Is Animal Crossing Evil? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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Animal Crossing is ADORABLE! But its addicting gameplay makes us wonder, is there a darker side to Animal Crossing?? Join Jamin on this week's episode of Game/Show as he explores the underlying themes of debt, forced-labor and capitalism, in one of Nintendo's most popular games. So is Animal Crossing just a game that demands dedication, or is it actually evil? Check it out!
Games Featured:
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Farmville
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I can't stop playing Animal Crossing
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How is Animal Crossing evil? Tom Nook (Nook for Tanuki) is very nice. He gives you a home when you have no money, and he let's you pay off the debt whenever you want. He gives you all the time in the world and is never mean about it. Most landlords aren't so nice. If you miss the pay date, you are out on the street.
darkcarnage1234 yea but every time you pay it off he forces you into another loan. The game does omit certain nasty aspects like interest rates and foreclosures, but it does teach the youth to "get used" to being in debt for life.
downphoenix Well, in New Leaf, Tom gives you a choice if you want to upgrade or not.
darkcarnage1234 Oh, that's good. Never played New Leaf, no 3DS.
Tom Nook enslaves you in a debt based Skinner Box.
Thou shalt fear Lucifer and his many agents.
darkcarnage1234 As drug dealers often quip, "the first hit is free." There are lots of systems that are set up that way. "Free" chips at the casino or credit cards with low introductory APRs.
>charm your pants off
>picture of Isabelle
Ah, so PBS has been to Deviantart recently.
Animal Crossing is also a psychologically comforting game when it comes to the problems it presents. Large debt? It's okay, you'll pay it off, and you may as well have fun while doing so. You haven't returned in months and shirked your obligations? Isabelle will have missed you, but pull up a few weeds and everything's good to go. It's a bit like a reminder that the real-life equivalents of these in-game issues are often only a small part of life, they'll pass with time, and you can still enjoy yourself while they happen. Maybe that's overly optimistic, but a little optimism helps sometimes. It's a little bit like Zen in that way, putting things in their place, even when they seem massive or horrible at first.
The whole real time argument goes out the window though when you realize that 90% of people play with the time travel method.
So true! Most people I know name their towns things like Gallifrey. We are time lords.
Shaun Dreclin In my group of players, time travel was looked down upon. I only time traveled once, and that was to help a friend earn some bells so he could catch up to the rest of us. Granted, I did stop playing after month 2 or 3...Im gunna boot it up right now and cry because all my favorite villages are gone.
+Kashloo Illu 10 years ago that was taboo, but the community has grown like crazy after Wild World got released, so no people don't look at it like it's cheating anymore despite Nintendo overtly calling it cheating at the beginning.
Honestly I always find the "Nook is an evil crook trying to take all of your money" to be really funny. You get a house for practically nothing, no interest, no foreclosure. Paying it back whenever you want to. You catch a few bugs or fish and over a small amount of time you have a double story house with a basement. You're neighbors give you furniture, often for free. You can get money by shaking a few trees.
I admit sometimes I feel bad when my neighbors move away, when I had my first Animal Crossing game I didn't even know your neighbors could move away until around 5 months into playing the game. I felt SO bad after she left, even though the animals are all based off of 6-8 different personality's I felt so connected to them. It's such a relaxing game, you can play it whenever you feel the need to and someone will always be there to talk to.
It's even great for many player styles. You can be a collector and try to get every furniture item, flower, fossil, and gyroid in the game, or just talk to animals every once in awhile.
I can't ever find this game evil, especially considering in new leaf I paid my house off and had the biggest one there was in maybe 2 months top. Definitely doesn't work that way in real life. In City folk though I never paid off my house, I just didn't want to. My house was big enough for me.
Overall I just feel like like the Animal Crossing series is just a very happy environment.
Ah Mr. Resetti... when I was a kid my Mom turned off the GC like a tyrant, I hat to sit through 15 minutes of him. Disturbing indeed.
Oh and when the DS shuts off for no reason and you haven't saved, at least it's easies to get rid of him in new leaf
Yeah, we get it: Capitalism is evil because...reasons.
I have never heard that accusation before...
...Moving on.
SashaSexyfur Capitalism is "evil" because it forces people to work for food or starve. Just one of the many, im sure other people while chime in with insightful dialogue.
Comrade Max yeah working for food and not just magically getting it is terrible
SashaSexyfur I absolutely hate these arguments because its clear these people do not understand the difference between being evil and being outdated. Like Comrade Max here, what he is describing is not evil, it is the inefficiency of a given system to meet the needs and desires of a given population. This is why in many ways, I find systems like Communism and Socialism to be very wanting, because of system analyzing the ways in which their own system could be ineffective at dealing with the needs and desires of its population, they wax on endlessly about the evils of a system they clearly either do not understand to a great degree or that they do understand but use the wrong adjectives to describe it, which thus leads to easy dismissals like the one magmajp just gave.
Calling a system of economics and social/political capital evil is undermining the very process by which we can look at systems, analyze them and declare the reasons behind why they're ineffective at meeting the needs of the people.
SashaSexyfur Well a key idea of 'evil' is certain characteristic as describe by most major religions. The Christian, Jews and Muslims refer to them as 'sins' as other religions refer to them as something else. But a major selling point of 'evil' in these moral codes is greed.
And Capitalism relies on greed. It not only supports it, but also glorifies it. Buddha teaches it as one of the great poison of humanity.
But again, i kinda think he was just making a funny video abotu a game that relies so much on a cute aesthetic and how it can be 'evil' But hey don;t you regularly troll on this channel anyway?
Toy Day is actually the day before Christmas. I'm always so ready to ignore my family all day, only to go on the game and realize I missed Toy Day.
idk if I'm in the minority here but I pay off every loan hundreds of hours before I stop playing. So, calling it a 'debt simulator' makes no sense because you spend most of the game free of debt with millions in the bank. It's more of a... "aspirational financial situation simulator", if anything.
*facepalm* if you pay your debt and dont talk to nook HE DOESNT PUT YOU BACK IN DEBT
This was a question? Of course animal crossing is evil.
I thought that was a common fact :/
...Or maybe no one else revolves their room themes around skeletons but me...
When I saw the title for a moment I thought I was on GameTheorist's channel
Julian Francisco Is that a complement?
More like, “[Insert videogame franchise] is EVIL” is kind of a trend in The Game Theorists' channel.
Arturo Torres Sánchez Thankfully PBS GameShow doesn't need GameTheorist like GameTheorist needs the WMG pages of TvTropes
Julian Francisco I think those would help the pbs game show
I thought it was some holier-than-thou angry protester rant.
I hate the real-time aspect of it -_- it feels like a chore.
I play games for fun, so I didn't last long with this one. It's gathering dust somewhere in my room as we speak.
Simulators have always had that niche appeal. Not everyone will enjoy them.
*****
The game itself appeals to me, the real time aspect of it however, does not.
***** It has its pros and cons. For instance, the game limits what you can do daily so you don't become obsessed with it. But there's players who break it by accessing the 3DS clock and changing the time to suit it to their needs.
*****
It really doesn't hold any pros for me, as I can't always play on a daily basis.
Also; I like to decide for myself when I play the game, not have it force me to play at regular intervals so my town doesn't go to shit.
I much prefer the approach of Harvest Moon for example; it has a day and night cycle and a calendar with seasonal events, but I don't miss out on anything or screw myself by not playing for a while.
The longer I leave Animal Crossing... the less I want to play it, because I know things will bad in my town due to absence.
And similarly, the more time I invest the more I'll feel like I'll have to play to keep the benefits of earlier play sessions. So unlike what you are saying; I feel like it is especially designed to hook you and make you obsessed. And I really don't like that.
There shouldn't be a "right way" to play games I feel... just let consumers enjoy the game how they see fit. But this game just can't let you do that it seems. It's so strict and annoying.
+Zappandy you don't have to play in real time, and the main point of the game is to best-friend your animal neighbors, ultimately getting those pics from them, and the highest house score possible for bragging rights online. You talk to your villagers by reading text, "a text-based communication game", the words Nintendo pitched Animal Crossing as.
I completely agree with everything in this video, but there are a few important distinctions to make about the debt that keep it from seeming evil. One: it's extremely easy to pay it off. You can make hundreds of thousands just by selling seashells and catching butterflies. You can pay off an entire home expansion in less than an hour. Two: Tom Nook doesn't really care if you don't pay it. If at any point you're tired of expanding the house, he'll never come after you. You won't even see him. In fact, you never have to pay off the very last installment. The reward you get for doing it is lame at best and a waste of time at worst. And Nook doesn't really care. :P
If you are familiar with Gaijin Goombah, he did a video a while back on dating sims in japan, emphasizing their intent to give a sense of companionship to those who lack it, not just titillation, and I think a similar case can be made for animal crossing and community. You may have a dilemma deciding between family and animal crossing on Christmas, but what of the man who is too far from family to do more then just call, or worse yet lacks a family at all.
bendonatier yeah, and you can just change the date so you dont have to play the game on christmas
bendonatier Related comment to Nathaniel Jurcago Related: there's some fun stuff on the "fantasy of labor" in social games: tinysubversions.com/2011/03/gdc-notes-clarkzimmerman-the-fantasy-of-labor-how-social-games-create-meaning/
I think part of this idea is invalidated when even the creator himself feels like Tom Nook is misunderstood. He says he is very passionate about his business and will wait as long as time itself to pay off your debt.
also anyone know the video at 1:07 ? It looks entertaining.
Anthony Morado That's the café in New Leaf.
Anthony Morado Can I get a link to that? Also, it's important to remember that creator intent *does not* dictate our player experience. Sometimes they align; but not always. I certainly give creators a lot of credit, but it's hard to escape what Tom Nook _feels_ like as a player.
If this is evil, it sounds like we should really take a close look at society today.
_Is Animal Crossing Evil?_
Eh, not as evil as Joel from _The Last of Us_, probably. That man was a sociopath.
Paradox Acres Tomayto tomaaaato. :)
I mean... When I got AC:NL, I was super excited, it stole so much of my time I hardly slept. I jokingly said it took my soul, but it made me feel a lot less lonely... Especially when I got to play on the island. Considering the situation of Japan's people, I can see the appeal. Get lonely, or feel lost? Just pop Animal crossing in. It will give you a feeling of accomplishment and companionship, no matter what you do... No game is quite like AC.
I love Animal Crossing. During those rough pre-teen years it was part of my daily routine to get home from school, pop in the OG GC AC and just do my thing.
Now that I think about it, this was actually a pretty turbulent time in my life, and I was a pretty socially inept child. It's pretty sad in retrospect, but I think my little town and routine provided some much needed stability.
That being said, I don't think I ever felt particularly compelled to change my schedule or interrupt what I was doing IRL to go catch a beetle or anything.
Maybe it's just me, maybe it's how the game has progressed(maybe the social hooks?), maybe it's that is portable, but I felt very comfortable chipping away at my collection over months when I could.
The game is just so low impact. Even not checking your town for a few days just gives you more interaction when you log back in.
It's just all part of the cycle. Things fall apart, you come back in and put them back together with maybe some new personalities, which is never a bad thing.
Unless Apollo leaves. That's the real lose state.
Animal crossing is a phenomenal game. It's one that I stopped playing at one point and I don't think I can ever play again. It's rare when a game like this can actually make you feel guilty for not playing it. I don't think I could face my village again after abandoning them. I'm like that 80's dad who went out for a pack of smokes and never came home.
Am i the only one who hates click bait titles?
How is this clickbait. The question is if Animal Crossing evil. Therefore the title is the question.
If anything your comment is bait to get replys agreeing with you and likes.
DeadpoolandTgwtgFan I hate people who don;t know what click bait is.
It can be counted as a kind of clickbait
IsSaSlime probably because what I get from his mess of a video is this:
"Is AC evil?!?!
blathering ensues*
nope!"
Remind me again what the point was of this video?
1. Mr. Resetti is optional in new leaf.
2. Tom Nook is *nice*. He gives you a house when you have nothing. He doesn't force you to pay your debt, and you give YOURSELF more of it.
3. Animal Crossing New Leaf has been *tailored* to make the game more about fun than being a chore. It gives you ways to get around the punishments of not playing for a long time. (IE. The "Beautiful" Ordinance, Time-Traveling... etc.) and almost everything in the game is optional. With every game in the series, it punishes you less and less for not playing.
Sorry, but I love me some Animal Crossing.
I'm afraid to go back to animal crossing because Walker either hates me or has left for a less weedy town ;_;
I have no desire to play this game now. That sounds awful.
Phoebe Gavin Same here.
It's a cute game but as soon as you play it, if you get into it, it does become a bit questionable. The positive is they don't charge you for anything after purchasing it, there's even a bunch of events and new things all the time. However, unfortunately it can become a bit of a time sink.
Phoebe Gavin It really isnt all that bad. Its not a game you have to play everyday for multiple hours. Just pick it up every now and then. As for holiday events, I have set so that the holiday happens a week after so that i dont have to play the game on christmas to get christmas content. The debt thing would be bad if it was real life but in this case you can just ignore it forever.
Phoebe Gavin My reaction was the exact opposite.
I kinda regret not owning a Nintendo console. Animal Crossing sounds like such a nice relaxing game and the online function might be a good way to find online friends.
Phoebe Gavin I felt the same way when I heard about how the game is. I have no problem with the collection aspects and such, but the whole "event" thing followed by the "get out of debt" thing were major deal breakers.
But Tom Nook gives sells you a house and says "pay me back whenever." Isn't that like...a super cool nice thing?
Yeah, it is. Although it'd be nicer if force you to get renovations every time you pay him back, putting you in more debt.
Keep this in mind however, you are brought to a town without a place to live. All you have is your title as mayor and the town hall. The game cant allow you to live at your workplace since that illogical. So they add Nook into play as a way to offer you a place to live. We should be glad that he offers you a loan and gives you a place to stay while he builds your new home. The place he offers you sadly is a tent but that's better than nothing.
I actually dislike how much people bash on Nook. He doesn't check your credit, he just gives you a loan. He doesn't charge interest and he doesn't have a monthly minimum payment like how debt works in real life. I think the biggest problem people have is that the game doesn't have a goal - but we play it like we have to beat the game. It's rewarding if you just play it and take it in as a gentle and ongoing idealized other life.
Honestly? The subtle sinister undertones and Stepford qualities in Animal Crossing appeal to me. Sort of keeps things from feeling too perfect. I think that would be genuinely creepy.
But hey, that's just a theory...
About playing during holidays for special events and items, most people just Time Travel which basically just means that you change the date and time on the game's main menu before you start and ta-da! You can join in any holiday event without infringing on your IRL holiday time. Also about the weeds, you can pay 20,000 at some point in the game to setup a 'Beautiful Town' ordinance which keeps your flowers from dying and weeds from growing. Aaand you can easily get a couple hundred thousand bells a day if you know how.
Once you get the hang of the game it doesn't actually suck up as much time as you think.
AC teaches commitment and resposabilities. Teaches that effort and time is nedded to get what you want. And its really rewarding to see grow the town you live and the friendships you have. It realy makes you think about how big cities insolates people and how small communities do the daily live.
Of course it's evil. Anything that starts going outside a measurable scale of cuteness is evil. :P
Jamin, this video in particular made me realize I'd love for you to do a guest spot on Game Theory, and vice versa. Make it happen!
The Internet Peasant I'll write a note!
New Leaf is much less punishing than the other games; my wife decided to boot up my town after I hadn't played for a year. I was freaking out that since I wasn't able to time travel back to when I stopped, that all my villagers would have moved, but that didn't happen. I was so relieved!
One, people cheat in it all the time, it's called time traveling, two, it's actually a communication game, you befriend your animal neighbors by TALKING to them. That's the whole point of the game, the dialog makes you feel like you're literally living in this fictional world.
My parents actually loved it when I started playing the original because they felt that I was learning practical life skills that surround money, debt, saving, etc.
There is this very entertaining story accompanied with pictures that paints the events of Animal Crossing as a horror where children are forced into isolation of separate villages, made to work and become a part of the system. It was disturbing but could not look away.
I have barely picked up my copy of New Leaf in some time because I fear the consequences of inaction after I was playing it every day, and what would be required to expand my house in the game. I managed to get all the fossils though.
Literally 5 days ago I got animal crossing as a present for Christmas. I'm already addicted!
I literally haven't played animal crossing for MONTHS because I feel so bad about not having played in months. I know that once I go back my town will either be deserted or everyone will hate me and I get too invested in this dumb town to be okay with that so instead of going on and fixing it I just don't play because even tiny animals yelling at me is stressful when you think about the fact that they're all dependent on you or their various needs yet I can't manage to muster up the effort to start playing again because it's such a time consuming game and so emotionally consuming as well. It's a vicious cycle, the longer you haven't played animal crossing the more difficult it is to start playing again.
Honestly, I gave away my crossing of ACNL for a few reasons. A) I just wasn't having a lot of fun and B) I didn't like having to play it daily. It just got more stressful than enjoyable.
A Tyrannical Kingdom ran by adorable cartoon animals, with the intent of making you spend hours upon hours doing menial tasks and spending hundreds of dollars on useless, superficial possessions you otherwise wouldn't have the desire to own? This sounds more like the goal of Disneyworld than a video game to me.
It's been a while since I played this, but oh what I remember celebrating new year in my virtual world
forever alone
DAMN, I recently started playing Animal Crossing New Leaf, my first experience with the franchise, and I couldn't get that thought out of my head, it's super time consuming, and makes me feel bad when I forget about things like visits to the neighbor's houses and sending letters. But the main thing is Tom Nook, you said everything I had on my head about him, the whole "illusion that you have control over anything" was spot on, Nook obviously runs the town beneath the sheets. But putting those thoughts aside, the game still is super fun and light-hearted. One last thing, Jon Tron did a video about favorite boss battles, and listed Animal Crossing for having none, and he appreciated that, but he was wrong, Tom Nook is clearly a final boss, just in a different way. Great video!
I'm getting a chuckle out of the number of commenters that have missed the hyperbole in the title, and the humor in the video.
I think one important thing to remember is that game designers/developers essentially create a playground within which players "play", and just like in a playground, good designers and developers need to ensure that the playground is "safe" for it's players.
What I mean by this is that, although the rules and systems in Animal Crossing may promote excessive play by "completionists", the alternative would be to reduce the liveliness of the Animal Crossing world, or restrict the players ability to return to the game.
Ultimately, we are raised in a society that promotes consumerism in excess, and unfortunately a game life Animal Crossing provides a level of content that is theoretically consumable (in contrast to No Man's Sky) - wherein the idea of "missing" some of the content, often leads to social stress within a player, ("What? You didn't see the fishing event on the weekend?"), and feelings of waste (akin to not being able to leave food on your plate).
My argument would be that Animal Crossing in itself isn't evil, but due to the current social/cultural values of western societies, it is a product that allows players to abuse themselves.
Dude animal crossing is totally harmless
I find it strange so many treat Tom Nook as a villain when he is literally the nicest landlord. No one in the world would give you a house with no down payment and the ability to pay back the loan whenever (or never.) There are only a few events in animal crossing that require daily play, and it is meant to play a little bit here and there on the subway or whatever.
Animal Crossing is definitely more of an 'experience' based game. It feels heartfelt and charming because it is. The way it is designed with the weeds and villagers moving out based on their relationship to you and how well the town is taken care of is incentive to care about virtual animals and a virtual town. I don't think it is fair to the game to call it evil for doing what all good video game design does- play to our psyche.
When i played animal crossing the fact that i saw other players have their huge houses with a lot of stuff and i only had a bed and a box made me sad and wanted to upgrade my things right away. But then you realize that's not possible and start getting into the real play doing all the possible tasks you can.
Which is fun and getting to know the characters and the drama is fun too.
I think it's a lovely game and the fact that it's a slow play it's nice because you don't feel you can loose or have a "game over" because you know you have plenty of time to create your own life in the game and have more money.
But the animal that came when you wanted to turn off without saving was awful. Yes. it felt like an endless speech.
*cough* time travel *cough*
but I'm a animal crossing time traveler and I love making my villages suffer for my evil over lord tom nook
"Demanding Time Schedule" aka pretending that 99% of players don't time travel.
This reminds me probably everyone in my town are either dead or left a WHILE ago.
Just gotta say, Jamin, I really liked this episode. I love when you have an interesting theory related to gaming far more that when you have a highly political discussion through the lens if gaming. It's not that both don't have their place, and I'm glad we have those conversations, but for a while I almost stopped watching because it got pretty heavily unbalanced and when everything is heavy, it's just depressing. Anyway, thanks for the episode, just wanted to share some feedback.
On Minecraft forums I noted a number of "prison" servers, where you are a convict trying to avoid angering the guards while surviving the PvP world of being in jail, and slowly working your way out by earning points turning in harvested goodies, over time raising your rank until you can gather better stuff and eventually get free.
I don't like PvP much, but I did like the idea of having a chore-like game I could use for Abnegation (see Extra Credits' episode on Core Aesthetics), where I could either turn my brain off for a while or else have my mind be elsewhere while running around the pleasant world of Minecraft.
Eventually I concluded that I wanted a server with some sort of "indentured servant" gameplay, only with a bit of a sci-fi feel, like we'd just landed on a new planet and were harvesting resources and maybe slowly expanding the settlement while sending resources back to the homeworld. And maybe having it based around something with more crops, such as HarvestCraft, and being able to slowly earn your way to a little settlement of your own where other players could work for you and you'd get a cut of what they harvested off your land, something like that. Seems like a natural progression.
I have a thread up on the forums but no one really seemed interested in that sort of gameplay. But I don't see how it's that much different from the prison servers, except that there's no PvP focus. And I'd still like to see a server set up where I could do this. Repetitive gameplay has its place... and unlike Animal Crossing, I could log in only when I cared to, and not miss out on anything if life took up my attention for a few weeks.
I talk about having to spend your time on "hard-earned" experience here:
www.reddit.com/r/gamearcane/comments/3da0yc/the_grind/
Definitely not harmless, maybe... "mostly harmless" :) You are still getting some-THING out of the exchange. Just like spending your bells in Animal Crossing, you are spending your time on Animal Crossing. It's not an empty dump, Animal Crossing was like a pioneer for games like No Man's Sky, where you are able to go waste your time relaxing your brain in a simulated peace. Kind of meditative in its own right.
A lot of players hack the game's realtime model by changing the dates and times on their console's clock, so one doesn't necessarily have to have holidays on their real world dates or wait for real life seasons to change to change the seasons in the game. This video in a way shows the advantages and disadvantages to this approach vs the traditional approach.
Been waiting for you to catch on with the comment videos since Mike started doing it. Infinitely superior method IMO, so keep it up by all means.
Oh, wait. I though I was on Game/Show, not Game Theory.
Devin Craig Is that a dig?
PBS Game/Show I find Game Theory to be really hit and miss, and this video reminds me of one of their miss, "Epileptic Tree" episodes. As many other people have said, Tom Nook is incredibly lax on the mortgage.
This is basically why I stopped playing Animal Crossing. I just got sick of always having a loan to pay off. That and my DS kept randomly crashing and the only way to make it stop crashing is to turn it off. Without saving. God, the pain I have suffered.
Animal crossing is a good example of the game going on after the player has left. For example say if you just saved a game of Mario and just left it. In your mind did your character complete his quest or did he fail. Did your Mario rescue Princes Peach? In animal crossing you can see what happened to the character who was left behind. He will be the Mayer of a ghost town. Also evil is a bad descriptor it to vague for the internet. One person evil is another pleasure.
I had a dog friend in the first ds animal crossing game. One day he said he was moving, and it broke my heart so much that I quit the game and tried to time travel back. Anyways, it didn't work. I was like 8 or 10, so I might have actually shed some tears. Though I stopped playing it because of that, I can't help but think that it must've changed my personality in some way, maybe it made me appreciate friends more, or maybe it helped me become less attached to those I love because, sadly, everyone dies at some point.
animal crossing is like a nicer version of reality!
love these videos i have just stared animal crossing videos on m y yt
I wish I could make a living and even expand my house into a mansion by selling seashells and bugs I find...
PBS Game/Show this makes me think of the episode you'll did on the origins of the monopoly game. Animal crossing could very well be a game teaching about the struggles of living with debt, or about the horribleness of runaway capitalism.
I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to put in my two cents.
The original concept of the game was pretty nasty. You start out in debt to Tom Nook. You gather things to give to Tom Nook in exchange for money, which you give to Tom Nook to repay your debt. When your debt is repayed, Tom Nook gives you a bigger debt. Everything goes through this in-game monopoly.
I really do feel like New Leaf breaks this mold in a significant way. Sure, you still start with a house debt that you have to pay off, but when you're done, you're done. If you want a bigger house, you have to pay for it, but if you don't, you can do whatever you want.
And business is spread out. You can sell your goods to the Recycling Center OR to the Nooklings -- both of which are apparently separate entities from Nook's Homes, where all of your home debt is settled. Moreover, there are many different businesses where you can spend your money, which breaks up the monopoly Nook used to run.
And a lot of the real-world inconveniences can be controlled by the player. If you don't want weeds to spring up, you can pass an ordinance to keep the town clean even when you're way. If you don't like Resetti, you just don't build his Reset Center. If the shops don't fit your life's routines, you can change the hours they stay open.
I love the concept of the real-time world that you can visit at your leisure and watch it grow and evolve, but I think Nintendo's gotten the clue that this is harmful to the players who engage with it, and I think they're taking steps to make it a little friendlier in that regard. I'd even say that games like Happy Home Designer and Amiibo Festival are an attempt to take the ideas of Animal Crossing away from these sorts of problems.
I continue to play New Leaf, but I relate to it the way I relate to my other games -- I play it for half an hour or so at a time, I put it down for days or weeks to do other interesting things -- and it's worked out all right for me.
You talked about how real life events and in game events coincide and require the player to pick, but there is an in-game clock that you can reset whenever you want. I expected better of you =P
Ah, yes. Chores: The Video Game.
One last note, the name of Tom nook isn't to rhyme with crook, because after all, what's the Tom part for anyway? It's actually a pun on Tanooki, the animal that Tom nook is actually based on. Think about it. Tanooki. TOM-NOOKI.
Samuel Baugh I was joking. :)
Although Animal crossing can be seen as evil: with some thought the arguments on the subject could be rebuttaled easily:
For one, Tom Nook has been antagonized by the debt creation in the game. But you can choose if you want to be part of this or not. You could pay off the first debt of 10,000 bells (which isn't quite hard, in my opinioun), and then forget about it completly. This shown quite obviously in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, as you have to ask Tom Nook to expand your house: it is completly optional.
And with that, so is Ressetti : in 2 ways. In New Leaf, you can choose to build the reset center, so Ressetti appearing is completly optional. And in the other games and when the Reset Center is active, you can choose to have Resseti appear (by restarting the game). And in his '10 minute lecture', he heavily stresses on the fact that he wants this game to be able to simulate a slow life as possible - and you cant reset in real life, so he wants you to refrain from doing so in the game for the best experience.
The yearly events are also a part of a positive atmosphere - as it gives you a feeling that it is alive, and also lets people celebrate events in a warm enviroment when they can't do it normally. Since the events never change, it doesn't matter if you miss it: there is always next year.
All of these aspects helps in getting across the idea of Animal Crossing should be: a slow, relaxing life simulator that is always friendly to you and lets you do what you choose, when you want to do it.
I'm curious, how do people feel about animal crossing after they stop playing it? I used to be really into MMORPG's and never really questioned there design or affect on me until after I stopped playing. Its when the 'missing out' anxiety kicked in that I realized that this was an unhealthy relationship
I don't mind the large mortgage payments to Tom Nook, it's the fact that I have to wait for hours and hours to do something when games like My Sims Agents does it better with mini games, that bothers me.
Last time I played Animal Crossing it was for the original DS. It was less of an infringement on my time when I just messed with the internal clock. I couldn't even imagine playing using ACTUAL time. I can't even watch tv that hasnt already been recorded by my DVR. Who has time for that?!
Animal Crossing has never ever ever ever not felt like a forced labor camp to me.
There are moments where I'm trying to collect something I actually give to cents about or specific characters I like that just happen to be in the game (K.K. Slider, Kicks, Isabelle) but that is buried under mountains of fake debt, characters who act friendly but quickly start repeating the same lines over again till they start looking very 2 dimensional, characters I hate (Gracie, Tom Nook, Resetti), hours of pointless time sucking tasks that don't make me feel like I've accomplished much of anything and those times where you are trying to collect all of something or a set of something but the game itself isn't designed well enough to let you know when you're done so you end up missing out on something because you didn't spend a few extra dollars more for a guide.
(Before anyone jumps at me for that last part, yes I know there are online websites that keep track of this stuff but none of them are perfect so you end up looking at 3 or 4 of those websites just to know when a fish or bug or something is going to spawn and where. It's very taxing. I went through all 4 seasons to get all the dinosaur bones, bugs and fish in New Leaf.)
Animal Crossing: New Leaf is going to be the last traditional Animal Crossing game I think I'll ever play. It hasn't gotten any better, just added more things to OCD about. Happy Home Designer may be more interesting.
My original intention for getting my first AC game (Wild World) was to finally play a fun game where something isn't trying to kill me yet again. Instead I've been thrown under the Debt and Collecting Items OCD Bus.
Watching this makes me want to play animal crossing.. I've been free of it for three months now! Thanks...
I love that this is a specific discussion of the idea in a recent Idea Channel episode. Why do we want media that feels like work, in our "free" time from work? I think Animal Crossing itself sorta asks the question of what work is. In the video Jamin says you have to "pick fruit and fish and look through trash all day to scrounge up a living." And that stuff is used to sound like labor, but the trash aside maybe, these are usually enjoyable activities. So if in order to survive you have to pick fruit but it's in good conditions and you enjoy it, is it a problem? Is it work? I'm not saying this is applicable to real life. Jobs and work have their own conditions that are usually detrimental. But in Animal Crossing, why is it so bad to "labor" like this if it's enjoyable? I'm familiar only with the gamecube and DS games, but if I'm remembering those correctly, you only actually "work" in tom nook's store for like one day early in the gamecube one, and you have to wear the uniform and your jobs are usually delivering items to townspeople. Besides that, it seems to be more a favor and bartering economy than the capitalism in the real world right now. (You collect things people give you in return for doing something for them, or swapping items, etc) So I'm just thinking that labor functions differently as well.
Games are not evil or good. They are subject to the players unique, individual experiences.
no
i will NEVER understand why people think this game is fun when all you do in it are CHORES.
Nathaniel Jurcago Tell me then: How you ever given someone an apple and, them being so happy, you got a WHOLE GOLD STATUE as a reward? Yet, me being a fan of the series, I have stopped playing for a week before due to the chore feeling. Yet I always come back.
Nathaniel Jurcago Related: there's some fun stuff on the "fantasy of labor" in social games: tinysubversions.com/2011/03/gdc-notes-clarkzimmerman-the-fantasy-of-labor-how-social-games-create-meaning/
PBS Game/Show thanks! This helped. I guess I just don't understand why this game specifically is so appealing. Because I like other games that require "work" but there's something different about it that makes it fun for me unlike animal crosing.
There's no way that I'm the only person upset at there being no mention if harvest moon...
You know you can just set the clock to whatever you want and the game will assume it is that time and date?
Well, there is a way to (proverbially) "have your cake and eat it too" with both Animal Crossing and meatspace holidays. Just experience the meatspace holiday on the actual day and manipulate the clock so the game "thinks" it's that holiday again. Just make sure to change it back once you're done.
Of course, some might consider this "cheating" but... Sometimes *you've got* to do stuff like that if you want to be good at both lives.
Then again, there was this one time my mom and I (for various reasons) ended up on a Greyhound bus near midnight New Years Eve. So, we ended up counting down to the new year with my copy of Animal Crossing New Leaf instead of watching some kind of news program as usual.
Swimmybird412 shout out! I recognized his video immediately!
I spent so much time on this game when I was a child, I'll never go back to playing it... hopefully ^^'
But Tom Nook let's you pay your tax ANYTIME you want, yeah that sounds evil.
Is Jamin wearing an ear-prompter? What's up with the cords running up the back of his neck?
Because of exams my fav villager moved out
I don't think that debt in Animal Crossing is a bad thing for the player. You're not forced to pay your debt, you have got all the time you want to pay it back (or not).
And the debt is used in Animal Crossing as in real life is a way to keep a social link between the villagers. When you owe someone it means that you have to enter in relationship with them again, you and your crebitor have now a sort of common destiny. If you earrn enough money you and your creditor will be well-off. If you fail, your creditor will fail too.
Debt is not only an instrument of coercition it's an instrument to create a community.
I mean it could be an evil game, but I think it depends on your mindset. You could go to the island at night and work your ass off to pay off your debt, or you could take a bit of time each day to unwind by searching for the four daily fossils. The game can be hardcore or casual but you'll still play for a long time if you stick with it. The newest one seems to encourage a mixture of both with the way the town tree grows. For each growth level, it requires a certain amount of hours clocked in, but also a certain amount of individual days you've decided to play the game. I feel like the debt part is just there to push the story. If you think about it, money connects you to everyone in the game.
I feel like Animal Crossing is like Sims in that when you think about it, in real life it would be really boring to be a sims character: wake up, have breakfast, work for 9 hours come home, have dinner, watch tv, go to sleep (this is a generalisation of sims so yeah). Animal crossing is quite similar in ways in that is is kind of either boring or just sort of averagely fun to pay loans, refurbish your house, donate to community buildings, these interactions can be quite bland or straight up boring in real life. Funny how games make real life more fun. As another example I played GTA V for ps3 for about 2 years, then when the pc version came out and first person was accessible, it made me feel more immersed in the game like driving around crazily is fun and all but there seems to be a sort of pleasure in following the road rules BUT I only found this interesting and engaging when I did it in first person.
I tried a Animal Crossing game once. Loved it. It was fun watching the town develop as I played. After a while, I started to enjoy it less, and it felt more and more like a chore to play it. Wouldn't been so bad if it didn't feel like I lost progress if I was unable to play for a week or so. Not sure if I actually lost progress. Then there was a new Pokémon game released, and I needed space for it and AC was the natural choice to delete from my system, thus releaseing me from it's enslavement.
so you are a downloader . I always try to buy the physical copy when i can .
wolffoetowtech
I do both, depending on release time and how much I want the game in question.
The need to play every day or huge guilt trip is what made me drop Wild World. I'm the kind of person/gamer who's personality/schedule is centered around periods of intense gameplay and then dropping off for a while when I get sick of it/need to focus on other things.
I love games but for my poor prioritization skills anything too demanding of long stretches of time is a no go.
Can you still manually change the date and time like you could with the DS? That'd be a nice work-around for having to be playing the game at specific holidays. I know this was an easy out for getting the Calendar Man achievement in one of the Batman Arkham games.
Wow, so much of this video sounds just like my addiction to smoking. When quitting, I was surprised when I went through a bit of a grieving process. I hadn't considered that cigarettes, "despite their many quirks, had always been there for me, and always would be."
Addictions are defined by the lack of control addicts experience, who feel compelled/forced to continually get another fix. Kinda like being in a forced labor camp to work off a debt where you always run a deficit. Add to that the demands on your time, the guilt trips, and community of fellow debtors/laborers, sounds like a quality addiction sim to me :P.
I... kind of wish I had a Wii now to play it.
I knew that sneaky racoon bastard couldn't be trusted
Tom Nook a tyrant? He gives out huge loans with zero interest and let's you pay the loan back at your own pace...hell, you never have to pay the loan at all if you don't want to.
Awesome video! 👍
It's not evil, it's rather discouraging unless you enjoy filling your pockets with stuff to end up selling just to pay the debt, which probably inspired Bioshock! After that, you do it again about two more times so you can buy stuff for your house and pay the debt again! This game i not evil, no no no, it's INSANE!
I don't like Animal Crossing. I think it's a big waste of time and I'm never returning to it. I think people who play it are nuts... then I remember I spent 3 days killing Silver Rathalos over over to get it's gem. I feel dumb now.
Debt simulator, hahaha, I never thought about it that way, but there is truth in it xD
I love how you place a completely different perspective on this game!