Animal Crossing | UX + Game Design Case Study
Exploring concepts to reach ‘New Horizons’
The ‘Wild World’ of Animal Crossing
Every year video games push the boundary of virtual entertainment experiences. The untapped potential of new gameplay, worlds, and stories are only limited by a game developer’s imagination (and remaining wrist dexterity — carpal tunnel braces save lives!).
Despite the hype surrounding energetic titles such as Apex Legends and Red Dead Redemption 2, there are video games that are just as successful and popular that don’t provide the player with a story, complex mechanics, or an overall objective for that matter! There’s no better example of this than the Animal Crossing series from Nintendo.
Animal Crossing is an open-ended social simulation video game where players are encouraged to take it easy as they explore the world around them, create their dream home, and build friendships with their animal neighbours.
Design Challenge
With the latest installment in the series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, being released soon on the Nintendo Switch, I wanted to challenge myself to combine my passions for UX and video games, and explore how I could enhance the player experience of Animal Crossing through user research and game design.
Understanding Animal Crossing & its Players
Player User Research
In order to create a foundation to work from, I gathered 25 participants from Twitter and Facebook, and conducted a survey assessing the current user experience of the most recent title in the Animal Crossing series, Animal Crossing: New Leaf (ACNL) for the Nintendo 3DS. By gaining a better understanding of why players gravitate to life in Animal Crossing, I hoped to identify barriers to their enjoyment of the game.
“It’s a game that doesn’t require much in order to enjoy. It’s simple, straightforward, and very relaxing when you simply need to wind down.”
Player Motivations
Generally, research showed that players are motivated to play Animal Crossing because it’s relaxing, is aesthetically charming, and offers escapism from the chaos of reality.
Quantitative research shows that Animal Crossing players most value their freedom, whether that be through character customization, home decoration, or collecting.
Top Three “Most Favorite Aspects of Gameplay” from Survey
- Decorating (designing rooms, town customization — 4.72)
- Character Customization (clothes, accessories, hairstyles — 4.6)
- Collecting (bugs, fish, fossils — 4.32)
Aspects rated on a weighted scale from 1 to 7, inclusive.
This is further supported qualitatively — testimony from survey participants showed that players enjoy discovering rare decor, take pride in perfecting the aesthetics of their towns, and love customizing their characters with unique hairstyles and accessories. Players get to enjoy these activities without feeling the pressure of time constraints when working towards their goals.
“The amount of freedom in what you want to do is immense but not in an overwhelming way. The game’s pace is so leisurely that there’s no element of stress to not focusing on any particular component at a particular time.”
The Desire to Collect and Do Everything
In addition to enjoying leisure, players find it rewarding to complete sets of furniture, taking a ‘completionist’ approach to the game, and showing off their towns to others. This is partly because Animal Crossing has an impressive number of items to collect (over 4000 in ACNL) and because of the care players dedicate to crafting the world they desire.
Players also experience satisfaction when being able to participate in random events throughout their gameplay. This could be catching a fish with a 1% encounter rate, hitting a floating balloon out of the sky with a slingshot to find exclusive furniture, or stumbling across amethyst ores hidden in rocks.
“What I like…is the daily lifestyle gameplay, where I can go out and explore around my town map and find random things in trees or hunt for treasure. It’s the same map but there’s tiny unexpected changes everyday that makes the game so fun and almost unpredictable.”
Player Pain Point №1
In order to identify pain points in the current Animal Crossing experience, I utilized the insights I gained about player motivations to direct discussion around specific moments where Decorating, Character Customization, and Collecting were disrupted.
Not Enough Room in my Pockets
From research I learned that the most common pain point players encounter is when their ‘pocket’ inventory becomes full.
The ‘pocket’ inventory is the player’s primary method to store items. Any items they collect in the overworld are placed in the ‘pocket’ inventory by default. Players are constantly moving items within their inventory depending on the current task, however the rule of thumb is that you can never have too much space.
95% of survey participants (21/25) stated that they experienced ‘Running out of pocket space in their inventory’ while playing Animal Crossing.
Inventory Capacity Management
In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the maximum number of items that players could hold at one time was 16 items. However, 6 of those slots would be occupied by tools if the player chose to carry them. This reduction to 10 item slots further limits what the player can carry, and by extension, limits the player’s ability to ‘Decorate’ and ‘Character Customize’.
Reducing inventory capacity often presented situations where the player was forced to make a decision on which furniture, tools, or moneybags to forfeit. Considering the fact that Animal Crossing has a strong ‘Collecting’ culture, restricting the number of items the player can carry is intrusive to their enjoyment of the game.
“I always kept all my tools in my inventory to avoid needing them and not having them. However, they took up a lot of inventory space… I would have to throw things away that I might have kept otherwise.”
Using Letters as a Workaround
Some players developed their own workaround for this problem by repurposing the ‘letters’ inventory to leverage additional item slots. In research, 48% of participants (12/25) stated that they exploited this trick in order to expand their inventory, showing that this is a common workaround to the pain point.
Players shared that they utilized the ‘letters’ inventory to carry items that they wanted to have on-hand but didn’t utilize as often. These items were mainly tools, such as axes, slingshots, and fishing rods, which have situational uses based on random encounters. By having these tools in the ‘letters’ inventory, players felt secure in that they could participate in random events without the tools taking up space in their primary inventory.
Though players found a workaround to this pain point, the workflow to practice it wasn’t seamless. When attaching items to letters they take the form of presents. If the player wants to retrieve an item inside a present, they must do an ‘unwrapping’ action which takes time to perform. Additionally, it’s impossible for the player to tell what’s inside of a present. This results in players guessing at which present stores the item they want or relying on muscle memory to keep track of their presents.
The remainder of players who weren’t aware of the ‘letters’ workaround were less fortunate. One player stated:
“For inventory tools, I typically left the tools in my home, so I would have to go back and get it. In instances where I needed it to catch a bug/fish, I would just sadly realize that I can’t catch that bug/fish and continue on my way doing something else.”
As a result, these players could not participate in special, random events because they were not carrying the appropriate tools with them. This ultimately caused them to miss out on opportune moments that are supposed to add joy to the Animal Crossing experience.
Note: While the limited size of the item inventory can be argued as intentional design, research shows this is a universal barrier to player satisfaction regardless.
Problem Statement
Animal Crossing players want to be opportunistic as they collect items and explore the world around them. However, players have less ease-of-mind doing so with the current inventory’s capacity. They often experience frustration when sacrificing space for new items. This creates a dilemma for players as they have to prioritize which items to carry.
In addition, Animal Crossing players need a method to store situational tools, so that they can fully experience random events (such as fishing and digging).
Hypothesis
If Animal Crossing players are given an expansion to their item inventory, they would be required to forfeit items less often. This would empower them to feel confident that they are prepared for any item or situation they encounter.
Proposed Design Solution
The ‘Backpack ‘ Feature
Animal Crossing players will be presented with a new item called the ‘backpack’. This new feature is composed of two elements, a physical (or in this case, digital) accessory and an inventory UI.
The ‘backpack’ serves two purposes:
1) An expansion to the ‘pocket’ inventory (Solution for lack of inventory space)
2) A new character accessory (Player motivation of customization)
Backpack — Additional Inventory
The ‘backpack’ expands the player’s maximum number of held items by providing additional inventory space.
Similar to the ‘letters’ workaround, the ‘backpack’ inventory is initially hidden when viewing the primary ‘pockets’ inventory. To access the ‘backpack’, players can select the orange ‘backpack’ icon located at the bottom of the ‘pocket’ interface.
Placing the ‘backpack’ one layer deeper within the ‘pockets’ enables players to have more control over how their inventory is organized. Players can place situational tools in the ‘backpack’ to free up space in their ‘pockets’. Doing this will allow players to keep high-priority items in their primary inventory, while still having easy access to their fishing rod and slingshot when the opportunity arises. This encourages players to ‘Collect’ as much as they want so they can ‘Decorate’ without the anxiety of running out of inventory space.
While it is intended to hold situational tools, players have the freedom to store any item they desire in the ‘backpack’.
Backpack — New Accessory
Additionally, the ‘backpack’ gives players a new option to accessorize their character with, supporting the player motivation of Character Customization.
Currently backpacks exist as an accessory in the mobile game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Bringing this over to Animal Crossing: New Horizons would only elevate the game’s character customization experience. From messenger bags to fanny packs, the possibilities are endless!
Measuring Success
Though I (sadly) do not work for Nintendo and implementing the ‘backpack’ feature for user testing was out of scope for this project, I organized a small study in order to test out the ‘backpack’ feature’s rationale and concept.
Overall, player feedback was positive — with 100% of participants (10/10) stating that the ‘backpack’ addressed the primary pain point and would add value to their Animal Crossing gameplay experience.
Takeaways
The design thinking that goes into video games is no different than any other product design project. Deep diving into the ‘why’ for one of my favorite video game series and applying my UX and game design knowledge together was a really fun, motivating challenge. I look forward to working more in this intersection as I continue to learn, grow as a designer, and play move video games!
I’m excited to open a new chapter and explore what the new world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons has to offer to players both old and new. Want to talk about product design, Animal Crossing, or anything in-between? Feel free to reach out to me on twitter @JaredSuasin — See you on the island!
