You would think that, since video games are supposed to entertain you, they would relieve stress, rather than causing more of it. But I've certainly had my share of worries due to the games that I've played.

Every day, I check up on my Animal Crossing: Wild World to see if it has rained in the game. (If you've been keeping track, there is a previous post of mine which speaks of this, so bear with me if you've already heard of it.) Over the years I have cultivated a grand garden of flowers in my town, which I am very proud of it. And as I always tend to get too attached to things, even those that may seem trivial, I can't part with it, not after I've spent so much time and effort keeping the flowers alive. I've grown tired of having to take care of them, day in and day out (the ones that are brown and dying must be watered, so that the next day they will be healthy again).

I have already let go of Nintendogs. That was a bit easier because the worst that could happen would be the dog running away (they don't die, nor do they ever mature. Rather unrealistic). The dog would surely come back after a while. In this case I would not lose my house or anything like that, so I wasn't particularly concerned.

Eventually I expect I'll abandon Animal Crossing completely, either because it falls off my list of priorities or I finally come to terms with loss. But even though I already know what will happen, I can't help but be saddened by the future.

During my 6th grade year, I went to a makeshift YMCA daycare after school, located in a place called the Multi-Use room where school announcements and assemblies take place, since I wasn't trusted to walk home by myself and my parents wouldn't be able to pick me up until 5 pm, sometimes 6, in most cases. I would finish whatever homework I could (we could use the school library if we needed textbooks). At first, in the beginning of the year, I might sometimes run around backstage and play hide and seek, but after a while we were told not to go backstage anymore, so that put an end to it. We also played some games, like Apples to Apples. It can be quite fun if you have enough people. (Unfortunately you need four people to play it properly, and in my family there are only three if my mom would actually agree to play. So I never get the chance to play it.) But as the year wore on, one of the two people in charge of this YMCA would bring in his Nintendo Gamecube more frequently, and we would play Mario Kart Double Dash or Super Smash Bros. Melee or this X-Men game. I did have a good time playing the video games, although it meant I was that much more impatient for them when I wasn't playing.

I did hear some exciting news recently. There's a new kind of Nintendo DS coming out - it's called the 3DS, and so the graphics will be quite nice. There are games on the way, too, like Nintendogs + Cats. Because of the camera built into the 3DS, the dog will actually be able to recognize your face. And there's also a new Animal Crossing that looks nice. The characters you can make are now taller and thinner (I was never too fond of the chibi-ish, short people). I'd really like to try these games out, so I guess I'm going to have to get a 3DS. But this also makes me wonder if I'll even have the time to play them.

What really spurred me on to write this post was the problems I was having with my Sims 3 today. I was notified that there was a game update available for the Sims 3 World Adventures (an expansion pack I had purchased), so I decided to update it. After that I figured I should try to play the game. But then I was told that my expansion was not compatible with my base game. I waited for it to update, but it didn't do anything. Eventually I started rooting around online to see what I could find. It seems that other people were having the same problem, too. I finally figured out that I ought to download a patch to my Sims 3 game, which fixed the game launcher, so I should be able to play now (it has finally stopped telling me my game is incompatible and everything is showing up as usual). I was really worried there thinking I might have to uninstall everything (although I was prepared for this, and backed up my files on my external hard drive). I'm so glad that it's been fixed now.

Labels: 3ds, animal crossing, apples to apples, backstage, games, garden, memories, nintendo ds, nintendogs, patch, pride, problem, routine, sims 3, stress, wild world, YMCA

That bond is a very important one, one that many people have. The bond differs from person to person...I have read or heard about pretty close bonds, and I wanted to share them.

My dad watched a movie called District 9, about aliens who landed on Earth, in fact, near Johannesburg, South Africa, I think. I was pretty freaked out by the movie since the main character had something happen to his arm and started turning into an alien little by little or something... We call the main character the "sweety man" because in fact, in the movie, he had tried to tempt out an alien child by saying "It's the sweety man!". So now we're addicted to saying "sweety man". But anyways, the point is, that even the aliens cared a lot about their children. It was the sweety man's job to move the aliens to a new camp outside of Johannesburg, so then he tried threatening to take away an alien's child unless they moved to the new camp. The alien, who was previously calm, then became very worked up and upset.

And then there are cats and their kittens. My dad's friend is getting a cat soon, from a "cat club" that was set up at my dad's workplace, what with lots of stray cats hanging around Cisco's buildings. Apparently someone who helps take care of the cats came up to my dad and said he was very worried about the mother of the cat that was getting adopted. He said the mother was fretting and stressed because she didn't know where her child had gotten off to suddenly. My mom thought the solution would be for my dad's friend to adopt the mother and its child (but I doubt their family was planning to get two cats). Either way, I hope that the mother cat can see her child again. If she did, then she would know her child was safe (and hopefully happy and well taken care of) and then she wouldn't have to worry.

Guardians aren't always in the form of parents. Sometimes grandparents serve as the parental figures. I started reading a book, and when the mother of the main character's friend mentioned that not doing something would be like child abuse, then the grandmother of the main character allowed the main character to do something that she'd forbidden until then. The grandmother was always concerned about someone taking her granddaughter away from her, because they might think she was too old to take care of a child, or something. So hearing "child abuse", even if the person only meant it figuratively and not literally, probably made alarm bells go off in her head.

But sometimes the relationship between parents and their children are...less than perfect. A good example is Alice and Kev (yep, that's a link, click on it!), a story about a homeless girl and her father, created with the Sims 3. Unfortunately there isn't really an ending to the story. But it's pretty cool, seeing a video game being used to tell a compelling story.

Labels: alice and kev, aliens, bond, cat, child cruelty, children, cisco systems, club, district 9, grandmother, homeless, parents, relationship, sims 3, sweety man

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