Bewildering Stories: Editorial

Learning Tools

by Jerry Wright

Well, hey, that was fun. Or perhaps not. Our good friend Don is hiding in the swamps of Floridia (sic) and has left the final issue of the year to me. Bwa ha ha ha ha... choke, gasp. So... Let there be mindless frivolity.

We just got a GameCube from the "wonderful people" at Nintendo. Now, I know that XBox and PS2 are the sine-qua-non of the gaming world, but frankly Scarlett, I don't care. There is one game that ONLY appears on the GameCube, and that is Animal Crossing!

Animal Crossing is totally non-violent, and non-threatening, and you spend your time interacting with "intelligent animals", expanding and furnishing your house, pulling weeds, and fishing, and of course, making money. As well as doing a mass quantity of other things. This game is real-time, so if a minute goes by in the real world, well, it's gone by in the gameworld.

For some reason, this game is incredibly addicting, even to non-gamers, of whom, I'm proud to say, I'm one. And even the maddog killers who love first-person-shooters have been known to become addicted to this crazy game. But...

And the caveat is large... What would this game teach a child -- malleable -- impressionable?

The most important thing in your life is getting money (bells in AC). Your house, clothing, and possessions are only as worthwhile as they are judged to be by others. People are untrustworthy and will cheat you if given the opportunity. And sucking up to others is the best way of life.

Ouch. I'm not sure if the predominantly Japanese game-designers realized what life-lessons they were teaching, but hey, that's what I've learned in three days of playing Animal Crossing.

So that's life in our little corner of the universe. Tell us what is going on in your life. We’ll be glad to listen. As we so often say, please write!