The Magic of Animal Crossing
I’m sure quite a lot of modern children have played or at least heard of the game “Animal crossing”. It’s defined as a “social simulation” game and it is truly unique compared to the flurry of other console games out there. It has seen quite a surge in popularity since the release of the Nintendo Switch together with its latest incarnation in the form of “Animal Crossing New Horizons”. But why does it capture the minds of gamers so much? Why, compared to all the other super intense games, does this seemingly random social game with completely new characters have such a large and dedicated player base? Well, that’s probably why you would want to stick around for a new installment in my video game series!
To fully understand a social simulation game like Animal Crossing, there needs to be a character and a story to describe how it feels. So allow me to introduce… Tom. Tom is a modest kid, born at an age when the early Internet ruled the world. When he was 8, his parents bought a Gamecube and a small number of games for his birthday. One of these games, named Animal Crossing, caught his attention. It was one of those rare Nintendo new releases, it featured lovely vibrant colors on its cover and had a cute cartoon look to it. He fired up his new console and instantly loaded in the mysterious new game of Animal Crossing. As it loaded, the unforgettable tune of the initial start menu simply intensified the experience for young Tom.
Pressing start, his character sits in a train car pondering about the next steps in life as it moves to a new town. Then suddenly, a small cat named rover approaches you and allows you to explore the first few of the many unique aspects of the original Animal Crossing. Rover asks you what the date is, and it displays the exact date that the Gamecube’s onboard real-time clock provides. Part of what makes this game so special is that time passes by in-game in accordance to the real world time and date. Seasons change, shops open and close… so much is done with this simple mechanic. But moving on to the second mechanic which Rover introduces you to, the dialogue. Animal Crossing famously has no real voice behind each character, only displaying bubbles with their name and what they are saying in whatever language you set the console to. Instead of using real voices, Animal Crossing speaks essentially gibberish while still giving the effect of a person speaking to you. Rover then asks if you have a seat available, for which Tom responds with “Please!”. Tom is then guided through essentially what we nowadays call a setup menu where you choose your name and that kind of stuff. The magic of using an interactable character in a simple setup menu really emphasizes how the team behind Animal Crossing created a seemingly magical interface between you and the game world. By using these unique and cool characters throughout interactions with the player, Nintendo created a more natural way of communicating without actually well… communicating in the normal human way. Tom names his new character… Tom. Rover then asks him where his destination is, which in fact is a hidden name setup where you choose your town name. Very clever. Tom then arrives at his town, which was seemingly copying the outside weather into the game. It was snowing in New York that day, which the game happily adjusted to due to the date being in December, a winter season. Tom is then introduced to the one and only Tom Nook, which in future interactions becomes a rampant man of greed. Hell, in later games he even promotes child labor! And since Tom’s character has no money and has no home… he is now forced to pay back the rent to Tom Nook. Which happens to be becoming a part-time worker for him, interestingly. Our main character begins planting flowers to make Nooks shop look better, and eventually earns back the exorbitant amount of money that is owed to Nook. And now comes the true magic of this game.
Animal crossing has so much customizable features that it keeps you entertained even with the most mundane of tasks. Much like Minecraft, Animal Crossing allows you to do pretty much whatever you want in the bounds of a small sandbox. You can dig for fossils and put them in a museum, send raging mail to villagers or catch bugs to collect or sell. But for me, the best part was the beautifully made SNES furniture with their own actually playable games! Like seriously, you can collect these and stack them on top of each other then start playing them. The ability for one to collect, manage, build and just do random stuff in a beautifully designed world really shows the creative powerhouse that is Nintendo. Out of all the games I have ever played, the ones that I have always loved the most were Nintendo. They just have their magical formula and lore style that is simply unmatched by most other game companies. Instead of focusing on raw gaming power or intense FPS games, Nintendo focused on the “Fun” part of gaming instead of the “haha RGB go BRRRR” part of it. Most of the “Gaming” we see today or is generalized today are of the toxic communities that are behind these visual barf loads of computing. The utter idiocracy behind some of the modern games people tend to generalize modern gaming to is simply baffling compared to the vibrantly crafted masterpieces of yesteryear.
The reason Animal Crossing contrasts so well to modern games and the reason why it did so well was that Nintendo applied many of its core game design concepts to it. And not to mention it did that while pretty much carving out its own territory in the wild world of social games as “That game you can chill” in. Nintendo viewed Animal Crossing as an experiment that they could continuously add with the feedback from players which added to the bonfire of both curiosity and admiration from the casual gaming community. But what I think is the most important reason AC is so successful nowadays is the pandemic. During 2020 people wanted an outlet for creativity and just general activity while locked indoors, so they turned to the Nintendo Switch and eventually AC: New horizons. People realized how much of a gem this game was and the general curiosity of some players made it into an instant success among the type of “relaxation” gamers Nintendo was focusing on. I myself have a copy of Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii coming soon and I am ecstatic to play it. The Wii is a really cool console, plus I can actually play it in the school I go to because it requires no internet! To end this blog on a high note, one should not judge Animal Crossing or most games as a generalized toxic space where no one applies the stranger-danger rule to anything. You should always be open to these types of things as it might just cure you of something!
Thanks for reading, have a nice day~~
