> It’s fun to gather resources, to improve one’s skills, to engage in mutually beneficial exchanges, to collect things, to decorate. It's fun to chop down a tr

> It’s fun to gather resources, to improve one’s skills, to engage in mutually beneficial exchanges, to collect things, to decorate. It's fun to chop down a tree when it's a button press and a few seconds of waiting, and not when you actually need to swing your axe for a half hour before a single tree comes down. And then realize that you need to split the logs in half and do about 10 more to make enough firewood to last tonight's snowstorm. It's fun to sit fish when it's a rhythm game, timing button presses, but real fish aren't predictable timing patterns for you to master, they're living beings scared of dying, trying to fight the predator that's going to kill them. It's not fun to that feeding your family tonight means getting enough fish to survive. It's not fun to realize you've run a lake dry of fish and have to move to find new food. Animal Crossing isn't work, it's play. It's an advanced form of playing house with dolls. Of course people want to do that.