Collected at last
May. 29th, 2016 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerDuring the season of Lent, I decided I'd been spending an awful lot of my lunch breaks playing a particular game on my iPad (the number-matching game Threes), and resolved to give it up for at least a while. I might hewed to the letter of that pledge while still missing its spirit, however. Having just finished watching the anime series Love Live, I thought I could try out the mobile game in the franchise; once I'd done that, I realised just how effectively it could pull someone in.
The game may be simple enough at its core (keeping time with the pop songs of the anime and franchise's group of "school idols"), but there are lots of small details to it too. There's a "collection" aspect, with a card-based "album" of school idols to be put together through steady effort. Some idols are easier to come by than others, but frequent special competitions in the game all promise special cards featuring the anime's main characters. Somehow, though, I could never gain enough points to get those cards; it was awful easy to suspect this was how the game got you to spend money on it. I resisted that, but even as I might have devoted that much more time to the game I kept wondering if I was finding after-the-fact excuses for some unfortunate distraction during each contest.
Then, though, through the regular effort I built up enough opportunities to collect points that it seemed I'd get to the point of getting a special card, and then just like that I had one. As much as I'd thought the cards from the competitions just preceding it had been interesting, I could at least reflect on how the character Nico had come to catch my attention when watching the first anime series.
The game may be simple enough at its core (keeping time with the pop songs of the anime and franchise's group of "school idols"), but there are lots of small details to it too. There's a "collection" aspect, with a card-based "album" of school idols to be put together through steady effort. Some idols are easier to come by than others, but frequent special competitions in the game all promise special cards featuring the anime's main characters. Somehow, though, I could never gain enough points to get those cards; it was awful easy to suspect this was how the game got you to spend money on it. I resisted that, but even as I might have devoted that much more time to the game I kept wondering if I was finding after-the-fact excuses for some unfortunate distraction during each contest.
Then, though, through the regular effort I built up enough opportunities to collect points that it seemed I'd get to the point of getting a special card, and then just like that I had one. As much as I'd thought the cards from the competitions just preceding it had been interesting, I could at least reflect on how the character Nico had come to catch my attention when watching the first anime series.