Answer Me This – Enthusiasm Blues

Question: Am I losing my love for gaming?

I’m having somewhat of a worry.

In my last blog, I was singing the praises of the 3DSXL, saying how brilliantly innovative and downright fun it was. Since then, I’ve picked up a copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf and become the mayor of the town of Dodge. I’ve upgraded and filled my home, ploughed money into public projects and overseen the construction of bridges, benches and dream salons. In order to fund all this, I’ve been visiting the nearby tropical island to farm local fauna, donating any undiscovered species to Dodge’s museum.

The thing is, these developments require a huge amount of Bells to complete and the residents, a bunch of collectivist skinflints, only ever donate a paltry amount when most things require hundreds of thousands to complete. This means that most of your time will be spent visiting the tropical island, farming the same old animals and selling them to the recycling shop before repeating the process simply to earn enough Bells to build a new bridge or finally pay off the extortionate rates that Tom Nook, the local estate agent, charges you for an extension to your house.

It’s all a bit dull, really.

The main reason for me getting a 3DS was the number of glowing reviews New Leaf was getting and, due to my usual genre of gaming becoming somewhat stale as of late, I wanted something new but familiar, a change of pace into which I could gently ease myself into. I absolutely adored Animal Crossing on the GameCube all those years ago, so I wanted to return to the relaxed gameplay that I loved. I experienced it for the first few weeks, but now it’s become an utter grind just to get the Bells required to upgrade your town, with many of the available developments adding little of any value to your town at all.

Things wouldn’t be so bad if you only had to visit the island once or twice to raise enough funds, but this isn’t the case: unless you’re really lucky when it comes to rare fish and insects appearing, you’ll have to make a number of long trips. I must have made dozens of trips to that godforsaken island in order to build the Reset Surveillance Centre, which cost a staggering 368,000 Bells, only for a manhole to appear in my town. Things are exacerbated by the fact that the shops operate in real time, meaning that you only have a set time every day to get your goods in or else you’ll be stuck waiting for them to open again, marooning you in a void with little to do until the morning comes.

I’m worried that I’m losing my life-long passion for gaming.

I don’t remember any of this happening while playing the original on the GameCube. I remember running around, catching butterflies and bothering Blathers; welcoming new residents and watching K.K. Slider sling his guitar when he rolled into town every Saturday night. Things like this still happen in New Leaf, but they’re so few and far between that it seems like a miracle when they finally do.

As a result, I’ll turn it on, see if anything new is happening, harvest as many animals from the island that I can stand, then turn it off. The fun, relaxing gameplay that I remember from the original has turned into a long, minimally-rewarding grindfest.

I just don’t really have the urge to play it anymore.

I’m worried that I’m losing my life-long passion for gaming. Every gamer has their glut and a title comes along to reignite their gaming spark, but I’ve been stuck in this one for so long.

Until my passion returns, I’ll be drumming up enough money to build the second floor of the museum that probably no-one will use. Sometimes I just wanna get out of Dodge.

Answer: I’m currently just feeling a little blue.