Why Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the Most Important Game of the Year

It goes unsaid that life right now is scary. Inconvenient in some ways, and strange certainly, but above all — it is scary. From the closing of Disney World to the government-mandated lockdown in some states to the genuinely terrifying lack of open and functional Waffle Houses, we as people — we as humans — are going through something that most of us have never experienced before in our lives. If there is anything humans are more afraid of — above dying, what lies after death, and political discussions at family events — it is change and the unknown. And it seems now all that any of us can do is drown in it.

But what is that on the horizon? That glimmer of hope and promise of sweet, sweet escapism? Why, only the game that I and many others have been waiting nearly half a decade for.

You know, that game whose main goal revolves around repaying your home loan to a talking raccoon. That game where most of your time is spent picking weeds and watering a wide variety of flowers. That game where literal hours of your life is spent collecting furniture and decorating your digital house.

Let me explain.

Animal Crossing, the game series, as described by the gift that is Wikipedia, is a “social simulation video game.” Within Animal Crossing, much, if not all of what you do revolves around the town that you start the game in. In earlier incarnations of the game series, you begin in a somewhat pre-settled town complete with a semi-functional main street and fully functional town hall. In New Horizons, the latest game, this town is replaced by a completely deserted island — it is up to you to build all of the various shops and residential buildings that previously required no involvement from the player in order to be settled.

Your town is at various points occupied by a variety of permanent and non-permanent bipedal animals. Permanent residents include housing provider Tom Nook, the talking raccoon mentioned previously; delightful townhall aid Isabelle, a — and I cannot stress this enough — absolutely perfect yellow Shih Tzu; and local business owners Timmy and Tommy, nephews of Tom Nook who run a business as toddlers because no one can escape hustle culture, not even innocent digital child raccoons. Non-permanent villagers include the rotating cast of birds, monkeys, dogs, lions, tigers, bears (oh my!), and more who will move in and out of your town based on their own personal feelings and how they are treated within your town (if you go around hitting your villagers with your bug net, they will, understandably, move away).

Your main “goal” in Animal Crossing, if anything in the games can be called a goal (the games are quite open-ended), is to improve your town for the residents who live there — all the while befriending your animal neighbors, decorating and paying off your house, and creating such devastatingly amazing outfits you give professional stylists nightmares. 

There are also other “goals,” like donating various fish, bugs, and fossils, to your town or island’s local museum. Many seasonal events, like Bunny Day (Easter) and Toy Day (Christmas), as well as a variety of bug or fish catching contests, will occur throughout the year. Every so often your neighbors will fight with each other, or lose something, and it’s you who are given the option to aid them in their time of need. But the main “loop” of Animal Crossing is as follows: get money (via fishing, bug-catching, etc.), pay off your house (or crowdfunded bridge, or fountain, etc.), collect furniture and clothing (scare professional stylists to their grave, etc.), repeat.

Now I suppose is the time to mention Animal Crossing’s possibly most important feature: it syncs up with present time. Day, season, hour and all. If I’m playing Animal Crossing at 4am on January 14th (Animal Crossing, insomnia’s best friend since 2001!), then within the game it will be 4am on January 14th — it might even snow, too. You now might be asking, why is this Animal Crossing’s most important feature? Why have I taken so much time explaining the history of Animal Crossing and it’s most mundane aspects? What is the meaning of life? Why is literally every person on the planet playing this video game? Well, curious and slightly existentially terrified reader, let me tell you.

Living through this terrifying period of human history, there is one word I have heard used to describe the crisis more than any other. And that word is “uncertain.” When our terror at the thought of losing our older and immunocompromised loved ones to illness will subside is “uncertain.” When we will all return to living a somewhat normal life is “uncertain.” If things will, in fact, ever return to how they were before is “uncertain.” Everyone is confused and hurting and grieving and everything — everything — is “uncertain.”

Want to know what isn’t uncertain? Tomorrow, on my Animal Crossing island, there will be fruit trees to harvest and peaches and oranges to sell to my good friends Timmy and Tommy at the store. Tomorrow, there will be weeds to pick and flowers to water. Tomorrow, there will be fossils to dig up and give my friend Blathers at the museum. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

This is certain. Tomorrow, I will wake up and have chores to do around my island, and even though they are chores, even though they may get tedious every now and then, they are certain. I do not know if tomorrow is the day I wake and find out that I’m sick. Or if tomorrow is the day that one of my family members dies due to another ill person’s recklessness. Or if tomorrow is the day the whole of the country collapses into itself like a dying star.

But tomorrow, I will wake up and be happy that I did. I will walk across my island, water my flowers, say good morning to my neighbors, and maybe buy a new jacket for my character as a treat. For a few blessed hours, I will not think of all the horror currently happening just outside my door.

This is what Animal Crossing provides. Routine, safety, and certainty in a world currently void of those things. I can see and hear the ocean in Animal Crossing, when today the real beaches near me are closed. I can visit friends and family in Animal Crossing, when today I cannot because of responsible self-isolating and social distancing. I can wake up tomorrow morning and be glad that I did, when before, without this gift of a game, I may not have.

I don’t know if I can properly describe the feeling I had while waiting for the digital midnight release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the night of March 19th and the morning of the 20th. I stood, smiling like an idiot in my family’s living room, and thought of the hundreds of thousands of people just like me, hovering over their Nintendo Switches, constantly clicking on the game to see if it had been unlocked to play yet.

In that moment, I could feel the excitement and the anxiety and the joy that people all across the world were waiting for, just like me. Just like me, many of them would be nearly brought to tears over the return of some semblance of normalcy and routine that our real lives can not currently provide. The pure relief I felt upon seeing the first loading screen of New Horizons nearly knocked me over — a massive wave that finally crested and washed over me and said softly, “If all in the world is wrong and frightening, may you have one thing that is right and gentle.”

When people look back on this time, in a year, in a decade, they will remember Animal Crossing: New Horizons. They not only remember it as a good time, or as a good game, but as a dying man lost in the desert remembers stumbling upon an oasis. Animal Crossing will be in many people’s minds the lighthouse that guided them from the terror of the hurricane back to the safety of the harbor. For many, unquestionably, Animal Crossing will be the reason that they are still alive today. 

And that is why Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most important game of the year. It arrived at just the right time, provided something that many people desperately needed, and it is for that reason that I am certain it will be remembered for years, if not decades, to come.

In times like these, I feel it is important to remember all that art does for us. Think, in this time of crisis, how many movies have you watched? How many tv shows? How many books have you read, or games have you played? Far more, I would assume, than ever previously in your life.

In times like these we must remember to thank artists for the work and services that they provide. We must thank them for the time they take to create. For the joy their art provides. For keeping all of us as sane as we can be without social events, or summer activities, or sports.

Art is as intertwined and related with human history and human survival as the creation of agricultural or animal domestication, and now more than ever we must remember to appreciate art and artists, and all that they give us.

Next time you’re watching a movie, or listening to a podcast, or reading a book, just send a little mental thank you to whoever gave this gift of time and effort to you — I promise whoever is on the receiving end will hear it and be grateful. After all, there is no greater gift a person can give to another than joy.

Stay safe.