It’s said by some, that we live our lives in decades. This may come about from the fact that humans have ten fingers, and remembering facts about our history is difficult beyond the second pinkie.
However, others believe that our lives are lived in patterns of 7. Which may have come about while an older person, trying to recount the past decade, while holding a hot cup of coffee and their phone, realized it is almost impossible to get beyond 7 without spilling the coffee or dropping the phone, or dropping the phone into the coffee.
But, as it pertains to my history with The Simpsons Tapped Out (hereafter referred to as TSTO because I don’t want to keep typing out the full name of the game, while drinking coffee and holding my phone), I will be using a mathematic reference of number of 8 years. Why? Because the TSTO characters have 8 fingers, and the game, and my life in association to it, ran in patterns of 8…and a half (which makes sense if you start the second pattern of 8, and stopped it abruptly in the middle).
Live with it. It’s how we’re gonna do this.
It is really difficult to understand how important this game was to me during the past 12 years. The game, my dedication to writing about it, and the friends and associates I met through that time, will remain a touchstone with events that happened in my REAL life. Knowing that the game is ending, and there is nothing we can do about it, is tantamount to knowing a good friend is on their final days, before they pull the plug, and trying to tell them everything they mean to you… before the lights go out.
Whoa. Dark.
Or, if we are being more pragmatic, it is the natural cycle of all things. And let’s be honest, the game has been on a bit of a “life-support cycle” for the past 4 (half of 8) years or so. The end was inevitable. But, like losing anything that is important to the fabric of your life, it is the memories that will stay with you forever, long after the lights go out. Nothing lasts forever in physical form, it is the very thermodynamic nature of entropy.
And again, let’s be honest (so much honesty here), we really weren’t “calling our dear friend” (logging in to tap) as much as we used to. TSTO went from a sometimes many times a day obsession, to a “mostly quick check in to see if you are alive,” couple of times a week to do the daily challenge, tertiary kind of relationship.
Like a relationship that devolves over time, both sides can point fingers. EA may have kept it alive if they were making huge income, and could justify the staffing…which was next to impossible, as most of the diehard fans were donut farmers and rarely spent actual cash on the game. And of course, the diehards can complain that compared to the first 8 years (there is that number again), the game had become boring and predictable, with a fraction of the action offered when the game was in full nonstop TSTO action mode (so…much…daily…tapping…to hit the goals!).
But, this isn’t the place to whine about what could have been. Not now. This is much more personal…a eulogy of sorts. And come on…nobody speaks ill of the dead at a funeral! At least that’s what I’m counting on for mine.
There is no easy way to escape the fact that TSTO was interwoven into the fabric of some of the most important years of my life. I started playing shortly after the death of my father. We were close. He was a man full of unconditional love and patience loved by everyone he touched. I still mourn him, and aspire to be half the human he was.
I also needed something to take my mind off the daily grind of running a business (I owned a company that provided internet services to Broadcasters in more than 100 markets), and was getting the last of my five daughters through college, and three weddings, and three huge political campaigns, and managing the marketing for my country club, and a handful of other clients. I needed something that was FUN, that offered a creative outlet (and wasn’t as frustrating as golf). TSTO provided that…and so much more.
I came to the game through a different door than most. My connection to the Simpsons was both personal and professional. My wife went to High School with Matt Groening’s sister, Lisa…who married Craig Bartlett, one of the head animators for Will Vinton Claymation…with whom I was doing the music for the Emmy Award winning, “Claymation Christmas Celebration.” I was around when the Matt was doing his pre-Simpsons comic, “Life in Hell” (which ran in the Eugene weekly newspapers) ,which evolved into the Simpsons short, on the “Tracy Ullman Show”, which birthed the game. So yeah…I kinda HAD to play the game, simply because I loved the Simpsons, and animation, and had a loyalty to Matt, and had MET the REAL Lisa! (don’t get me started on the REAL Springfield…it’s here…right next to Eugene…in OREGON!)
Like so many others, when the game came out, I endured the server messes, random updates, and early storylines, and kept playing. But then my ridiculous penchant to “get involved with management” took over.
The answer is complicated.
But, it really comes down to the weird, funny, unique community of players and bloggers that kept me interested and writing, along with the enduring friendships made by those of us who took the time to blog about this “silly ‘lil game.”A community, that when my youngest daughter did an exchange to Uganda in 2014, and cajoled me into starting an NGO to help the kids in the village of Buyijja, stepped up to be part of this amazing, grass roots effort. 
We built wells, bathrooms, solar power, books, clothes, shoes, and so much more…well over $80,000 raised and spent…hundreds of children’s lives changed…until COVID wiped it all out. The “why” is complicated, the politics of Uganda extreme, but when “Friends of Buyijja” died in 2021, I had to stop writing about “this silly little game” and step away. My purpose went adrift.
Whoa. Dark. Again…
Ironically, about that same time, TSTO went into “auto-pilot” mode. The writing in the semi-regular updates, was the only really fresh aspect of the game, barely offsetting the reliance on obscure characters or countless dopplegangers (how many Marges, Homers, Barts, and Lisas do we need???) The number of weird “randos” far outweighed legitimate characters that we should care about. But, yet…it lived on. It lived in a state of stasis, here…but less and less relevant to our day to day lives. It lost value in our lives, while shedding players. It slid into the “how long can this really go on” status, much like the TV show on which it is based.
Then, we got the word that the “patient was terminal,” and we panicked! We set aside our busy, distracted lives, to take stock, and try and salvage and save what is inevitably going away.
What am I going to miss most about TSTO? My town. Every chapter preserved, with weird attention to details that didn’t matter to anyone but me. I will do a screen grab. I will do a Screen Recording Video of a tour… and take a final ride on my monorails, before they pull the plug.
(Look For A POST on Best Ways to Do This!)
They can take away the game…but that can’t take away my digital record! HA! HA! After all…the game (and maybe reality) is just zeros and ones! I can/will capture and store my town FOREVER (or as long as my cloud storage stays alive…Kids? Kids? Keep paying the bill after I’m gone…kids?).
I will miss the “tags” when my friends visit. And I will hope that they continue to send Christmas cards, and stay in touch. EA teased us about another version of the game, or something with a similar theme. But, it won’t be the same.
Both my wife and I have had the high schools we attended torn down and “improved” with new buildings. There are minor remnants, but it is not the same. I will feel the same about any “new” version of the game.
Like so many gatherings of things that are past, whether they be reunions, or funerals, we celebrate the love and camaraderie we shared, put aside our differences, and simply bask in the knowledge that we were part of something very, very special…This TSTO Community!
Like I said…things have a logical, and sometime illogical conclusion, when we least expect it. The loss of TSTO pails in comparison to the losses of natural disasters. But, losses are personal, and can’t easily be quantified. Just know, the game will be missed.
Thanks to Alissa, Wookie, Safi, and the countless friends I have made through this game. Thanks for playing along. Thanks for reading. Thanks for being my friend when I needed one most.