Tonight’s going to be short, because I want sleep and I need to get a lot done tomorrow. I worked hard today, so I don’t feel bad about going to bed. I think that when you don’t feel good about going to bed when it’s late in the evening (or in this case, morning, though I’ll make WordPress lie once again), or you go to bed because you feel like giving up on the day, that’s pretty clear evidence that something went wrong that day, that something could’ve been done better. I feel that way a lot, to be honest. Thankfully not tonight, but it’s very possible that ‘worked hard’ will not be good enough come Thursday.
On another note, for a man quickly running out of money and desperately trying to procure some from overseas, today was a not insignificant success. I ate a cereal breakfast, snacked lightly during the day, and absolutely gorged myself at two parties for free this evening. It was wondrous, and I probably won’t need to eat for most of tomorrow. I’m trying to train my stomach to work like a camel’s, and it’s funny to observe how quickly, after returning to life as a uni student, I slipped back into the ‘when free, consume everything in sight’ mentality, and even more this time seeing as I’m paying for things. London may be less gracious to the under-funded, and I will likely be making some changes to my financial schedule, but there are so many free(-ish) things to be found when you look for them.
I love thinking. I do over-think, yes, and I have been hurt by it, but I still love thinking and in general it turns out well for me. I didn’t go into this so much yesterday when talking about films, but I’ll take a twisted, complex film that I have to figure out over a spoon-fed ordeal almost any day. I like sports and games that require strategy as well as physique, like football – and at the last winter Olympics I discovered curling. The preceding Olympics I’d been down on it as a household chore on ice, but this time thanks in no small part to the attractiveness of the Japanese team, I first watched a bit of it, then looked up the rules, then was utterly hooked on it. It combines the rigorous intellectual challenge of chess with the skilful finesse of any precision sport, and includes a physical aspect, to boot. Couldn’t be better. Don’t knock it till you’ve learnt the rules and watched a few ends.
I like my games cerebral too, not left to chance. Sure, a night of Bunco with impassioned friends is riotous fun, but in the intervals I’ll take something I can control, provided I can hang on to the complexities. Tonight, I learned such a game. Ironically, it’s called ‘bumhead’, and even more interestingly, I used to play something very similar to it on Neopets. Do I hear any cheers? Anyone else devote a significant proportion of their childhood free time to this gateway drug MMORPG? Fortunately I didn’t go too far down that path…well, maybe a bit too far, but I did enjoy playing all the games, earning money, and banking or investing it (especially once I realised my pet could be “starving” but would never actually die, and therefore didn’t really need food).
I wasn’t actually going to talk about Neopets here tonight, and honestly I haven’t even thought about it for years, but curiosity got the better of me and I went to take a look for old times’ sake. A lot of it’s changed, but it’s still recognisable and has most of the old trappings – the games, certainly, and even most of the regions of the world, all the shops, over-arching stories, the bank, stock market, and even the scratchcard kiosk was still surviving in Happy Valley (I seem to recall it being in the Ice Caves before, though). I couldn’t just take a look around so I tried to sign in, and, after having them email me my username and password (the advantage of keeping the same email address since the first one I ever created, way back in 5th grade), I was reunited with my old Neopet (2,999 days old, they tell me, to be precise). Oh, and I found out that he was not only “starving”, he was “dying”. But Neopets, like I said, cannot die, and his mood was “cheerful”, so it’s all good.
Everything’s progressed, though. My few inventory items were mostly “retired”, though I may be able to sell a few as antiques and make a small profit. Speaking of profit, I revisited my Neohome and found it categorised as “classic” because they’ve revamped the whole system. So I sold it back to the bank, the whole thing, and made a tidy sum. Unfortunately my bank account hadn’t grown a bit – they make you manually collect interest each day; I suppose that’s one of the ways they keep kids coming back daily – but the story when I visited my stock market portfolio was grandly different. I only had holdings in two companies, but while one had devalued by over 90%, the other had been experiencing record-breaking growth, was leaps and bounds above all the other stocks, and I sold it for almost 4000% of what I paid for it – gained over 20,000 neopoints. Not bad for the first day back after about eight years. I promptly bought up shares in several bottom-lining companies, so perhaps in another eight years I’ll make another killing.
This probably sounds ridiculously childish to you, and it is, but I actually think Neopets has some value for kids. I did notice a monetised section where you can pay real money for ‘neocash’ (not to be confused with the innocent neopoints) with which you can buy more interesting items, and though this is unfortunate and I’d hate to see some little kid begging her mum for the credit card to buy a princess wig for her Neopet, it’s basically inevitable. Every community like this eventually monetises, not least of which being Facebook. But despite that there are so many features from which kids can learn about real life. Sure, the ‘work’ to earn money is just games, but the banking system is somewhat realistic, with interest; the stock market, though random, is similar in usage to the real stock market; you can haggle in the stores or participate in auctions or even sell items in your own store; there’s lotteries and newspapers and forums. A lot more education than Runescape, I daresay, though I’ll admit I did spend some time – not much – on there as well.
Oh, they’ve also upped the customisation system, so I can now buy clothing for my Neopet and put it on him. Just to see how it was I quickly bought up some items; he’s now decked out in a white polo, khaki trousers, and blue sneakers, and though he’s still “dying”, his mood has gone from “cheerful” to “extremely happy”. Attaboy. I’m not so into his red and green skin anymore, though; I may give him a repaint (the more complicated the design, the more expensive, of course). Haha. I’m a phase kinda guy, so this won’t last long (it can’t – I have so much to be doing), but surely you know what it’s like to stumble upon an old toy; you want to play with it again. I wonder if they still have my favourite game…
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that that game showed me a little about how the world works, and got me excited about the career paths available to me. Most games these days don’t seem to do that, they’re just diversions and mind-numbers. Kids are more wary of ‘learning games’, to be sure, but that just means we have to be more creative in designing them. I was perfectly happy to play Math Blaster and Gizmos ‘n’ Gadgets as a child, and I could see the effects of those missions even in junior high maths and science.
So I don’t think it’s too much to ask that our entertainment, whether it’s films, card games, or fully immersive environments, be both stimulating and self-improving.
Hey, tell me what kinds of things you guys did as children that you haven’t thought about for ages but wouldn’t mind revisiting now.
Oh, and I guess this wasn’t short at all, but I didn’t plan on running into thirteen year-old me.
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