Animal crossing New leaf released in summer 2013, I was 18 years old and had finished my first year in a University I wasn’t keen on. I remember staying up all night till 6am waiting for the eShop European release on the Nintendo 3DS. After realizing that there’s a time difference and I’d have to wait till 9am, I persevered and downloaded the game despite how slow the WiFi was at the time.
It’s a familiar feeling, loading up the game and talking your way through your appearance presets. Having grown up with Animal Crossing, the way the game handles friendship greatly influenced my own. As someone who has mild social anxiety, I would leave you on read, knowingly but not intentionally. I’m here for you, but I’m also here for my own well-being and social capacity.
On Animal Crossing New Leaf, you’re the Mayor of a village of animals. Friendships are formed through performing tasks these animals ask you to. From giving them fruit, to working as the middle man to deliver presents from one villager to the other. Although they’re not calculated in-game, there are certain levels of friendships you can form with the animals, reaching the highest would be rewarded by the villager when they gift you a picture of themselves.
The appeal of the Animal Crossing games is that there’s no ‘winning’ or ‘losing’. It is a life simulator that allows you to do things like fish, plant flowers, send letters, craft furniture, and make bells, the game’s currency. It is a laid back game that operates on a real time cycle, and with that you are able to get back to it when you like.
With the game being so forgiving and relaxing, the friendships formed with the villagers are low maintenance. For example, a villager could ask to visit your house at a chosen timeframe, and if you stood them up, they would express their mild disappointment, then get over it by the next interaction. The game makes it clear that there is no catch to being friends with the animals, nor would you gain anything other than the occasional gifts if you were to pursue friendships with them.
Animal Crossing friendships tend to fall under the ‘low maintenance’ friendships. The ones where both parties understand that there aren’t any daily interactive obligations for them to stay friends. In real life, I related this to the parallel between flakey friends and friends that have issues with mental health.
In an article on Affinity Magazine, writer Zoe P. explains how your ‘flakey’ friend could be introverted, and that the words ‘toxic friend’ could be applied to someone without knowing how or why they might be perceived that way. They say, “If you have no idea why they don’t always want to hang off, sit down with them and have a conversation before you cut them off.” As someone with a mutual understanding with close friends, this resonated with me. Animal Crossing does this by not holding the player accountable over certain meetings that never happened, and by giving the option to decline hanging out without consequences.
With that, I will stay as salty as Chrissy Teigen, waiting for a new Animal Crossing game to be announced. All the while looking forward to how social interactions will pan out once we can befriend animal villagers again in a new title.
At the time of this post, no news about a new Animal Crossing mainline game has been announced yet. Although, with the gaming industry’s trade expo E3 happening next month, who’s to say whether or not a new title may be announced on the Nintendo Switch.
