How Animal Crossing: New Horizons saved us from the pandemic
In what way this game prevented a psychological collapse for many people?
Originally scheduled for 2019, the fifth installment of one of the Japanese company Nintendo’s best-known franchises was released on March 20, 2020, when the first wave of Covid-19 was hitting Asia, Europe and the United States hard. To counteract it, many countries went on lockdown at the same time. In France, the first, very restrictive, lockdown was implemented on 17 March, three days before the game was released. Although the shops were closed, Animal Crossing: New Horizons broke all sales records, becoming an indispensable antidote to social distancing measures.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers a real alternative world where life is paradise. We set down our luggage on an island far from any problems where adorable anthropomorphic animals live and become our friends. Our only concern is to pay off the successive loans we took from Tom Nook to expand our house, but again, there is no rush. We can escape the panic of reality and spend our days wrapped in blankets, hunting bugs, catching fish, finding fossils and decorating our beautiful island to our heart's content. The game's new features allow us to shape it to our liking and easily change our character's physique, giving us more possibilities to create a world that suits us.
The previous versions of the game were often presented as children's games, where we played in a world that was sometimes a little silly. Now Animal Crossing is an ode to life, an opportunity to breathe, to simply live. It was also an opportunity to imagine the world after, which we were promised would be more environmentally friendly, greener, in vain.
At the time of the first lockdown, I didn't have the Nintendo Switch yet and although I couldn't test the game when it was released, I could see the positive effects it had on my girlfriend and friends. I asked one of them what Animal Crossing: New Horizons did for him during the lockdown:
We had to finish our school year working from home, with restrictions on the amount of time we could spend outside and not being allowed to go more than a mile from home. Although I was lucky enough to have a garden, I missed going to the forest or the lake...
At first he hadn't planned to buy the game outright, but out of nostalgia and as it was a chance to keep in touch with his sister who was alone for the lockdown, he pulled out the credit card. By playing Animal Crossing, he could share unforgettable moments with his friends and family despite the distance. He adds:
The atmosphere of Animal Crossing, the art direction, its colours, objects, characters, events... All these simple things made me feel a sense of serenity while playing during the lockdown. I felt like I was on holiday when I played, I didn't think about my worries, my obligations, I took time for myself... And for my virtual self. Even though we are in a virtual world, we try to recreate the pleasures we feel in the real world, like when we look at beautiful landscapes during a holiday in the mountains, when we give gifts to a loved one, when we look for the item that will add that little magic touch to our room decoration... I think that what made Animal Crossing so successful during this period of confinement was precisely this simplistic gameplay that copied simple gestures of our real everyday life, gestures that are difficult to achieve in these difficult times.
The OECD has shown in a study that the population is facing an "increasing level of depression or anxiety as well as an increased sense of loneliness and disconnection from society". Unfortunately, we could see in the newspapers how much society has been psychologically affected by all these health measures, especially among young people and those deprived of the outdoors. Animal Crossing has become a bulwark against the risk of depression among players. Being able to interact with loved ones in the game has greatly reduced feelings of loneliness. Being able to escape through the game has had positive effects on well-being, putting everything that is happening in the world into perspective, despite our powerlessness in the face of this pandemic.
Moreover, the simple fact of being able to keep a routine with day-to-day goals is an unshakeable pillar of our well-being and ensures that we do not wander around aimlessly in our living space. We open the window, a little breeze comes in, we play and feel good, we air our minds.
I got the console and the game a few days before the second lockdown in France, in November 2020. I could see the difference, I felt better, I rediscovered freedom on my island, I could finally interact with my friends, whom I had been watching from afar, sometimes with a bit of lust, I admit... Since then, I continue to play it with them, whom I meet during nice meetings.
The game is thus a kind of social network that can be played alone or with others, where you can strut your stuff and leave your everyday problems behind for a while. The pandemic helped sales of the game a lot, but it helped us a lot in return. It united us by erasing the borders of a world that was totally closed in on itself. It was a sign of destiny, arriving just in time like a miracle, it protected us from a psychological catastrophe of great proportions. Even if the epidemic seems to be calming down, let's keep playing, all together. Thank you for everything Nintendo.
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