Animal Crossing is Really Effing Boring, and I Love It So Much
I don’t know how many of you need to read this, but I definitely need to write this. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are abuzz with proclamations of joy for the game called Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or あつまれどうぶつの森 (Atsumare Doubutsu no Mori, literally “Gather Up! Animal Forest”). If you’re like my mom, you’re probably really interested in such a popular Japanese game because East Asian culture has become so globally legible in the past few decades.
So, for all of you out there who want some armchair knowledge of the newest Japanese game that’s become almost trivial knowledge to swarths of internet-users, then buckle up, buttercup. Here’s five reasons why this game is so good:
1. You Can Choose Your Gender, But This Choice Means Nothing
The game begins thus: you’re a cute little human (boy/girl/gender-fluid) on an airplane to an uninhabited island that you will be living on. Yes, you can change your gender anytime AND you can wear whatever clothing you like regardless of your gender. Yes, the metaphoric implications of a game about fleeing to a deserted island is ironically an extremely successful game during a time of global quarantine. Don’t think about it too much.
The island is owned by a cute raccoon dog (tanuki in Japanese) named Tom Nook. He and his two identical twin baby tanukis provide you with a tent and some basic furniture, along with two other random villagers who were on the same flight as you: in my case, a unibrowed squirrel named Airisu and an anteater whose name is like Makoto or something.
Together, Airisu, (maybe) Makoto and I began slowly exploring the island. The game lliterally tells you at the beginning, “do whatever you want.” You can run around, discover fruits, and visit Tom Nook&co. in his large, central tent that serves as a town hall. It’s a simple premise that becomes exponentially more interesting.
2.Tom Nook Is a Capitalist and, Yet, I’m Weirdly OK with It
Nook is all about that cash, or bells as the in-game currency is named. After a day goes by, he begins to make suggestions. You can use his workbench to craft furniture and other items out of resources you’ve found around the island. He teaches you how to make tools to extract resources from different objects on the island. You can build a fishing rod to fish (and sell the ones you catch to him of course), or a net to catch insects (again, sell-able for bells), or a shovel to mine iron and stone from rocks. For some, this becomes the purpose of the game: to generate revenue to enable further progress in the game.
But it’s, like, utopic capitalism. Resources are literally infinite (because they are not real) and no one is poor. The game is quite generous, offering tons of freebies that make even chopping wood from your trees an exciting experience. Tom Nook, and his deputy mayor, Isabelle, ultimately treat you like the Head of the Village, and the game quickly becomes more about sharing and having fun.
3. PETA is Mad about It, Which Means It Definitely Treats Animals More Ethically than PETA
Notoriously extreme non-profit PETA wrote a “vegan guide” about how you should not use the game to symbolically harm animals. Yes, the game features fishing, bug-catching, and clamming, and PETA claims that because this would harm the animal in real life, players should abstain from doing it in game.
It’s theoretically possible to avoid fishing and bug-catching, but it means you will only get to experience about 40% of the game. For example, there is a museum where you display the different insects, fish, and pre-historic fossils you find around the island, but to invite Blathers the Owl to your island and prompt him to build this museum, you must catch and “donate” these items to his museum where he displays them. Nook’s twins will buy fish and bugs, villagers will keep fish and bugs as pets. No villager is ever shown eating meat.
In fact, everyone is vegan. The only edible resource in the game is fruit which, when consumed, let’s you dig up and transplant trees (very nifty), or destroy rocks (which you should never do...). Even carnivore animals, like my Tiger Maririn, only drink fruit smoothies, or talk about protein powder, as my anteater “probably-Makoto” does incessantly. He, like every jock, loves to talk about being a jock.
4. I Weirdly Care About My AI Villagers?
I’m an Animal Crossing veteran. I remember when I first played Animal Crossing on the Gamecube at my daycare, the boy playing it with me genuinely asked me “are you a boy or a girl?” when we had to decide our in-game gender. I remember being so furious when he would continuously reset the game.
I remember, as a teenager, talking about my “crush” on certain villagers in the game with some guy I actually had a crush on. Nook, Blathers, the villagers, they’ve been with me throughout my life. I genuinely like them all.
And they have gotten so much smarter. The dozens of different animal species that can populate your town have some pretty sophisticated AI.
And they become your best friends.
Villagers give you presents, they tell funny stories, they interact with each other, and they have personalities. You can also give them clothes and they wear the clothes if they like it and it’s so precious. They’re kind of like tamagotchi, if anyone remembers that. Although, some of them suck, and that’s why you ignore them until they move away from neglect. I don’t have time and energy for everyone, ok?
5. It Helps Me In My Real Life
This game is easy to complain about. The gameplay can be laborious. The third-person camera angle is one-dimensional, so you have to structure your island to ensure you aren’t hiding things. It’s super easy to mess up simple procedures because your character is slightly facing the wrong direction. Your watering can breaks and you have to constantly build new ones. And, inviting someone to your island takes hours of menu navigation and loading screens (ok, more like five minutes, but still).
But, all of this is weirdly OK? It is a life sim, after all, and life is about balance.
The time in the game is real-world, which means if something takes a day inside the game, it takes an actual day. I think about my own time so much more confidently now. I know the value of focused work. I’ve spent hours of free time arranging my fruit trees into a giant orchard, decorating my tatami bedroom to the tiniest detail, and building flower fields devoted to my kangaroo, Mami, a single-mom with an everpresent joey in her pouch who actually waters flowers and teaches me useful recipes, and whom I cherish as my in-game soulmate. The game helps me stay focused and think about large-scale tasks as discrete pockets of consistent (sometimes unpleasant) work.
At times, it’s pleasantly boring. And boredom is the greatest place to find inspiration.
If you don’t already own a Nintendo Switch, good luck. They’re short-stocked in both the US and Japan as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds. But for anyone who still hasn’t downloaded what is shaping up to be the best game of 2020, send me your friend code if you do. Seriously.










