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The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

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Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#151

Post by goda90 »

cblum wrote: post #113
grenoire wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go as far as to argue that Factorio is my Animal Crossing. For your average, casual player, Animal Crossing provides rote tasks that engages you with the game world without the added complexity. Factorio, SdV, and AC all ultimately provide 'relaxation.' I love AC, but I have other itches that need scratches.

Factorio made me super stressed out when I was playing it. One of the reasons I quit.

Was it the biters, or just the general gameplay loop? There is a peaceful mode that has no biters.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#152

Post by beigeoak »

billfruit wrote: post #105

I do feel, the article and discussion isn't doing Stardew Valley justice. I do think SdV for example portray's an adult world compared to the infantilized creations of Nintendo. Also the complex interlocking systems, for example how big the mine areas are etc, is very deep and satisfying to figure out. Even the people of SdV aren't just plastic figures, they have a semblance to real people, as much as could be achiev…

I've played more than a 100 hours of Stardew and I feel you're being overly generous. None of the systems are particularly complex (Civ has more complex interlocking systems), the mines and combat is relatively barebones (compared to something like Terraria) and the dialogue is above average, not the maximum that could be achieved (you could look at Divinity 2 to see dialogue done right).

What it does do well is an incredible level of polish in the production side of the game and giving the player a real and fulfilling sense of progression.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#153

Post by loquor »

conception wrote: post #61
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…

Your points are all correct but I think most folks are missing it’s a genre of Japanese game https://screentherapyblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/iyashikei... - basically healing games that are just supposed to give your mind and soul a break. Laying on the grass and seeing shapes in clouds is also “pointless” but it’s not invaluable.

Great point about the Iyashikei theme! Its very prominent in anime as well.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#154

Post by zitterbewegung »

Smaug123 wrote: post #96
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…

Mark Rosewater, a designer of Magic: the Gathering, wrote a very interesting piece on what a "game" is: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/w... He says a useful model is that if the game has no goal, it's better termed a "toy" (like Lego); if it doesn't give you "agency", it's an "event" (like watching a film); if it doesn't have mechanics that restrict what's possible, it's an "activity" (lik…

A game usually is defined as a set of rules and actions so that when you are playing the game no matter how many players play that game that you can get into some kind of win condition.

Looking at what other people have posted "paying off your house" or "filling the museum" in Animal Crossing are more like achievements that you can perform but they aren't necessarily a win condition.

A similar game that is more of a toy than really a game is the Stanley Parable. Sure you can get the Achievements in it but there is no real win condition at all. It doesn't even penalize you for not doing a task and instead figuring out the endings is what makes it fun.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#155

Post by minimaxir »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #50
rrmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most every game is on some level about wasting time. Good games make wasting time enjoyable.

Good games make you feel like the bottleneck. Being slow at something because you haven't worked it out or because your process is inefficient feels like rewarding gameplay because as you improve, your speed improves. Having to hammer the A button for 10 minutes to craft 10 of the same item doesn't make for rewarding gameplay.

Incidentally multicrafting in AC:NH was one of the cases I was alluding to. Making Fish Bait is painful.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#156

Post by kosievdmerwe »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #109
kosievdmerwe wrote: post #64

OK I skimmed through the article and I can't say I much care for it. To me Animal Crossing is a game that you play over many months to sometimes relax doing something mindless or over the longer term to have an island and house that you slowly build up in your own way. With that in mind there are a lot of great things in animal crossing. A lot of the furniture has interesting interactions and the museum is just a bea…

While I tend to agree that some mechanics like you describe them are tedious, at the same time I can't help but feel like you play it to min/max it, to get as much done as fast as possible. But there's space for games that are all about just taking your time. I mean I spent a lot of time in Runescape, hours upon hours spent clicking on the water to fish, or running between the same five rocks together with some other…

I don't quite agree with this. In the example of crafting fishbait, there are two sides to it one is collecting the Manilla clams and the other is crafting them into fishbait. Both are done one-by-one.

Arguably collecting the clams is much much more time consuming, and it's always been something I'm fine with. It's engaging running around digging the claims up.

Crafting them literally is just me spamming A for minutes at the time. It makes me watch a YouTube video instead of engaging with the game.

When you need multiples to even have fishbait have a point, then I feel it detracts from the game. I literally can't think of an experience (min max or no) that is enhanced by the crafting tedium. It would be different if crafting involved some care and attention like say Fantasy Life.

My problem isn't the time wasting it's the fact that the way the time is wasted is not engaging at all. When I think about that minutes of crafting, I don't even want to spend the hour collecting clams and the hour fishing a certain spot for that rare fish I'm missing.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#157

Post by kosievdmerwe »

kd5bjo wrote: post #108
kosievdmerwe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC's online experience sucks in large part because Nintendo is paranoid about item duping. This leads to things like everyone needing to pause their gameplay so the save states can be in sync when someone visits and worse rolling back the state of the world if someone disconnects due to bad internet or their console going sleep due to inactivity. Given the nature of the game I don't understand why they didn't priorit…

> I don't understand why they didn't prioritize fun over protecting against duping I suspect they may be aiming for long-term fun over instant gratification. Hard to get items will inevitably have a story attached of how they were a acquired. That means asking about some new thing you see when visiting a friend will get them telling that story. If Nintendo can keep these stories interesting, it’s a compelling reason…

A good point about why you care about not allowing dupes, but you can lose hours of gameplay with a rollback[1]. There isn't a periodic save.

This can happen for something as benign as a player taking a lunch break and not babying their switch.

Which harms the long term experience as if it happens to you once, it makes you paranoid about taking a longer term trip to a friend's island and doing something other than a short tour.

[1] https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/social/question...

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#158

Post by MattRix »

Smaug123 wrote: post #96
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…

Mark Rosewater, a designer of Magic: the Gathering, wrote a very interesting piece on what a "game" is: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/w... He says a useful model is that if the game has no goal, it's better termed a "toy" (like Lego); if it doesn't give you "agency", it's an "event" (like watching a film); if it doesn't have mechanics that restrict what's possible, it's an "activity" (lik…

This debate has happened in the video game world many years ago (and I'm sure is still ongoing in some circles), but most people arrived at a very simple but counterintuitive solution:

A "video game" is not the same as a game.

You can have definitions of games, toys, events, etc, but "video game" encompasses all of them.

Once it's digital and has some kind of interactivity, the only thing that matters is whether the author has defined it as a "video game". That's it.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#159

Post by mcphage »

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.

> This doesn't really sound "successful" in the traditional sense.

I'm not sure the "traditional sense" of successful was what he was going for. However, it was successful, nevertheless.

Re: The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

#160

Post by cdelsolar »

My wife has never played a video game in her life, but I showed her this one and she absolutely adores it. Although at times she still struggles with the joystick (hitting rocks, catching bugs, etc) her house already looks better than mine and she's tending a giant flower field, breeding hybrids, etc. We also have visited her cousins' islands a few times and they get to socialize virtually. I'm glad this game came out now; it's so relaxing and comforting.
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