One of the first GameCube games we bought was Animal Crossing. If you don’t know what AC is, it’s basically an offline persistent game world where multiple players can exist in the same world. One of the primary ways for players to “make their mark” in the world is letter writing. You can write letters to the NPCs (non-player characters) and also to other players. Unfortunately the text recognition for the NPCs is pretty sad. If you write much more than “Hi, you are cool, I’m glad we are friends” then the NPCs get confused. However, the best part of writing letters is that the animals will show off the letters they've received to the other players. So, if you write funny letters, the NPCs will not understand, but sometime down the road another person will see it.
Anyway, I’ve long since become bored with the activities that are available in the game, but Kara still plays it. So, I have started creating in game stories by writing letters and sending them to the animals. In essence I’m creating more content for Kara’ game, because these letters will be revealed to her as she continues to play. The most recent topic I’ve been writing about is Bill the Duck’s suspicious friendship with Huck the Frog. Bill is a cutesy character, so I’ve been spreading rumors that he might be, ya know, homo-duck-ual (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Poor Bill, I even talked to him until he let me change his catchphrase (which I changed to “FAB-U-lous!”) Only time will tell if there’s any validity to these rumors…
