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The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#141

Post by swebs »

tasogare wrote: post #60
billfruit wrote: post #44

Kind of surprised they did not mention Stardew Valley, in the discussion. I kind of feel that Nintendo fanboyism pervades a large proportion of writing on games, but it would be better to be more objective.

Same here. From what I saw from videos about the new AC and my experience with the mobile game, the game doesn’t seem as fun or interesting as SdV. Just pure grind, without interesting variations (and I don’t care about collectibles). The Gamecube version is looking more appealing because the town is already established, so you have to discover and interact with the world instead of starting from a generic empty isla…

Well the mobile game was crap. It was just the standard mobile game template with an Animal Crossing skin, rather than a real Animal Crossing game.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#142

Post by vorpalhex »

madeofpalk wrote: post #139
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why they always put so little effort in. I know at least part of the reason is that nintendo wants to make an entirely child friendly experience which usually involves leaving as little player to player interaction as possible.

The things that suck about Animal Crossing's online experience isnt about limiting communication or making it more child friendly, but just the mechanicisms of it. Whenever someone enters or leaves an island you're on you're forced to sit through a series of cutscenes.

My guess is that nintendo wanted to dramatically restrict the netcode they had to write, so not having to send world deltas or spin up multiple threads sharing a socket was the way.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#143

Post by inopinatus »

WJW wrote: post #132
ebg13 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s not invaluable invaluable (adjective): extremely useful

Seeing shapes in clouds is not "extremely" useful, but it's nice. Neither useful nor useless I suppose.

Try asking a meteorologist.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#144

Post by jakoblorz »

nicbou wrote: post #121
jakoblorz wrote: post #106

The article is great until Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Millions of people already have spent hours in the game stewing on that idea since the coronavirus crisis began. Is it though? There is compound interest in this world, I don‘t think we are able to make all lenders „Tom Nook“s.

A world with no losers is impossible when the world and its inhabitants requires maintenance just to keep existing. The characters in Animal Crossing do not tire. They do not go hungry and they do not feel pain. The buildings in the village to not erode, and the in-game items appear out of thin air, without a complex manufacturing process. In the real world, just maintaining your current condition is a constant grind…

You are perfectly describing entropy or the fight against entropy more specifically.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#145

Post by tablethnuser »

There's many different kinds of players with an equally rich spectrum of player motivations. Animal Crossing is a phenomenon for some players because games like it are released pretty rarely. For others, it's "not even a game".

Reviews of Animal Crossing are more a reflection of the author than Animal Crossing itself. The game, like any topic viral enough to drive the engagement economy, is just some bobbet to anchor an opinion around.

For example, in the article I can tell that Bogost uses games to live out his fantasy as a humanities professor. And Lantz enjoys playing the contrarian.

Nothing wrong with that, they are playing the game in their own way, perhaps without even needing to _play_ it.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#146

Post by Loughla »

yetihehe wrote: post #95
danbolt wrote: post #48

I've seen a lot of comments or responses from people saying that Animal Crossing's mechanics are unfulfilling or "pointless", but I think they're missing the spirit of what makes them enjoyable to a lot of people. I'm going to posit that a video game is the three following things, but you're welcome to disagree: 1) a player performs some sort of input into a game 2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phe…

1) a player performs some sort of input into a game 2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phenomena in regards to that input 3) 1 and 2 are repeated, creating a relationship between the player and the game You can reduce that to "control and achievment". Games give you a little world you can control and achieve something. Even if this something is some value in a meaningless counter (like cookie clicker,…

I think you've hit on something with this, for AC. Right now, the world is seemingly more out of control and random than normal, for many people. Nothing they can do, literally nothing they could possibly do (outside suicide) can change the trajectory of their own lives due to something outside of their control.

But in games like AC, you control everything. So it's sort of like a child of abuse developing OCD or some other neurological disorder. It's a coping mechanism. Maybe there's something to that?

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#147

Post by Loughla »

slightwinder wrote: post #116
billfruit wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that respect I think Stardew Valley has included much more complex and compelling mechanics, as it seems designed foremost to appeal to adults. I thant is where it really shines over Animal Crossing.

Stardew Valley is also a different kind of game. It's a Farming Simulator, while Animal Crossing is usually called a Life Simulator. They both do kinda similar thing, but with very different focus. In AC you collect stuff and arange/design stuff. And you also build stuff, for collecting and arranging stuff. In SV you Farm, literally, and you plan how you farm the most efficiently way. You even have a energy-system an…

>have permanent pressure to do things now and not later.

I have not played SV, but I have been a farmer. I find it fascinating that the game makers managed to get that mechanic into the game, because that is 100% farming. "When it's time to make hay, make hay" is a saying you hear almost every day as a full time farmer. If you don't get it done today, it may rain tomorrow and then everything will be ruined, is the sentiment there.

I don't know that there's anything else to this, or that it's really that interesting. But I find it interesting that game creators, who I assume were never farmers, would work that into a game that seems to focus on farming. The stereotype of a farmer, from what I can tell post-farm life, is to be laid back and sort of let life happen around them.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#148

Post by leetcrew »

fphhotchips wrote: post #80
ebg13 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s not invaluable invaluable (adjective): extremely useful

"Inflammable means flammable? What a country!" In this case the context makes the meaning clear, but this quirk of English has confused people for years.

interestingly, you can track this issue back to latin, which has a preposition "in" (meaning in, on, to), which is often attached to verbs, and a prefix "in-" which negates the word it's attached to.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#149

Post by hi5eyes »

AgentME wrote: post #30
hi5eyes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

games are a grind everyone thats ever played an mmo knows flipping specific builds/leveled accounts using botting software is some of the most common middle schoolers first money making enterprise at some level almost all games could be reduced to a version of cookie clicker good games keep players actively looking for a new meta by tweaking and adding content, similar to the everchanging running of a business

>at some level almost all games could be reduced to a version of cookie clicker I can think of some interesting counterexamples: in games like Minecraft and Factorio, you create something and are left with an interesting artifact you've designed. In MMOs, you're often left with new friendships. But I'd be lying if I said I played those games primarily for those outcomes. It feels like each of those games still have s…

ive yet to delve into factorio (afraid itll have the same effect as civ tbh) but minecraft is very mind numbing early to mid game with all the farms esp with mob spawner/villager procurement to create their farms and resource grind. building and exploration in mc alongside amount of mods and great servers do make you forget about how insanely grindy it is for a bit

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#150

Post by mzg »

andrewzah wrote: post #84
mcphage wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cow Clicker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker

> The game serves as a deconstructive satire of social games > The goal of the game is to earn "clicks" by clicking on a sprite of a cow every six hours. [...] A premium currency known as "Mooney" allows the user to purchase different cow designs and skip the six-hour interval between clicks. This doesn't really sound "successful" in the traditional sense.

Except that there's a direct line from Cow Clicker to Cookie Clicker and the entire idle games genre. Sure, this wasn't Bogost's intention, but it's hard to deny his influence here.
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