12/17/2023 0 Comments Virtual villagers originThrough hours of isolation, he began to understand the importance of connection, and these feelings inspired the series that has comforted so many of us in similar seasons of turbulence and isolation.Ĭommunity, then, is rooted in the game’s execution. He longed for community, for the time he could no longer spend with his loved ones. Three hundred miles away from home, Eguchi floated through the motions of work, silent commutes, an empty home, and back to work. We know, whether from personal accounts or qualitative studies, that these games provide a sense of stability, and they give us enough of a purpose to make it to the next day.Īt the age of 21, Animal Crossing creator Katsuya Eguchi left his friends and family behind in his hometown of Chiba to move to Kyoto to pursue a career in game design at Nintendo. There’s a reason the series soared in popularity with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. And two months later, I abandoned them.Īnimal Crossing is fundamentally concerned with loneliness and community. These villagers kept me grounded through a numbing stretch of loneliness, agoraphobia and one of the worst depressive episodes I’ve ever experienced. See, Animal Crossing: New Leaf only ends when you no longer want to play, or really, when you no longer need it. At the end, energetic bells ring, their pulsing reminiscent of the sound of the train connecting your town with all of the others, of the train that brought you to this village that fateful, first day. Though Animal Crossing doesn’t have a set ending, it is here, beneath the town tree, that you can watch the credits roll to a twinkly medley of the game’s most iconic musical themes. When you sit on the tree’s brick border, the screen will display to you the town name, its residents and the entire history of the town, from the day you became mayor, to each new shop opening, to the community-funded public works projects you’ve banded together to complete. It is a symbol of our community’s new roots and new beginnings, and as such, the tree grows as our community grows. There, they asked me to perform my first task as mayor: plant a fragile sapling at the heart of our town. On my first day as mayor of the town, my villagers and my assistant, Isabelle, held a commemoration ceremony for me in the town’s event plaza. At the end of each session, I’d pass the town tree on the way back to my home. I’d pass my day selling fish, designing clothes, ignoring my soul-crushing property debt to Tom Nook and then I’d do it all again.
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