Time to stop playing Pocket Camp for good.
I decided today to quit playing Pocket Camp.
It went offline last year, but I kept playing every day. I played the online version every day since it launched, eight years ago, and then the offline version every day since it launched, one year ago.
They added four new monthly events this year. The other eight were repeats. Now it's nothing but repeats. More opportunities to finish filling out my catalog. To get the things I didn't get the last time around. The things I managed to live without then, and could live without now.
It was the first thing I did when I woke up in the morning. I would sit up in bed and use the glow of my phone starting up Pocket Camp to force myself to get out of bed. I did that this morning.
I got good at multi-tasking. I could clean my cat's litterbox one-handed while I played Pocket Camp in the other hand. I would play while driving. I would play while walking outside. Holding my phone close to myself so it wouldn't get rained on. Poking one finger out of my glove so I could keep playing when it was below freezing outside, switching from hand to hand as one finger at a time became so cold it would grow numb.
I played at airports when I traveled to Japan in 2019. On subway trains. At dinner with friends. I played during work meetings, stealthily, under the table, where everyone could see I was doing something on my phone but didn't know what.
I would play it while doing my workouts in the morning. While doing my final leg and knee stretches at night, part of my daily physical therapy for my chronic knee pain.
I would check the clock constantly. 5 AM. 8 AM. 11 AM. 2 PM. 5 PM. 8 PM. The times when I should check my flowers and gather fruit. Give items to the campers. Once a day, empty out my inventory of snacks to the campers with the lowest friendship values with the corresponding themes. Swap out the campers in my cabin for the ones who now had the lowest values.
It was a ritual. A series of them. And I showed up, day after day, watching my numbers get higher and higher. My campsite and warehouse filling with earned items.
I stopped posting about it a long time ago. I have no friends who play. I don't talk about it with anybody. I did it just for me for a long time. I let it slip more and more in the last few months, because the offline version didn't require as much. Days I was visiting family, I'd only check in three or four times instead of all six that I would during normal days. But I never missed a day. Never missed a morning.
And the math doesn't work anymore. I'm trying as hard as I can to fix my sleep debt. To write novels. I'm a few months from having the one I've spent the last five years writing ready to send out to publishers. I've already started on my second. Will they ever see physical releases? Probably not. Will they ever make me money? Probably not. But would Pocket Camp? No. It never did.
I don't regret the time I spent on it. But it's done. The thing I showed up for for eight years needs to be put down. A daily habit, multiple times a day, for eight years. It was predictable. Gave me continuity.
I won't miss it. I don't miss the other Animal Crossing games I quit playing. I don't miss the other mobile games I quit playing, either. The obligation to maintain it continued long after the joy faded.
But I was there every day, and I won't be anymore.
Here is the Friend Card for Soybean, who rose to level 643 this year. I just took this today. It is very likely the last I'll ever see of her. It would mean something to me to know that she might show up in someone else's game, even once.
I keep this blog up because it means something to me when I see a post get a like or a reblog on my activity feed. Makes me feel like it was worthwhile to populate this tiny corner of the fandom, in this tiny corner of Tumblr, in this tiny corner of the internet.
Look closely enough, and you'll find me. I was here. I had to move on to something else, but that won't change the fact that I was here.













