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The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

247 points by deegles 7y ago

the_d00d 7y ago
I can't read this...there are no pictures!
zwkrt 7y ago
“It is the most boring, long-winded, repetitive, condescending, infantile bullshit we’ve ever seen.” After a few more invectives, he posed a question: “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?” Apparently so!
- Trasmatta 7y ago
  That quote was from Frank Lantz, who is the guy who designed Universal Paperclips. There's a bit of irony about the criticism of repetition, coming from someone who designed a game about clicking buttons over and over to make numbers go up. Disclaimer: I actually think Universal Paperclips is brilliant, and agree that Animal Crossing has a lot of overly tedious and unnecessary mechanics. But I don't think it's fair to say that people who take comfort from it are just enjoying "tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism".
  - Analemma_ 7y ago
    Was Universal Paperclips supposed to be fun? I kind of got the impression it was meant to scare you into donating to MIRI or whatever.
    - Trasmatta 7y ago
      I enjoyed it a lot, but I also have a weird affinity for clickers. I was very unproductive at work for about a week when I first discovered it.
    - ansible 7y ago
      I thought the story was poignant as well.
    - bo1024 7y ago
      I got completely sucked into it (the philosophy and "story" being a big part of that). It was fun to try and optimize, fun to follow events, and cathartic to reach the end. Sometimes I would take breaks at points while income built up in the background, but I also spent plenty of time optimizing. And I don't normally enjoy grinding.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      "Idle games" are one of the recent booms in gaming over the last five or so years. They now even have their own section on Kongregate and are a large mobile gaming category.
- starpilot 7y ago
  Is it a clickfest like Diablo?
bigtunacan 7y ago
I loved the original Animal Crossing, but honestly I think the less well known indie game Stardew Valley is far better.
- voicedYoda 7y ago
  We've been enjoying this on and off. It takes a while to understand and the controls aren't intuitive... And i think we've thrown away a sword or fishing rod but accident... Unclear
- Trasmatta 7y ago
  > less well known I don't know if I would call Stardew Valley "less well known", as it's sold over 10 million copies. It's incredibly popular, one of the biggest indie game success stories ever. I would also say Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley (and Harvest Moon, for that matter) and very different types of games (despite surface level similarities), so it's pretty hard to compare them directly like that.
  - hyperpallium 7y ago
    > the Animal Crossing franchise has sold over 30 million units. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crossing https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crossing The inequality is legitimate.
    - whateveracct 7y ago
      That's 30 million units over like 20 years and many titles vs one indie game tho
      - cma 7y ago
        New Horizons is already close to more than Stardew in one month though.
      - hyperpallium 7y ago
        Popularity over a longer period increases well-knownness.
minimaxir 7y ago
It's interesting how New Horizons adds many quality-of-life features to streamline gameplay...but still deliberately keeps some of the monotony present in the game design two decades ago on the GameCube. Adding a "weight" to repetitive actions has been a controversial game design principle. It implicitly makes good/efficient actions more rewarding, but there has to be a balance.
- rrmm 7y ago
  Most every game is on some level about wasting time. Good games make wasting time enjoyable.
  - ehnto 7y ago
    Edit: Oh boy, I didn't even realise TFA was written by the same guy. I hadn't read it yet, no wonder it's bringing up the same discussions. /endEdit I stumbled upon this article a while ago which attempts to argue that former idea to absurdity, it's very well written. I disagree with almost the whole thing, but it was fun to see someone disconnect themselves so far from the simple, real time engagement of a playing a video game. It's an entirely valid way to look at games, but it's just a very shallow view on games as a medium. He even accidentally discovers the real reasons why we play games as he works hard to make his case on the gameplay-as-work idea. Full respect to the author, and I'm sure they knew exactly how contrarian they were being. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/dont-play-the-goose-game/600472/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/dont-... Some of my favourite quotes: >"That’s the big problem with video games: To enjoy them, you have to play them." > "Game-play—the work of working a game—is fundamentally irritating" > "And like all labor, the best way to get it done is to farm it out to others. Let the memers honk their geese so you don’t have to."
    - hi5eyes 7y ago
      games are a grind everyone thats ever played an mmo knows flipping specific builds/leveled accounts using botting software is some of the most common middle schoolers first money making enterprise at some level almost all games could be reduced to a version of cookie clicker good games keep players actively looking for a new meta by tweaking and adding content, similar to the everchanging running of a business
voz_ 7y ago
It is a rather poor game all things considered. Stardew valley is far better. On the whole, the one thing they needed to nail is co-op, and that is probably the thing they did the worst on. The game features are limited, villager interaction is inane, the items are repetitive, the goals non-existent. I understand the simple joy of a no-pressure game, but without a meaningful reward loop of any kind, the whole thing starts boring and gets only more so.
- causality0 7y ago
  It's not really a "game" at all. There's no failure state. It's an interactive experience that brings joy to millions of people, and that's enough.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Game does not need to have fail state. Children's games often don't have fail states and were called games long before.
- pasquinelli 7y ago
  stardew valley is one guy's attempt to make the best possible harvest moon, which is a game, i would say, of the same genre as animal crossing, broadly speaking, in the same way as -- i don't know -- mechwarrior and virtual on. the way i think of animal crossing is: take a few microgames from warioware, set it in a jrpg town, and give the player their own doll house. it isn't deep, but that's an observation, not necessarily a criticism.
  - aspenmayer 7y ago
    Virtual On! I forgot I remembered that until you reminded me, which then brought to mind Zone of the Enders and Front Mission. There was one other one which eludes me. Oh yeah, Armored Core. I know there are many others but these were most memorable to me. I think of all of those I love Front Mission series best. It’s kind of an oddball since the others are action games but FM is tactical RPG closer to X-COM series. Thanks for the memories. Time to find some mecha games!
lawrenceyan 7y ago
It's kind of funny that they titled the article this way considering the fact that Animal Crossing is currently banned in China because people have been using it as a platform to stage the Hong Kong protests online [1]. I suppose it gives 'quiet revolution' a doubly apt connotation. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52269671 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52269671
- dmix 7y ago
  That resulted in a ban that will affect every game released in China. Games will have to start blocking any interaction between mainland Chinese and any ‘foreigner’: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885892 This is part of the reversal of the great ‘Opening of China’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Maybe it is more open than it was? Maybe is was even more closed before?
  - eqmvii 7y ago
    Must make it tempting to have limited communication systems, like Magic the Gathering: Arena, where players can only choose from a handful of benign emotes.
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      There seems to a weird trend of attaching political references to video game characters / other in game things which makes it even harder to block all forms of protest.
  - dx87 7y ago
    Some gamers are so upset about it that they're reporting Steam to the CCP for listing Taiwan as a separate country. Seems pointless, but I guess they just want to watch the world burn, which is funny considering they're upset because they can't play a friendly game about being a good neighbor.
Uhhrrr 7y ago
Why does he go on and on about whether the game accurately represents modern life? It seems like this misses the point of games in general, and a game for pre-teens about talking animals specifically.
- amwelles 7y ago
  Eh, me and my friends (all adults in our 30s) have been loving this game. It’s relaxing and fun to decorate a house and island and slowly build up from nothing. It’s a lot like Minecraft or The Sims in that way, although there aren’t any bad guys to fight (a feature I tended to turn off while playing).
  - immutate 7y ago
    It’s the same with me and my friends. Trading fruit, visiting each others’ islands to see Flick, etc. Then there’s the whole terraforming aspect that just feels nice and methodical.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  The thesis of the article """I had imagined Animal Crossing to be a game about the world, one that offered ingenious, if abstract, life lessons. But the players enjoying it in quarantine celebrate it for escapism, which any form of entertainment might provide. Neither interpretation seems quite right. .... Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers.""" This strikes me as "blood from a stone". Generally, games aren't taken as serious art with high brow messages. I don't think Animal Crossing is really trying to 'say' anything. (Albeit, the original one was made when the developer was feeling lonely when he moved to a new town). I think the author is the kind who wants to write lofty things about games. I think that explains the frustration in the question "Do people find comfort in [this bullshit]?". If you make serious games with serious messages to be taken seriously by serious people, I think something relaxed like Animal Crossing somewhat undermines "games are a serious artform".
  - empath75 7y ago
moron4hire 7y ago
I have a lot of friends playing the game and it just looks like all the worst features of grinding through an MMORPG with the only paid being "look at this village I put together". I've generally quit playing any games that involve grinding. Which means I've mostly quit playing games, especially in Mobile, as they pretty much all involved grinding of some kind, even the action games. It's depressing how samey the game market has become.
- dx87 7y ago
  My wife has been playing it quite a bit, and it seems like it's only grindy if you want it to be. My wife spends most of her time making gardens, decorating rooms, and exploring new islands. Some of her friends have ugly islands full of weeds, cluttered houses, etc, but they have tons of money, even though they don't need it. I think it's a game that is whatever you make of it.
dpeck 7y ago
I know it sound silly, but I find that it goes really well with an audio book. It's a nice way to chill out at the end of the day if I don't have the energy to hack away on anything. Having something to do with my hands while listening helps my thoughts not to wander as much, even if I'm just going around fishing and harvesting fruit so my son can sell them and build/buy whatever he wants the next day. I wouldn't have bought it on my own, but having just one child and the quarantine I'm thankful that it exists.
- kibwen 7y ago
  I was having a rough time of it in the first few weeks of distancing, and on one of my first nights in Animal Crossing I just walked out onto the beach on a stormy night and listened to the sound of rain and surf as I drifted off to sleep. It's been an immense comfort to have a peaceful mini-routine that I can spend half an hour on at lunchtime each day.
  - dpeck 7y ago
    the only thing I'd change of it is the multiplayer to be less clunky, both couch-coop and visiting/being visited by over network. If it was easy to drop into a friends island, water their plants, leave a gift I think it'd brighten up a lot of folks days right now. Stay strong my friend.
billfruit 7y ago
Kind of surprised they did not mention Stardew Valley, in the discussion. I kind of feel that Nintendo fanboyism pervades a large proportion of writing on games, but it would be better to be more objective.
- kibwen 7y ago
  I've played both, and I don't think we should be too quick to lump both games in together. The fundamental game loop of Stardew Valley is about deciding how best to expend your finite stamina and time with every in-game day (which are quite short in real time), with the soft goal of having "beaten" the game by the first day of the third in-game year. Meanwhile in Animal Crossing, its real-time nature mandates patience and the lack of stamina permits leisurely play, and there's no pressure to ever achieve anything by any date. Honestly, I don't like calling Animal Crossing a "game", because that's kind of inaccurate. Just like some "video games" are more like movies, and some are more like books, and some are more like roller coasters, Animal Crossing is more like a little garden to which you can tend. If anything, I might compare Animal Crossing to a game of Minecraft on Peaceful Survival mode before I'd compare it to Stardew Valley.
  - deleted 7y ago
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- tasogare 7y ago
  Same here. From what I saw from videos about the new AC and my experience with the mobile game, the game doesn’t seem as fun or interesting as SdV. Just pure grind, without interesting variations (and I don’t care about collectibles). The Gamecube version is looking more appealing because the town is already established, so you have to discover and interact with the world instead of starting from a generic empty island. There is also a big difference in tag price. For the price of AC I could SdV on three platforms, or buy copies for friends to play with me (I did that once).
  - elliekelly 7y ago
    > The Gamecube version is looking more appealing because the town is already established, so you have to discover and interact with the world instead of starting from a generic empty island. What makes you think there’s nothing to discover and interact with just because the island starts off empty?
danbolt 7y ago
I've seen a lot of comments or responses from people saying that Animal Crossing's mechanics are unfulfilling or "pointless", but I think they're missing the spirit of what makes them enjoyable to a lot of people. I'm going to posit that a video game is the three following things, but you're welcome to disagree: 1) a player performs some sort of input into a game 2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phenomena in regards to that input 3) 1 and 2 are repeated, creating a relationship between the player and the game I know a lot of people define video games as a series of choices or "states", but I think it's too strict as I don't think the appeal of video games is necessarily reduced to "a series of interesting decisions" as Will Wright puts it. I do think decision-making is a big part of a lot of games, but it doesn't explain the entertainment of situations like Revolver Ocelot torturing Snake in Metal Gear Solid, or groups of teenagers playing an easy Starcraft map against a computer player together. Animal Crossing is the same way too; the relationship the player has with the product is fulfilling, and that's what drives its appeal.
- conception 7y ago
  Your points are all correct but I think most folks are missing it’s a genre of Japanese game https://screentherapyblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/iyashikei/ https://screentherapyblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/iyashikei... - basically healing games that are just supposed to give your mind and soul a break. Laying on the grass and seeing shapes in clouds is also “pointless” but it’s not invaluable.
  - ebg13 7y ago
    > it’s not invaluable invaluable (adjective): extremely useful
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Qu3tzal 7y ago
      I guess it was used as to mean "without value", which is not exactly what it means. The prefix "in" of "invaluable" does mean negation but it means negation in the way that the value of the object is such that it doesn't exist. It's so valuable that you cannot even quantify it, it transcends the notion of value. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invaluable#note-1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invaluable#note-1
anigbrowl 7y ago
The point about how AC implements a particular model of village life as a tableau of georgic calm sealed inside the bottle of a company town is well made. We have plenty of games that implement the logic of capitalist or resource-driven economies; some grand strategy games (notably those from Paradox Entertainment, like Hearts of Iron and Stellaris allow players to pursue other development trees, from fascism to communism, though I don't know how robust the underlying economic simulations are and the simple-play mechanics of the game necessarily means all options are quasi-autocracies. Is anyone aware of a game dedicated to exploring competing economic models,perhaps through agent-based simulation or some of the methods explored in the emerging concept of econophysics and statistical mechanics applied to money relationships - I think Dragalescu is the pathbreaking author in this area. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60213-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60213-...
kosievdmerwe 7y ago
OK I skimmed through the article and I can't say I much care for it. To me Animal Crossing is a game that you play over many months to sometimes relax doing something mindless or over the longer term to have an island and house that you slowly build up in your own way. With that in mind there are a lot of great things in animal crossing. A lot of the furniture has interesting interactions and the museum is just a beautiful thing to walk through. But I also feel that some aspects of the game needs tweaking as they detract from the gameplay. There's no reason I should have to craft fishbait one by one, mindlessly spamming A for minutes at a time. Nor does shopping have to be as tedious as it is. There is no reason I should have to buy flowers in batches of 5 taking 5+ seconds per batch. I want to plant a massive flower patch not navigate overly deep menus. The lest said about the online play the better. I think the author is trying to find meaning where there really isn't any. At its core Animal Crossing is shallow, but in some sense that lack of depth is the appeal. What it has is a shocking breadth though giving each player lots of options to express themselves or simply to while away a few peaceful hours. It's not for everyone and it doesn't have to be.
- wincy 7y ago
  My five year old daughter has a villager and decorates her house. I think the enhancements that would make the game easier for adults would make it harder for young children to grasp. She doesn’t accidentally buy 500 stacks of flowers then cry because her bells are gone.
  - kosievdmerwe 7y ago
    Good point, still makes no difference with regards to bait crafting, but at least it's a good reason for the shop not having free-form shopping.
  - billfruit 7y ago
    In that respect I think Stardew Valley has included much more complex and compelling mechanics, as it seems designed foremost to appeal to adults. I thant is where it really shines over Animal Crossing.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
Question for people with gameplay experience of both/all - how does Animal Crossing compare to the Harvest Moon games? Or Stardew Valley? I have a massive soft spot for Harvest Moon because I wrote my first code ever (in Python) to figure out what was the best crop to plant in summer - the answer was turnips, and 17 years later, I still remember that.
- mercer 7y ago
  I think it scratches an itch similar to Harvest Moon and, to a degree, Stardew Valley. The crucial difference for me between AC and SV is that the former all but forces you to take a relaxed approach. SV felt more like a typical game where I tried to do everything the 'best' way, and optimize and 'level up' things. Which is a ton of fun, but also a bit stressful. In AC, on the other hand, everything is real-time. Lots of activities can only be done once a day, if you build something it will take at least until the next day for it to show up. The shop refreshes items once a day. 'Collectibles' either randomly show up, at particular times of day, in particular months, or during particular events (easter, etc.). Furthermore, this 'do nothing and relax' philosophy extends to pretty much everything, so for example buying stuff forces you to go through dialogs every time, and both buying and crafting can't be done in bulk (for the most part). Quite frustrating at times, but I do think it helps me at least not find clever ways to stress myself out and 'optimize' again. I have other games for that :).
  - immutate 7y ago
    I haven’t played Harvest Moon, but I agree with what you’re saying about SV and AC. I’ve spent far more hours in SV, but haven’t picked it back up since I started AC. One of the things I’ve found particularly fun is planning out and starting terraforming of my island in AC.
- slightwinder 7y ago
  They are very different. On surface they have similar mechanics and features, but focus and execution is quite different. In AC there is no energy-system like in SV. Time in AC is also way longer as it plays in real time. There is no need to sleep (as far as I known) and thus no penalty when missing bedtime. There is no real farming in AC, just collecting stuff, and a bit of arranging things. Overall, AC is very free from sources of stress, while SV has them everywhere, though it depends on yourself on much they impact you. Also, you can also get stress in AC, but only by setting yourself goals, not through the game itself.
jianshen 7y ago
I got the game because a friend invited me to a virtual wedding party because she had to cancel the one in real life due to SIP. My goal was to get a nice virtual gift for my friend so I grinded hard to make Bells and learn DIYs but wound up enjoying the whole process not because I was living a fantasy life like in the article but because it gave me a bit of purpose beyond checking mortality stats every five minutes and feeling guilty for not developing a new skill during this "privileged downtime". Everyone plays for different reasons. I feel lucky this game came out during this uncertain time.
twomoretime 7y ago
>Animal Crossing serves up unexpected consolation by offering surrogate habits—a structured, if fictional, alternative to normal life I think this speaks to the sorry state of our society when the majority of Americans are apparently unable to give meaningful structure to their lives. We don't seem to prioritize non-physical self improvement in this country.
a_e_k 7y ago
Animal Crossing seemed like a game that my kids might really enjoy relaxing with and I was prepared to pop for it on the launch day. Reading about the one-island-per-Switch and primary vs. secondary users thing kind of killed our interest in it, however. None of them wants to (or should have to) settle for second fiddle. Seems like a really odd oversight for a company that tries so hard to be family-oriented.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  Whilst I intensely dislike the one-island-per-Switch restriction, I can understand - thinking about how to handle someone visiting an island on the same Switch makes my head hurt. Couldn't have the player character there, you'd need cross-account communication of things like turnip prices, etc. (And if you disallowed people visiting another island on the same Switch, people would be up in arms about that too.)
deleted 7y ago
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wodenokoto 7y ago
How does it compare to stardew valley (probably the other way around) If I’ve build my farm and talked to the villages enough to not bother farming anymore is there anything for me in animal crossing?
nathanvanfleet 7y ago
It's pretty mediocre honestly. It's fun for a bit but the limitations on just about every mechanic hits pretty fast. Fishing, tools, picking up things, putting them down, getting recipes, everything.
andrewzah 7y ago
> I had imagined Animal Crossing to be a game about the world, one that offered ingenious, if abstract, life lessons. Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Does this not strike anyone else as just... incredibly pretentious? I have played every animal crossing except Animal Forest E+ which iirc never released outside of Japan. Is it not possible to want to make a more relaxing game? While it's true that making a game that i.e. touches on real estate inherently makes a statement... I doubt that was the express goal of the developers. > a “stalk market” for turnip commodities is mostly a loser’s game best avoided You can consistently make money, in the long run. There are calculators available [0], not to mention there are online communities where people post their daily prices. [0]: https://turnipprophet.io/ https://turnipprophet.io/ > And yet, isn’t this exactly the trade-off that real smartphones demand, a constant lifeline to new options, all more or less the same in nature, judged valuable by how many likes or hearts they accrue? The developers obviously needed a UX solution to the various new features added to the game. It fits in with the game's opening theme of being a island getaway for a [presumably] millenialish crowd. I don't see why this is so complicated. --- Sometimes games are just games, and sometimes they -are- political commentary on society. This whole article just reeks of the bullshit I often heard while I was getting my film major. I could sit here and spin articles full of flowery language about practically any game, distorting the mechanics to fit whatever political or sociological lens I wanted. Throw in current events for good measure. > : “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?” I couldn't take this article seriously any further after this point.
billfruit 7y ago
I do feel, the article and discussion isn't doing Stardew Valley justice. I do think SdV for example portray's an adult world compared to the infantilized creations of Nintendo. Also the complex interlocking systems, for example how big the mine areas are etc, is very deep and satisfying to figure out. Even the people of SdV aren't just plastic figures, they have a semblance to real people, as much as could be achieved in a game.
- noobermin 7y ago
  There is value in it being cute and all, it's escapism. At the point where your escapism looks closer to your reality says a lot about how terrible your reality is, and perhaps becomes something of a replacement of that reality.
- grenoire 7y ago
  I would go as far as to argue that Factorio is my Animal Crossing. For your average, casual player, Animal Crossing provides rote tasks that engages you with the game world without the added complexity. Factorio, SdV, and AC all ultimately provide 'relaxation.' I love AC, but I have other itches that need scratches.
  - cblum 7y ago
    Factorio made me super stressed out when I was playing it. One of the reasons I quit.
    - goda90 7y ago
      Was it the biters, or just the general gameplay loop? There is a peaceful mode that has no biters.
      - cblum 7y ago
        Mostly the biters, but also I got to a point where I was getting frustrated with the spaghetti I was creating.
jakoblorz 7y ago
The article is great until Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Millions of people already have spent hours in the game stewing on that idea since the coronavirus crisis began. Is it though? There is compound interest in this world, I don‘t think we are able to make all lenders „Tom Nook“s.
- nicbou 7y ago
  A world with no losers is impossible when the world and its inhabitants requires maintenance just to keep existing. The characters in Animal Crossing do not tire. They do not go hungry and they do not feel pain. The buildings in the village to not erode, and the in-game items appear out of thin air, without a complex manufacturing process. In the real world, just maintaining your current condition is a constant grind. Real life is a treadmill that never stops. If you're lucky, it just moving a bit slower.
  - jakoblorz 7y ago
    You are perfectly describing entropy or the fight against entropy more specifically.
justlexi93 7y ago
There’s always meaning. Even if creators don’t intend there to be meaning or commentary, a work will still to some extent reflect the creators’ morality and general worldview
tablethnuser 7y ago
There's many different kinds of players with an equally rich spectrum of player motivations. Animal Crossing is a phenomenon for some players because games like it are released pretty rarely. For others, it's "not even a game". Reviews of Animal Crossing are more a reflection of the author than Animal Crossing itself. The game, like any topic viral enough to drive the engagement economy, is just some bobbet to anchor an opinion around. For example, in the article I can tell that Bogost uses games to live out his fantasy as a humanities professor. And Lantz enjoys playing the contrarian. Nothing wrong with that, they are playing the game in their own way, perhaps without even needing to _play_ it.
cdelsolar 7y ago
My wife has never played a video game in her life, but I showed her this one and she absolutely adores it. Although at times she still struggles with the joystick (hitting rocks, catching bugs, etc) her house already looks better than mine and she's tending a giant flower field, breeding hybrids, etc. We also have visited her cousins' islands a few times and they get to socialize virtually. I'm glad this game came out now; it's so relaxing and comforting.
bokwoon 7y ago
This was a hard article to read. Why does it try so hard to draw parallels between our world and Animal Crossing? It's just a Nintendo game. Tom Nook's not some "capitalist oligarch", he charges exorbitant prices so that the player can enjoy the process and slowly make their way towards a larger goal. "Conspicuous consumption still haunts the animal village". I'd bet this was far from the mind of the creator when he designed this game. This is like those literature memes where the teacher conjures up a fantastic narrative trying to guess what the author meant when he really just meant that "the door is red".
- olivierestsage 7y ago
  Although I do see your point, and I agree when it comes to Animal Crossing, I disagree with the broader concept that only an author's explicit intent matters when trying to understand a message. The two questions "what does that statement mean?" and "what did the author of that statement actually wish to convey?" sometimes coincide, but just as often do not.

247 points by deegles 7y ago

I can't read this...there are no pictures!

“It is the most boring, long-winded, repetitive, condescending, infantile bullshit we’ve ever seen.” After a few more invectives, he posed a question: “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?” Apparently so!

Trasmatta 7y ago
That quote was from Frank Lantz, who is the guy who designed Universal Paperclips. There's a bit of irony about the criticism of repetition, coming from someone who designed a game about clicking buttons over and over to make numbers go up. Disclaimer: I actually think Universal Paperclips is brilliant, and agree that Animal Crossing has a lot of overly tedious and unnecessary mechanics. But I don't think it's fair to say that people who take comfort from it are just enjoying "tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism".
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  Was Universal Paperclips supposed to be fun? I kind of got the impression it was meant to scare you into donating to MIRI or whatever.
  - Trasmatta 7y ago
    I enjoyed it a lot, but I also have a weird affinity for clickers. I was very unproductive at work for about a week when I first discovered it.
  - ansible 7y ago
    I thought the story was poignant as well.
  - bo1024 7y ago
    I got completely sucked into it (the philosophy and "story" being a big part of that). It was fun to try and optimize, fun to follow events, and cathartic to reach the end. Sometimes I would take breaks at points while income built up in the background, but I also spent plenty of time optimizing. And I don't normally enjoy grinding.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    "Idle games" are one of the recent booms in gaming over the last five or so years. They now even have their own section on Kongregate and are a large mobile gaming category.
starpilot 7y ago
Is it a clickfest like Diablo?

bigtunacan 7y ago

I loved the original Animal Crossing, but honestly I think the less well known indie game Stardew Valley is far better.

voicedYoda 7y ago
We've been enjoying this on and off. It takes a while to understand and the controls aren't intuitive... And i think we've thrown away a sword or fishing rod but accident... Unclear
Trasmatta 7y ago
> less well known I don't know if I would call Stardew Valley "less well known", as it's sold over 10 million copies. It's incredibly popular, one of the biggest indie game success stories ever. I would also say Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley (and Harvest Moon, for that matter) and very different types of games (despite surface level similarities), so it's pretty hard to compare them directly like that.
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  > the Animal Crossing franchise has sold over 30 million units. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crossing https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crossing The inequality is legitimate.
  - whateveracct 7y ago
    That's 30 million units over like 20 years and many titles vs one indie game tho
    - cma 7y ago
      New Horizons is already close to more than Stardew in one month though.
    - hyperpallium 7y ago
      Popularity over a longer period increases well-knownness.

minimaxir 7y ago

It's interesting how New Horizons adds many quality-of-life features to streamline gameplay...but still deliberately keeps some of the monotony present in the game design two decades ago on the GameCube. Adding a "weight" to repetitive actions has been a controversial game design principle. It implicitly makes good/efficient actions more rewarding, but there has to be a balance.

rrmm 7y ago
Most every game is on some level about wasting time. Good games make wasting time enjoyable.
- ehnto 7y ago
  Edit: Oh boy, I didn't even realise TFA was written by the same guy. I hadn't read it yet, no wonder it's bringing up the same discussions. /endEdit I stumbled upon this article a while ago which attempts to argue that former idea to absurdity, it's very well written. I disagree with almost the whole thing, but it was fun to see someone disconnect themselves so far from the simple, real time engagement of a playing a video game. It's an entirely valid way to look at games, but it's just a very shallow view on games as a medium. He even accidentally discovers the real reasons why we play games as he works hard to make his case on the gameplay-as-work idea. Full respect to the author, and I'm sure they knew exactly how contrarian they were being. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/dont-play-the-goose-game/600472/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/dont-... Some of my favourite quotes: >"That’s the big problem with video games: To enjoy them, you have to play them." > "Game-play—the work of working a game—is fundamentally irritating" > "And like all labor, the best way to get it done is to farm it out to others. Let the memers honk their geese so you don’t have to."
  - hi5eyes 7y ago
    games are a grind everyone thats ever played an mmo knows flipping specific builds/leveled accounts using botting software is some of the most common middle schoolers first money making enterprise at some level almost all games could be reduced to a version of cookie clicker good games keep players actively looking for a new meta by tweaking and adding content, similar to the everchanging running of a business

voz_ 7y ago

It is a rather poor game all things considered. Stardew valley is far better. On the whole, the one thing they needed to nail is co-op, and that is probably the thing they did the worst on. The game features are limited, villager interaction is inane, the items are repetitive, the goals non-existent. I understand the simple joy of a no-pressure game, but without a meaningful reward loop of any kind, the whole thing starts boring and gets only more so.

causality0 7y ago
It's not really a "game" at all. There's no failure state. It's an interactive experience that brings joy to millions of people, and that's enough.
- watwut 7y ago
  Game does not need to have fail state. Children's games often don't have fail states and were called games long before.
pasquinelli 7y ago
stardew valley is one guy's attempt to make the best possible harvest moon, which is a game, i would say, of the same genre as animal crossing, broadly speaking, in the same way as -- i don't know -- mechwarrior and virtual on. the way i think of animal crossing is: take a few microgames from warioware, set it in a jrpg town, and give the player their own doll house. it isn't deep, but that's an observation, not necessarily a criticism.
- aspenmayer 7y ago
  Virtual On! I forgot I remembered that until you reminded me, which then brought to mind Zone of the Enders and Front Mission. There was one other one which eludes me. Oh yeah, Armored Core. I know there are many others but these were most memorable to me. I think of all of those I love Front Mission series best. It’s kind of an oddball since the others are action games but FM is tactical RPG closer to X-COM series. Thanks for the memories. Time to find some mecha games!

lawrenceyan 7y ago

It's kind of funny that they titled the article this way considering the fact that Animal Crossing is currently banned in China because people have been using it as a platform to stage the Hong Kong protests online [1]. I suppose it gives 'quiet revolution' a doubly apt connotation. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52269671 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52269671

dmix 7y ago
That resulted in a ban that will affect every game released in China. Games will have to start blocking any interaction between mainland Chinese and any ‘foreigner’: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22885892 This is part of the reversal of the great ‘Opening of China’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Maybe it is more open than it was? Maybe is was even more closed before?
- eqmvii 7y ago
  Must make it tempting to have limited communication systems, like Magic the Gathering: Arena, where players can only choose from a handful of benign emotes.
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    There seems to a weird trend of attaching political references to video game characters / other in game things which makes it even harder to block all forms of protest.
- dx87 7y ago
  Some gamers are so upset about it that they're reporting Steam to the CCP for listing Taiwan as a separate country. Seems pointless, but I guess they just want to watch the world burn, which is funny considering they're upset because they can't play a friendly game about being a good neighbor.

Uhhrrr 7y ago

Why does he go on and on about whether the game accurately represents modern life? It seems like this misses the point of games in general, and a game for pre-teens about talking animals specifically.

amwelles 7y ago
Eh, me and my friends (all adults in our 30s) have been loving this game. It’s relaxing and fun to decorate a house and island and slowly build up from nothing. It’s a lot like Minecraft or The Sims in that way, although there aren’t any bad guys to fight (a feature I tended to turn off while playing).
- immutate 7y ago
  It’s the same with me and my friends. Trading fruit, visiting each others’ islands to see Flick, etc. Then there’s the whole terraforming aspect that just feels nice and methodical.
rgoulter 7y ago
The thesis of the article """I had imagined Animal Crossing to be a game about the world, one that offered ingenious, if abstract, life lessons. But the players enjoying it in quarantine celebrate it for escapism, which any form of entertainment might provide. Neither interpretation seems quite right. .... Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers.""" This strikes me as "blood from a stone". Generally, games aren't taken as serious art with high brow messages. I don't think Animal Crossing is really trying to 'say' anything. (Albeit, the original one was made when the developer was feeling lonely when he moved to a new town). I think the author is the kind who wants to write lofty things about games. I think that explains the frustration in the question "Do people find comfort in [this bullshit]?". If you make serious games with serious messages to be taken seriously by serious people, I think something relaxed like Animal Crossing somewhat undermines "games are a serious artform".
- empath75 7y ago

moron4hire 7y ago

I have a lot of friends playing the game and it just looks like all the worst features of grinding through an MMORPG with the only paid being "look at this village I put together". I've generally quit playing any games that involve grinding. Which means I've mostly quit playing games, especially in Mobile, as they pretty much all involved grinding of some kind, even the action games. It's depressing how samey the game market has become.

dx87 7y ago
My wife has been playing it quite a bit, and it seems like it's only grindy if you want it to be. My wife spends most of her time making gardens, decorating rooms, and exploring new islands. Some of her friends have ugly islands full of weeds, cluttered houses, etc, but they have tons of money, even though they don't need it. I think it's a game that is whatever you make of it.

dpeck 7y ago

I know it sound silly, but I find that it goes really well with an audio book. It's a nice way to chill out at the end of the day if I don't have the energy to hack away on anything. Having something to do with my hands while listening helps my thoughts not to wander as much, even if I'm just going around fishing and harvesting fruit so my son can sell them and build/buy whatever he wants the next day. I wouldn't have bought it on my own, but having just one child and the quarantine I'm thankful that it exists.

kibwen 7y ago
I was having a rough time of it in the first few weeks of distancing, and on one of my first nights in Animal Crossing I just walked out onto the beach on a stormy night and listened to the sound of rain and surf as I drifted off to sleep. It's been an immense comfort to have a peaceful mini-routine that I can spend half an hour on at lunchtime each day.
- dpeck 7y ago
  the only thing I'd change of it is the multiplayer to be less clunky, both couch-coop and visiting/being visited by over network. If it was easy to drop into a friends island, water their plants, leave a gift I think it'd brighten up a lot of folks days right now. Stay strong my friend.

billfruit 7y ago

Kind of surprised they did not mention Stardew Valley, in the discussion. I kind of feel that Nintendo fanboyism pervades a large proportion of writing on games, but it would be better to be more objective.

kibwen 7y ago
I've played both, and I don't think we should be too quick to lump both games in together. The fundamental game loop of Stardew Valley is about deciding how best to expend your finite stamina and time with every in-game day (which are quite short in real time), with the soft goal of having "beaten" the game by the first day of the third in-game year. Meanwhile in Animal Crossing, its real-time nature mandates patience and the lack of stamina permits leisurely play, and there's no pressure to ever achieve anything by any date. Honestly, I don't like calling Animal Crossing a "game", because that's kind of inaccurate. Just like some "video games" are more like movies, and some are more like books, and some are more like roller coasters, Animal Crossing is more like a little garden to which you can tend. If anything, I might compare Animal Crossing to a game of Minecraft on Peaceful Survival mode before I'd compare it to Stardew Valley.
- deleted 7y ago
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tasogare 7y ago
Same here. From what I saw from videos about the new AC and my experience with the mobile game, the game doesn’t seem as fun or interesting as SdV. Just pure grind, without interesting variations (and I don’t care about collectibles). The Gamecube version is looking more appealing because the town is already established, so you have to discover and interact with the world instead of starting from a generic empty island. There is also a big difference in tag price. For the price of AC I could SdV on three platforms, or buy copies for friends to play with me (I did that once).
- elliekelly 7y ago
  > The Gamecube version is looking more appealing because the town is already established, so you have to discover and interact with the world instead of starting from a generic empty island. What makes you think there’s nothing to discover and interact with just because the island starts off empty?

danbolt 7y ago

I've seen a lot of comments or responses from people saying that Animal Crossing's mechanics are unfulfilling or "pointless", but I think they're missing the spirit of what makes them enjoyable to a lot of people. I'm going to posit that a video game is the three following things, but you're welcome to disagree: 1) a player performs some sort of input into a game 2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phenomena in regards to that input 3) 1 and 2 are repeated, creating a relationship between the player and the game I know a lot of people define video games as a series of choices or "states", but I think it's too strict as I don't think the appeal of video games is necessarily reduced to "a series of interesting decisions" as Will Wright puts it. I do think decision-making is a big part of a lot of games, but it doesn't explain the entertainment of situations like Revolver Ocelot torturing Snake in Metal Gear Solid, or groups of teenagers playing an easy Starcraft map against a computer player together. Animal Crossing is the same way too; the relationship the player has with the product is fulfilling, and that's what drives its appeal.

conception 7y ago
Your points are all correct but I think most folks are missing it’s a genre of Japanese game https://screentherapyblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/iyashikei/ https://screentherapyblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/iyashikei... - basically healing games that are just supposed to give your mind and soul a break. Laying on the grass and seeing shapes in clouds is also “pointless” but it’s not invaluable.
- ebg13 7y ago
  > it’s not invaluable invaluable (adjective): extremely useful
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Qu3tzal 7y ago
    I guess it was used as to mean "without value", which is not exactly what it means. The prefix "in" of "invaluable" does mean negation but it means negation in the way that the value of the object is such that it doesn't exist. It's so valuable that you cannot even quantify it, it transcends the notion of value. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invaluable#note-1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invaluable#note-1

anigbrowl 7y ago

The point about how AC implements a particular model of village life as a tableau of georgic calm sealed inside the bottle of a company town is well made. We have plenty of games that implement the logic of capitalist or resource-driven economies; some grand strategy games (notably those from Paradox Entertainment, like Hearts of Iron and Stellaris allow players to pursue other development trees, from fascism to communism, though I don't know how robust the underlying economic simulations are and the simple-play mechanics of the game necessarily means all options are quasi-autocracies. Is anyone aware of a game dedicated to exploring competing economic models,perhaps through agent-based simulation or some of the methods explored in the emerging concept of econophysics and statistical mechanics applied to money relationships - I think Dragalescu is the pathbreaking author in this area. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60213-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60213-...

kosievdmerwe 7y ago

OK I skimmed through the article and I can't say I much care for it. To me Animal Crossing is a game that you play over many months to sometimes relax doing something mindless or over the longer term to have an island and house that you slowly build up in your own way. With that in mind there are a lot of great things in animal crossing. A lot of the furniture has interesting interactions and the museum is just a beautiful thing to walk through. But I also feel that some aspects of the game needs tweaking as they detract from the gameplay. There's no reason I should have to craft fishbait one by one, mindlessly spamming A for minutes at a time. Nor does shopping have to be as tedious as it is. There is no reason I should have to buy flowers in batches of 5 taking 5+ seconds per batch. I want to plant a massive flower patch not navigate overly deep menus. The lest said about the online play the better. I think the author is trying to find meaning where there really isn't any. At its core Animal Crossing is shallow, but in some sense that lack of depth is the appeal. What it has is a shocking breadth though giving each player lots of options to express themselves or simply to while away a few peaceful hours. It's not for everyone and it doesn't have to be.

wincy 7y ago
My five year old daughter has a villager and decorates her house. I think the enhancements that would make the game easier for adults would make it harder for young children to grasp. She doesn’t accidentally buy 500 stacks of flowers then cry because her bells are gone.
- kosievdmerwe 7y ago
  Good point, still makes no difference with regards to bait crafting, but at least it's a good reason for the shop not having free-form shopping.
- billfruit 7y ago
  In that respect I think Stardew Valley has included much more complex and compelling mechanics, as it seems designed foremost to appeal to adults. I thant is where it really shines over Animal Crossing.

EdwardDiego 7y ago

Question for people with gameplay experience of both/all - how does Animal Crossing compare to the Harvest Moon games? Or Stardew Valley? I have a massive soft spot for Harvest Moon because I wrote my first code ever (in Python) to figure out what was the best crop to plant in summer - the answer was turnips, and 17 years later, I still remember that.

mercer 7y ago
I think it scratches an itch similar to Harvest Moon and, to a degree, Stardew Valley. The crucial difference for me between AC and SV is that the former all but forces you to take a relaxed approach. SV felt more like a typical game where I tried to do everything the 'best' way, and optimize and 'level up' things. Which is a ton of fun, but also a bit stressful. In AC, on the other hand, everything is real-time. Lots of activities can only be done once a day, if you build something it will take at least until the next day for it to show up. The shop refreshes items once a day. 'Collectibles' either randomly show up, at particular times of day, in particular months, or during particular events (easter, etc.). Furthermore, this 'do nothing and relax' philosophy extends to pretty much everything, so for example buying stuff forces you to go through dialogs every time, and both buying and crafting can't be done in bulk (for the most part). Quite frustrating at times, but I do think it helps me at least not find clever ways to stress myself out and 'optimize' again. I have other games for that :).
- immutate 7y ago
  I haven’t played Harvest Moon, but I agree with what you’re saying about SV and AC. I’ve spent far more hours in SV, but haven’t picked it back up since I started AC. One of the things I’ve found particularly fun is planning out and starting terraforming of my island in AC.
slightwinder 7y ago
They are very different. On surface they have similar mechanics and features, but focus and execution is quite different. In AC there is no energy-system like in SV. Time in AC is also way longer as it plays in real time. There is no need to sleep (as far as I known) and thus no penalty when missing bedtime. There is no real farming in AC, just collecting stuff, and a bit of arranging things. Overall, AC is very free from sources of stress, while SV has them everywhere, though it depends on yourself on much they impact you. Also, you can also get stress in AC, but only by setting yourself goals, not through the game itself.

jianshen 7y ago

I got the game because a friend invited me to a virtual wedding party because she had to cancel the one in real life due to SIP. My goal was to get a nice virtual gift for my friend so I grinded hard to make Bells and learn DIYs but wound up enjoying the whole process not because I was living a fantasy life like in the article but because it gave me a bit of purpose beyond checking mortality stats every five minutes and feeling guilty for not developing a new skill during this "privileged downtime". Everyone plays for different reasons. I feel lucky this game came out during this uncertain time.

twomoretime 7y ago

>Animal Crossing serves up unexpected consolation by offering surrogate habits—a structured, if fictional, alternative to normal life I think this speaks to the sorry state of our society when the majority of Americans are apparently unable to give meaningful structure to their lives. We don't seem to prioritize non-physical self improvement in this country.

a_e_k 7y ago

Animal Crossing seemed like a game that my kids might really enjoy relaxing with and I was prepared to pop for it on the launch day. Reading about the one-island-per-Switch and primary vs. secondary users thing kind of killed our interest in it, however. None of them wants to (or should have to) settle for second fiddle. Seems like a really odd oversight for a company that tries so hard to be family-oriented.

zimpenfish 7y ago
Whilst I intensely dislike the one-island-per-Switch restriction, I can understand - thinking about how to handle someone visiting an island on the same Switch makes my head hurt. Couldn't have the player character there, you'd need cross-account communication of things like turnip prices, etc. (And if you disallowed people visiting another island on the same Switch, people would be up in arms about that too.)

deleted 7y ago

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wodenokoto 7y ago

How does it compare to stardew valley (probably the other way around) If I’ve build my farm and talked to the villages enough to not bother farming anymore is there anything for me in animal crossing?

nathanvanfleet 7y ago

It's pretty mediocre honestly. It's fun for a bit but the limitations on just about every mechanic hits pretty fast. Fishing, tools, picking up things, putting them down, getting recipes, everything.

andrewzah 7y ago

> I had imagined Animal Crossing to be a game about the world, one that offered ingenious, if abstract, life lessons. Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Does this not strike anyone else as just... incredibly pretentious? I have played every animal crossing except Animal Forest E+ which iirc never released outside of Japan. Is it not possible to want to make a more relaxing game? While it's true that making a game that i.e. touches on real estate inherently makes a statement... I doubt that was the express goal of the developers. > a “stalk market” for turnip commodities is mostly a loser’s game best avoided You can consistently make money, in the long run. There are calculators available [0], not to mention there are online communities where people post their daily prices. [0]: https://turnipprophet.io/ https://turnipprophet.io/ > And yet, isn’t this exactly the trade-off that real smartphones demand, a constant lifeline to new options, all more or less the same in nature, judged valuable by how many likes or hearts they accrue? The developers obviously needed a UX solution to the various new features added to the game. It fits in with the game's opening theme of being a island getaway for a [presumably] millenialish crowd. I don't see why this is so complicated. --- Sometimes games are just games, and sometimes they -are- political commentary on society. This whole article just reeks of the bullshit I often heard while I was getting my film major. I could sit here and spin articles full of flowery language about practically any game, distorting the mechanics to fit whatever political or sociological lens I wanted. Throw in current events for good measure. > : “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?” I couldn't take this article seriously any further after this point.

billfruit 7y ago

I do feel, the article and discussion isn't doing Stardew Valley justice. I do think SdV for example portray's an adult world compared to the infantilized creations of Nintendo. Also the complex interlocking systems, for example how big the mine areas are etc, is very deep and satisfying to figure out. Even the people of SdV aren't just plastic figures, they have a semblance to real people, as much as could be achieved in a game.

noobermin 7y ago
There is value in it being cute and all, it's escapism. At the point where your escapism looks closer to your reality says a lot about how terrible your reality is, and perhaps becomes something of a replacement of that reality.
grenoire 7y ago
I would go as far as to argue that Factorio is my Animal Crossing. For your average, casual player, Animal Crossing provides rote tasks that engages you with the game world without the added complexity. Factorio, SdV, and AC all ultimately provide 'relaxation.' I love AC, but I have other itches that need scratches.
- cblum 7y ago
  Factorio made me super stressed out when I was playing it. One of the reasons I quit.
  - goda90 7y ago
    Was it the biters, or just the general gameplay loop? There is a peaceful mode that has no biters.
    - cblum 7y ago
      Mostly the biters, but also I got to a point where I was getting frustrated with the spaghetti I was creating.

jakoblorz 7y ago

The article is great until Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Millions of people already have spent hours in the game stewing on that idea since the coronavirus crisis began. Is it though? There is compound interest in this world, I don‘t think we are able to make all lenders „Tom Nook“s.

nicbou 7y ago
A world with no losers is impossible when the world and its inhabitants requires maintenance just to keep existing. The characters in Animal Crossing do not tire. They do not go hungry and they do not feel pain. The buildings in the village to not erode, and the in-game items appear out of thin air, without a complex manufacturing process. In the real world, just maintaining your current condition is a constant grind. Real life is a treadmill that never stops. If you're lucky, it just moving a bit slower.
- jakoblorz 7y ago
  You are perfectly describing entropy or the fight against entropy more specifically.

justlexi93 7y ago

There’s always meaning. Even if creators don’t intend there to be meaning or commentary, a work will still to some extent reflect the creators’ morality and general worldview

tablethnuser 7y ago

There's many different kinds of players with an equally rich spectrum of player motivations. Animal Crossing is a phenomenon for some players because games like it are released pretty rarely. For others, it's "not even a game". Reviews of Animal Crossing are more a reflection of the author than Animal Crossing itself. The game, like any topic viral enough to drive the engagement economy, is just some bobbet to anchor an opinion around. For example, in the article I can tell that Bogost uses games to live out his fantasy as a humanities professor. And Lantz enjoys playing the contrarian. Nothing wrong with that, they are playing the game in their own way, perhaps without even needing to _play_ it.

cdelsolar 7y ago

My wife has never played a video game in her life, but I showed her this one and she absolutely adores it. Although at times she still struggles with the joystick (hitting rocks, catching bugs, etc) her house already looks better than mine and she's tending a giant flower field, breeding hybrids, etc. We also have visited her cousins' islands a few times and they get to socialize virtually. I'm glad this game came out now; it's so relaxing and comforting.

bokwoon 7y ago

This was a hard article to read. Why does it try so hard to draw parallels between our world and Animal Crossing? It's just a Nintendo game. Tom Nook's not some "capitalist oligarch", he charges exorbitant prices so that the player can enjoy the process and slowly make their way towards a larger goal. "Conspicuous consumption still haunts the animal village". I'd bet this was far from the mind of the creator when he designed this game. This is like those literature memes where the teacher conjures up a fantastic narrative trying to guess what the author meant when he really just meant that "the door is red".

olivierestsage 7y ago
Although I do see your point, and I agree when it comes to Animal Crossing, I disagree with the broader concept that only an author's explicit intent matters when trying to understand a message. The two questions "what does that statement mean?" and "what did the author of that statement actually wish to convey?" sometimes coincide, but just as often do not.