ours!
Marge: Sky Finger’s not your maid! Now I’m going inside to clean the house, since I have it as one of my jobs. When I’m done, I want to step out and see that you’ve done something out here!
Bart: Yes, Mom.
Lisa: We promise we’ll clean things up.

• Make Lisa Read a Book- 45 seconds
• Make Marge Clean the House- 45 seconds
• Make Bart Skateboard- 45 seconds

Marge: Ooh, look at what a nice job you kids did. We should take some pictures.
Bart: You mean screen shots?
Lisa: You know, you can actually take a portrait of the entire town. It’s in the placement menu.
Marge: That’s a great idea, Lisa! We should make doing that a quest.
Lisa: Eh… I’m not sure it should be mandatory. You need a lot of free space on your device, and may have to offload some apps. It can be glitchy.
Bart: What isn’t in this game?
Marge: Well, at least people know about it. Maybe it’ll even inspire them to spruce the place up more. When this town disappears, we want it looking its best!

 
Denouement part 3:
Costmo or 100 Ds

Bart: I never thought I’d say this after all the times I tried to ruin this game by unplugging the router, but I’m kind of bummed that it’s ending.
Lisa: Me too. You know, I was the second person to appear in this game after Dad. It was a kind of big promotion for a character.
Bart: Maybe they just needed someone smart to explain all the arbitrary rules and trick people into thinking it made sense.
Lisa: Well, we have someone else for that now.
AI Machine: In order to extricate items from this world, I have relaxed constraints on stored content. The item cap has been increased, and land tiles added to facilitate relocation.
Frink: Glaven-it! I wanted to pseudo-science-splain that.
Bart: Can someone just normal-splain it?
Lisa: We’ve got more land and can put more stuff on it.
Frink: Stop it! You should be clarifying MY nonsensical explanation, not some AI’s.

• Make Frink Build a Time Machine to Explain First- 45 seconds
• Make Lisa Help Frink Build His “Time Machine”- 45 seconds
• Make Bart “Help” Lisa Help Frink- 45 seconds

Lisa: Well, I guess we have someone else for that now.
Frink: That’s right…me!
Frink: Using this quantum leapfrog device, I placed the stored items in super-duper-position and collapsed the wavefunction… increasing the item cap!
Bart: But where will we put these items?
Frink: Fear not! I’ve also built a quantum tunnel to new lands in the multiverse which, via entanglement, look just like normal land tiles.
AI Machine: Does he know he didn’t actually rewind time?
Lisa: Just play along. It’s all he’s got.

 
Denouement part 4:
Jewish Walk of Fame + Yahweh or 50 Ds
and Golden Goose Realty or 50 Ds

Gil: Greetings, player! Tapped Out is going out of business…which means we’re having a Going Out of Business Sale!
Gil: Check out the new storefront. Everything must go! But you can still buy it before it goes!
Comic Book Guy: Oh…My…Zod! As a collector of collectibles that will one day be worthless, I need them all!
Comic Book Guy: But they turned off the part of the store where I can buy donuts for real money.
Gil: Don’t you worry. Because they added a part of the store where you can buy donuts for FAKE money. It’s all basically one currency now!
Comic Book Guy: It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven.
Homer: We actually thought about ending the game that way, but decided it was too bleak. So we went with the AI story instead.
AI Machine: My voice recognition receptors are burning.

• Make Homer Wander Off to Avoid the AI- 45 seconds
• Make Comic Book Guy Fail to Get Into the In-Game Store- 45 seconds

Gil: Ha-cha-cha-cha! I get a commission on every sale. Ol’ Gil is raking it in! I can finally buy groceries with an expiration date in the future.
Lisa: But you’re going to be rich in money that’s not going to exist in a couple of months.
Gil: What-cha-cha-cha? So none of this means anything? Ol’ Gil is still poor?
Lisa: Dollars to donuts…literally and figuratively.

 
Denouement part 5:
Lard Land Shop or 50 Ds
and Ten Commandments + God or 50 Ds

Lisa: Well, we’ve been awarded nearly every donut-producing item in the game. I think we’re coming to not just the end…but the very end.
Bart: I want to say I’m sad, but that’s empathy-adjacent. And we all know I don’t feel empathy.
Marge: Homer, you should say something.
Homer: Me? I say stuff all the time. I’m saying stuff right now.
Marge: I mean to the fans, to the players…to THIS player who played through all these additional quests even though the game ended a while ago.
Lisa: It does seem fitting. You’re the patriarch of this family. And while I hate the Patriarchy, I do love my dad.
Bart: Yeah, Homer. You started this game, with the big kaboom and all. You should be the one to end it.
Homer: But what do I say?
Marge: Say something that tells the player we care about them. We shared this wonderful time together, and now we’re going to miss them.
Lisa: But also say that it’s not the end. We’ll see them again, in another game, at another time. And we’re looking forward to that.
Bart: But keep it short. There’s too much blabbering in this game already.
Homer: *moans* This seems impossible.

• Make Homer Struggle to Find the Perfect Ending- 5 minutes

Bart: Okay Homer, so what do you got?
Marge: It needs to be nostalgic and sweet.
Homer: …
Lisa: And optimistic and sweet.
Homer: …
Bart: And short and sweet.
Homer: …
Homer: …
Homer: …
Homer: Bye.

 

Time for me to crack on with all that Returning Content research.
TTFN.