The Long Goodbye
Jun. 30th, 2023 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerTwo months ago I was tapping in as usual to the Love Live School Idol Festival All Stars mobile game when, in the course of reading the news updates, I ran into an announcement the game would be shutting down. Having plugged away at the game since it became available in English, the news was a bit of a jolt. No more than a few moments later, though, I was at least telling myself the game really was a time sink for all that I liked it well enough to keep playing, and through an intervention of sorts I’d be getting that time back even if only to fritter away on an assortment of things now. I’d also been thinking that in the summer I’d be at a point at last where I wouldn’t be able to tap into the game every day and would just have to deal with missing out on the daily and weekly items for a while. Having the game shut down altogether before that at least settled things there for me.
The game wasn’t going to shut down right away, though, and in the two months left to it it would be freer with the daily and weekly items. Some time before I’d worked out how to record my iPad’s screen and had begun saving the “music video” segments of the game, which involve the elaborate costumes that are part of the Love Live “school idol” experience in general and could amount to one slim justification for plugging away at this game in particular. Scouting up more costumes over the final countdown, I kept garbing the characters more or less the way I wanted to and making more videos.
All in all there was a lot of “content” in the game, which can seem one explanation why it was shut down. I’d kept up with the “special event stories” and had tried to keep up with the “main story”; the “bond stories” that you can get access to by deploying particular characters in game rounds had been very occasional indulgences, save for some that provided the backstory to some special character songs and had to be seen before the songs could be played. As the special events came to an end and I got to the amiable end of the main story (at least taking note of one moment where Honoka goes to an international food fair and gushes about how delicious the shawarma was; my work group seems to order a lot of that these days) I supposed I’d only worked a few characters all the way to the end of their bond stories, but then the game went ahead and unlocked all of those stories regardless of bond. There was far too much there now to get through anyway, but as I searched around for video recordings other people just happened to have already posted I did play all the way through some paths I hadn’t found right away.
The two months ran out at last; I recorded a hundred and sixty-fifth music video and popped out of the game. The very next day there was an update to the application, but on installing it alongside other updates I just found it pointed you to a web site and deleted the program at last, freeing up a fair bit of storage on my iPad. I have told myself one thing that got me into this game was having started playing it just weeks before being stuck in health-protective isolation working at home, and it’s been a while since then. While I know there’s a new Love Live rhythm game that could be available in English soon, more like the very first one than the “All Stars” game with its more elaborate pre-song preparations and less frenetic gameplay in the songs, I’m very resolved to not play it. With the videos saved, anyway, I at least have something more than memories left.
The game wasn’t going to shut down right away, though, and in the two months left to it it would be freer with the daily and weekly items. Some time before I’d worked out how to record my iPad’s screen and had begun saving the “music video” segments of the game, which involve the elaborate costumes that are part of the Love Live “school idol” experience in general and could amount to one slim justification for plugging away at this game in particular. Scouting up more costumes over the final countdown, I kept garbing the characters more or less the way I wanted to and making more videos.
All in all there was a lot of “content” in the game, which can seem one explanation why it was shut down. I’d kept up with the “special event stories” and had tried to keep up with the “main story”; the “bond stories” that you can get access to by deploying particular characters in game rounds had been very occasional indulgences, save for some that provided the backstory to some special character songs and had to be seen before the songs could be played. As the special events came to an end and I got to the amiable end of the main story (at least taking note of one moment where Honoka goes to an international food fair and gushes about how delicious the shawarma was; my work group seems to order a lot of that these days) I supposed I’d only worked a few characters all the way to the end of their bond stories, but then the game went ahead and unlocked all of those stories regardless of bond. There was far too much there now to get through anyway, but as I searched around for video recordings other people just happened to have already posted I did play all the way through some paths I hadn’t found right away.
The two months ran out at last; I recorded a hundred and sixty-fifth music video and popped out of the game. The very next day there was an update to the application, but on installing it alongside other updates I just found it pointed you to a web site and deleted the program at last, freeing up a fair bit of storage on my iPad. I have told myself one thing that got me into this game was having started playing it just weeks before being stuck in health-protective isolation working at home, and it’s been a while since then. While I know there’s a new Love Live rhythm game that could be available in English soon, more like the very first one than the “All Stars” game with its more elaborate pre-song preparations and less frenetic gameplay in the songs, I’m very resolved to not play it. With the videos saved, anyway, I at least have something more than memories left.