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The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

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Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#2
“It is the most boring, long-winded, repetitive, condescending, infantile bullshit we’ve ever seen.” After a few more invectives, he posed a question: “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?”

Apparently so!

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#3
post #2

“It is the most boring, long-winded, repetitive, condescending, infantile bullshit we’ve ever seen.” After a few more invectives, he posed a question: “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?” Apparently so!

That quote was from Frank Lantz, who is the guy who designed Universal Paperclips. There's a bit of irony about the criticism of repetition, coming from someone who designed a game about clicking buttons over and over to make numbers go up.

Disclaimer: I actually think Universal Paperclips is brilliant, and agree that Animal Crossing has a lot of overly tedious and unnecessary mechanics. But I don't think it's fair to say that people who take comfort from it are just enjoying "tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism".

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#4
post #2

“It is the most boring, long-winded, repetitive, condescending, infantile bullshit we’ve ever seen.” After a few more invectives, he posed a question: “Do people find comfort in tedious, bureaucratic, pandering authoritarianism?” Apparently so!

That quote was from Frank Lantz, who is the guy who designed Universal Paperclips. There's a bit of irony about the criticism of repetition, coming from someone who designed a game about clicking buttons over and over to make numbers go up. Disclaimer: I actually think Universal Paperclips is brilliant, and agree that Animal Crossing has a lot of overly tedious and unnecessary mechanics. But I don't think it's fair t…

Was Universal Paperclips supposed to be fun? I kind of got the impression it was meant to scare you into donating to MIRI or whatever.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote was from Frank Lantz, who is the guy who designed Universal Paperclips. There's a bit of irony about the criticism of repetition, coming from someone who designed a game about clicking buttons over and over to make numbers go up. Disclaimer: I actually think Universal Paperclips is brilliant, and agree that Animal Crossing has a lot of overly tedious and unnecessary mechanics. But I don't think it's fair t…

Was Universal Paperclips supposed to be fun? I kind of got the impression it was meant to scare you into donating to MIRI or whatever.

I enjoyed it a lot, but I also have a weird affinity for clickers. I was very unproductive at work for about a week when I first discovered it.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#7

I loved the original Animal Crossing, but honestly I think the less well known indie game Stardew Valley is far better.

We've been enjoying this on and off. It takes a while to understand and the controls aren't intuitive... And i think we've thrown away a sword or fishing rod but accident... Unclear

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#8

I loved the original Animal Crossing, but honestly I think the less well known indie game Stardew Valley is far better.

> less well known

I don't know if I would call Stardew Valley "less well known", as it's sold over 10 million copies. It's incredibly popular, one of the biggest indie game success stories ever.

I would also say Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley (and Harvest Moon, for that matter) and very different types of games (despite surface level similarities), so it's pretty hard to compare them directly like that.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#9
It's interesting how New Horizons adds many quality-of-life features to streamline gameplay...but still deliberately keeps some of the monotony present in the game design two decades ago on the GameCube.

Adding a "weight" to repetitive actions has been a controversial game design principle. It implicitly makes good/efficient actions more rewarding, but there has to be a balance.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#10
It is a rather poor game all things considered. Stardew valley is far better. On the whole, the one thing they needed to nail is co-op, and that is probably the thing they did the worst on.

The game features are limited, villager interaction is inane, the items are repetitive, the goals non-existent. I understand the simple joy of a no-pressure game, but without a meaningful reward loop of any kind, the whole thing starts boring and gets only more so.

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