I always repeat to myself, almost like a mantra, that games don\u2019t happen in a vacuum. I find it extremely important to look at games in the cultural context where they happen because they tell so much about us as human and the times we\u2019re living in. This is incidentally true for every playful activity, if you are one of those dying to draw a border between the two (I\u2019m not, I like my borders to be fuzzy to the point of non-existence).<\/p>\n
So, it\u2019s really remarkable seeing a game like Animal Crossing out exactly in the moment in history where it makes the most sense: it\u2019s March 2020 and a huge part of the world is under lockdown and terrified for the COVID-19 global pandemic.<\/p>\n
Of course I\u2019m not saying that the Animal Crossing\u2019s dev team knew about the pandemic beforehand and strategically planned for having the game out exactly now (although it\u2019s a conspiracy theory way more fun and interesting than the ones I keep listening to) but for sure the very way the game is played reflects the current history of the world. Just the fact this game is having a huge success and popularity to the point the Nintendo Switch is almost impossible to find<\/a> certainly says something.<\/p>\n Animal Crossing has a long history which dates back to the late days of the N64, although it started to become popular with the Nintendo GameCube. In the game you start your life in a village (now on an island) populated by weird antropomorphic characters. You can do all sort of things, like fishing, bug hunting, taking care of your house interior design. It\u2019s about living a life in this little space. And of course you interact with the characters, which show their own personalities and design choices. The in game time follows that of the real world, which somewhat forces you to get to the game in certain days or hours to take part in different special events. In all this you can connect to the Internet and visit other player\u2019s places, exchange goods and send letters.<\/p>\n Of course in this sort of game the way the space is designed and how we can interact with it is crucial. When you arrive there, the village\/island is rather anonymous. Wild trees grow everywhere, there are weeds, not much is going on. With your intervention this start changing, little by little. The game is very wise in giving you new possibilities and prefers to slow the process down as much as possible. Everything in Animal Crossing screams to take your time and go slowly. The interface is clunky and forces you to have a conversation with the other characters. Flowers and trees take time to grow. Fish and bugs show up only in certain months. This has a very important impact on the space. If at first you are a complete stranger, little by little you start leaving traces in the area. You plant flowers, you get new fruit plants from nearby cities, you design little tiles to place around. The little animals talk with you, they give you errands but they still see you as one of them. If you use the tool to personalise a dress, they notice it and start wearing it as well, in a sort of rudimental trend simulation. They talk about each other, sometimes they have an argument, they do exercises in the morning. They live their little lives no matter what.<\/p>\n Many games treat you just like a player. The NPC only exist to give you quests or to show you parts of the game lore, acknowledging you for the only function of being a player. In this sense, videogames often fail to be meaningful spaces and tend to feel more like what the french anthropologist Marc Aug\u00e9 defined as non places<\/em>. According to him<\/p>\n If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The island in Animal Crossing can be easily seen as a meaningful place. It becomes so more and more as you keep playing and discover new things and leave new traces. This has a very first impact in the time of lockdown. Now we are forced to stay home and our only relationship with the public space has become purely utilitaristic (getting food or maybe doing a bit of exercise in a park, keeping the distance from other people). The relational, historical, concerned with identity space of our lives has been almost entirely suspended (with the obvious exception of our home). Animal Crossing, moreso if played with other people, gives us back that kind of space. It\u2019s important to add that nothing in Animal Crossing threatens you in any way (not even the few dangerous insects which just have a comical effect on your in-game character). It\u2019s a completely safe space, where self expression and experimentation with identity is not only accepted, but encouraged through interior design, decoration and dressing.<\/p>\n Another fundamental point in strengthening the sense of place of the island is how the museum evolves while you donate bugs and fish you catch. The museum itself is designed in a way that connects with the lore and the history of the islands. The hall in the fossils section which connects the various type of villagers with their animal ancestors is a brilliant example of this perspective.<\/p>\n Iam a big fan of the way Gregory Bateson has described play while observing the animals in San Francisco zoo, in the 50s. Bateson view is that play implies metacommunication, in the sense that it must be clear to whoever takes part in a playful activity that the actions they take have a different meaning; a playful bite is represented as a bite but doesn\u2019t carry the same significance and context of a real<\/em> one. In this sense I like to think of play as a sort of a temporary language in which grammar and meaning tend to be concentrated in the actions we do as players.<\/p>\n Animal Crossing is a game that leaves a lot of space for just being playful. Play lies in the way you can dress your character, in little actions you can do together with other people and in the design and in the way you arrange furniture around. That space of play can be used to communicate non-verbally with other people. Around a week after the game has come out, many players have started wearing doctor masks. This simple choice in identity representation has had the strong communicative value of stating a certain approach towards the pandemic crisis and also as a way to raise awareness and start a conversation about the present and the future<\/a>.<\/p>\n This last point is crucial. For many people during lockdown the actions you take in Animal Crossing are in many ways the one we\u2019re giving up right now in the hope of a better future. Running outside in a safe and idyllic place, enjoying mundane activities and connecting with friends immediately resonate against the shock of a lockdown. The playful space enable us to keep imagining a positive future. The role of play and imagination in building something new or in overcoming a crisis is born from the creative power of the game\u2019s language. What we can do in the game is exactly the grammar we need in order to imagine a future. In her book Hope in the Dark<\/em>, Rebecca Solnit observes exactly this:<\/p>\n \u201cDespair demands less of us, it\u2019s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity \u2014 seeing the troubles in this world \u2014 and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Solnit connects hope to imagination. And imagination is the realm of play. She also finds in joy an essential point of dealing with crisis and sudden change:<\/p>\n \u201cJoy doesn\u2019t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The whole atmosphere of Animal Crossing builds up a terrain where we can cultivate hope through imagination and we can experiment subversion through play. In her seminal book Critical Play \u2014 Radical Game Design<\/em>, Mary Flanagan has pointed out how the language of play can be used, and is often used, in order to criticise the current world, exorcise it and imagine a new one. One of the most poignant example of this process is how in the victorian age, little girls started to enact funerals for their dolls as a way to criticise and subvert the expected role in society that these dolls represented. A toy is a natural playful object that leaves open many possibilities. Often that is not the same for a game, and yet some dark and different things have started to happen in certain Animal Crossing islands.<\/p>\nThe spacetime<\/h2>\n
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A space of play<\/h2>\n
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