Cute and Cuddly Capitalism

The video gaming system, a.k.a. THE CUBE. My son had been begging and pleading for it for months. I had held out for as long as I could, for I knew he would be hopelessly addicted to that sucker the moment he lifted it from the box. My husband decided it was high time for our son to join the new millennium, so for his eleventh birthday, it arrived. Well, a gaming system is nothing without games, and the game we got him was an animal homeowners simulation. It had great graphics, cute little animal denizens, and it offered the opportunity to buy a house and live amongst the adorable woodland creatures. It was only later that I learned that what we had given our son was essentially venture capitalism meets Sesame Street.

At first, I was pleased that my son was enjoying himself, building a virtual home alongside the impossibly cute little creatures. After a while, though, it became obvious that this game had him under a spell. The game was all he would talk about, to anyone who would listen. He would protest, sometimes angrily, when he was told it was time to get off the game. He and his sister would fight over whose turn it was to play, and the length of time each of them devoted to the game. My husband and I found ourselves trying to referee their many fights, and I was secretly imagining the many ways I could destroy the game disk and then afterwards, fake total ignorance of its demise.

After one particularly heated struggle, my son and daughter issued a challenge - “You try the game, Mom, and see how easy it is for YOU to stop”. Talk about a bet I couldn’t lose. I knew I could resist the charm of saccharine-sweet village inhabitants, and I had no interest setting up a house amongst them. I accepted the challenge. I was MOM and I was immune to the spell which had ensnared my children. Yea, right.

The premise of the game is as follows. You arrive in a picturesque little town by train, with nothing more than the clothes on your back. You seek out the village shop keeper, who sells you a house and then employs you, so you can pay back your mortgage. He has you deliver things to different townspeople, who give you gifts for your trouble. After paying off a portion of your mortgage, you are free to find other ways to make money. This shopkeeper will buy anything you care to sell him. Anything you can catch, pick, or otherwise acquire can be a source of income. As a homeowner, making lots of money to pay off a mortgage appealed to my very core. Without trying to, I found myself enjoying this foray into cuddly capitalism.

Now, when you pay off your mortgage, you can choose to have your house enlarged. Doing so incurs ever larger amounts of money. Higher ticket items must be acquired and sold to pay off the house. Okay, this introduces a stress element here, as loans are bad and solvency is good.

Oh, and did I mention there is a town committee that judges, and award points, according to how creatively you maintain your house? And that, while paying off your debt, you are penalized for furnishing your house improperly? Forget having eclectic taste - your floors, walls, furniture, and decorative items need to be of the same series or point deductions are made. Certain items can be bought, other items must be given or won,therefore,acquiring all the items in a series takes time and perseverance. Remember the Pokemon craze? Well, this is poke-decorating and you’ve gotta get it all to win. Collecting the required items before the other kid did, that was the hook for my kids. The compulsion to pay off my mortgage and all the expansions, before my children did, is what hooked me.

Soon, we were all fighting over the game. That was when we learned two secrets that turned our obsessions into full-fledged addiction : time travel, and secret codes. If we missed an item, we could go back in time and retrieve it. We could have everyday be (insert holiday of choice here). Soon, though,time travel just wasn’t enough, we wanted the items without the work. My son went on the internet and found the key for us to be the ultimate video slackers- the item codes. With these, we could go to the village shopkeeper, enter a code, and get the items we needed to complete home decor series. Not content to just complete the series, now we wanted scads of money for rare items. We would enter the codes, get the items for free, and them turn around and sell them back full price. Now, we were video-fencing. This couldn’t be legal.

Soon, arguments ensued amongst the children over house size, decor, and money. And both children were sore that Mom paid off her loan first and had a big shiny gold statue in the center of town commemorating that achievement. This wasn’t fun anymore, this was competition and it was getting ugly.

And lest I forget, those cute and cuddly animals were not as nice as they appeared. Some were catty, some were jealous, and some were just plain rude. There is enough of that in real life, we didn’t need computer-created soft toys insulting us.

By unanimous decision, this game is now in cold storage until further notice. Until a patch is developed to counteract the games effects, I will not be revisiting these animated venture capitalists. Frankly, I don’t want to be scolded for my long absence by a video Muppet.

©2005 Kathleen M. Wooton, M.D.