Animal Crossing, the Pandemic, and How to Cope With Loneliness

I first played Animal Crossing: New Leaf in eighth grade. I had recently bought a new 3DS just so I could revisit my old games — Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Bros, and many titles from the Pokemon series is what I grew up on, and around this time I wanted to revisit them and all their hand-held glory. With my new console, I also wanted to get a new game; Animal Crossing.

The game was a Nintendo classic, with its adorable characters and beautiful scenery, even with the graphic restraints of the 3DS. I booted it up sometime around Halloween. I played it for a few months and never touched it again.

Despite only having a brief period of time with New Leaf, when I heard that a brand new Animal Crossing game was being developed for the Nintendo Switch in 2019, I was absolutely thrilled. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on another outstanding Nintendo game, and I eagerly anticipated its release in early March 2020.

Now, I bet you can think of something else that happened early in March of 2020 — the lockdown. Our entire world seemed to come to a halt; the school year ended, businesses closed, and our province-wide shutdown began. This all sounds very familiar now, doesn’t it?

The funny thing is, I’d originally started this article before our second shutdown, and I spoke of the COVID lockdown in the past-tense. Naive little me said something along the lines of, “Remember when we were all locked down for months? That was crazy!” Times used to be so good.

So, now that we’re all stuck at home again, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect. With all of my COVID anxiety back with a vengeance, I asked myself the question; how did I get through it? When I was faced with the dreaded, uncertain reality of a global pandemic; locked away from my dearest friends and family, what exactly kept this immense burden at bay?

The answer was, of course, exactly what you’d expect — it was Animal Crossing.

When Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out, I bought it as soon as I woke up that morning. I wasn’t alone, either — so did a lot of my friends, and millions of people worldwide. In fact, in the first month of its release, the game sold an outstanding 14 million copies. There were large lineups outside of EB Games just to get Animal Crossing.

I decided to boot up the game again despite not playing for a few months, hoping to find some sense of peace in our new, crazy world. Returning to the game, I didn’t just get a moment of serenity in my turbulent world, I also had a realization — Animal Crossing was created for this exact situation. No, it wasn’t made for the pandemic, I’m not accusing Nintendo of a global conspiracy theory — but it fit right in with our brand new world of self-isolation and social distancing. I wanted to know why. Thus began my new look into Animal Crossing — not only as a video game — but as a piece of art, and what exactly it has to say about the pandemic.

I think Animal Crossing has a lot of fascinating themes. Particularly, the game discusses community and cooperation, developing and managing friendships, and working towards personal goals, rather than focusing on those imposed by society. The list goes on — Animal Crossing is a great place to start when it comes to analyzing video games.

But what I was interested in was its themes in relation to the pandemic. What I ended up learning is that Animal Crossing has a lot to say about loneliness — and more importantly, dealing with these feelings of isolation. A lot of these themes are demonstrated beautifully through the game’s mechanics itself.

Each game in the Animal Crossing series is different, but they all start relatively the same way — you move into a new town with nothing, knowing absolutely no one. In the most recent game, New Horizons, this is changed to a deserted island. This isn’t something a player would think extremely deep into their first time playing the game, but when it comes to discussing the game’s relationship with loneliness, it’s an important place to start.

There are two highly notable features that give each Animal Crossing game its unique feel: one being its use of real-world time, and the other its open-ended style of gameplay. The Animal Crossing games utilize their performing console’s built-in clock, which essentially means the game follows a real-world passage of time. Everything from seasons, to holidays, to just simply the growth of an in-game tree take hours, days, and even months to occur.

Another feature is its open-ended gameplay. In Animal Crossing, there is no defined goal or objective. Instead, the game encourages players to find their own objective, which can include paying off their home loan, collecting every in-game fossil, or simply socializing with fellow villagers.

To the average player, these game mechanics can sound incredibly unappealing. Who would want to spend months and potentially years on a game that had no true goal or ending to it? But this global pandemic opened up the eyes of many new Animal Crossing fans. These few mechanics, in particular, I think really demonstrate what I mean when I say Animal Crossing was “built for the pandemic.”

Just like Animal Crossing, we’re now on a long, unguided, seemingly endless journey. All of our former plans and deadlines set by our schools and jobs were cancelled, immediately, without warning. We had absolutely no idea when we’d all go back to normal. But Animal Crossing does not portray this with fear or dread that we’ve become accustomed to, it shows it as an opportunity.

In Animal Crossing, you arrive in the middle of nowhere, (seemingly stuck there for eternity,) without any goals given to you, and you figure out how to make it enjoyable. But instead of failing, Animal Crossing thrives in these circumstances. You quickly discover that the long, isolated, seemingly meaningless world you are taken to in Animal Crossing is actually a vast, expansive journey with endless possibilities.

When arriving in your new Animal Crossing town, it’s very empty, and you’re extremely lonely. But instead of succumbing to these weights, you fight them. You start new relationships with the villagers in your town. Or, you start collecting items so you can pay off your home loan and expand your house. You can even set more personal goals — like collecting all the in-game critters, completely filling out the museum, or just making your new town look pretty.

The world of Animal Crossing is lonely. You are alone — but that’s not a bad thing. You are given a chance to make something out of loneliness and isolation — which, during the global pandemic, was an incredibly impactful and inspiring message, and something I think we all needed, and still need to hear.

I have a really personal connection to Animal Crossing. During eighth grade, around the time I first picked up New Leaf, I was going through a rough time while dealing with my mental health. I was just as isolated from others as I am now. This time, however, it wasn’t physical isolation keeping me from my friends and family — it was emotional. I realized now, that when I stopped playing New Leaf, it wasn’t a bad thing — it was actually incredibly good. Animal Crossing nursed me through this period of loneliness in my life, just as it helps me, and many others, through the isolation of the pandemic today.