Headline: Woman Obsessed with Virtual Farm Lets Virtual Family Starve

We will eat your soul!

First off, I want you to know I’m not playing Farmville.  I am not that big of a loser.  It’s called Hay Day, and really, I can quit anytime I want to – I just haven’t wanted to yet.  Sadly, this has meant bad things for my little virtual family on a different game I told you about earlier.  I haven’t even given them a good slap in ages.  I’m pretty sure they’ve run out of food by now. (Click to enlarge pics I took from Google Images, mostly.)

And to think I was so good to them before . . .

But I can’t worry about that because I have a freaked out farm here.  It’s on my Nook, so it’s even worse than only being on Facebook or a game relegated to home.  On the plus side, it seems my workplace, built in 1974, is unable to get a decent signal with the Nook.  It can get a signal for laptops and my phone, but not this one simple game on my portable device.  Not that this is a problem.  I’m perfectly okay with it.

Oh okay Wicker Man arghhhhhhh!

But what about my crops?  I mean, I’ve got wheat and corn and carrots (all cut with a scythe interestingly enough) and they’re just sitting there waiting.  Also, the cows are full of milk (they sit there like overfilled Macy’s Day Parade floats, ready to burst) and the chickens are sitting on giant eggs which is bound to be uncomfortable.  Worst of all – the pigs!  You harvest bacon from the pigs, but you don’t kill them.  Nope.  Once they’re ready (they will be lying on their bloated stomachs in misery) you slide them through this tube that gives them liposuction resulting in bacon.  Then you feed them and it starts all over again.  I don’t think I’d want to eat this bacon.

Pig liposuction comin’ up.

Stuff occurs in real time in this game, but the time it takes varies and makes no logical sense.  You can get an egg from a chicken every few minutes, and milk from the cow every couple hours, but it takes like five hours to make corn bread and an entire day to make bacon and eggs.  I’m not the best cook, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take that long to make these things in real life.  WTF.

Bet it takes a year to make the pie. Don’t ask me about the saw.

You get money for selling stuff in this game.  You can sell to pretend people, or apparently real people some of whom have names spelled in Chinese characters.  One person I accidentally friended is named Hand.  I’m not sure how to unfriend this person now.  I just don’t think you can have a friendship based on a love of pretend produce.  What’s interesting is visiting the pretend farms of these people.  Maybe I should say pretend metropolises.  Holy crap!  These guys have acres and acres of crops, machines, animals, goat statues (really), and more.  I’m not sure whether to be impressed or really, really scared.

Does this person do anything else? Someone should check on him.

It takes a long time to get anywhere on this game, but Facebook and Google Play in their all-knowing wisdom have an answer!  You can pay real money for pretend diamonds to buy pretend products for your pretend farm in this free game.  It’s genius!  Now I’m way too cheap to ever, ever pay a dime for something that is supposed to be free, so I’m not too far gone yet.  But it’s still sneaky as heck, isn’t it?  And people pay for it or they wouldn’t keep advertising.  Far out.   Maybe I should just beg one of those other players.

Orrrr maybe not. Look at those creepy profile pics!

So my virtual family is dying and wondering where I’ve gone, but at least I can say I haven’t ignored my real family.  The kids are playing right along with me and I’m sure my husband is back there somewhere watching people dig stuff out of various garages or whatever on TV.  And the kids, unlike my pretend animals, can feed themselves!  So all is well.  Unless you’re a tiny virtual person.  Then I’m sorry.

Alice