The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing

Maybe I had it all wrong all those years ago. I had imagined Animal Crossing to be a game about the world, one that offered ingenious, if abstract, life lessons. But the players enjoying it in quarantine celebrate it for escapism, which any form of entertainment might provide. Neither interpretation seems quite right. Even though it can function as

Is it better to omit this truth, to pretend that resources are infinite, as many games do, or to force the player to contend with the scarcity and violence intrinsic to manufacturing? It would be disproportionate to conclude that merely representing the dynamic implies that the game endorses it. And yet, Animal Crossing doesn’t decry the practice e

Instead, Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Millions of people already have spent hours in the game stewing on that idea since the coronavirus crisis began.

For Americans playing the game as coronavirus lockdowns produce historic spikes in unemployment, the idea that any activity might be seen as viable work is a comfort, and perhaps even an aspiration. Imagine if everyone had a job that they enjoyed, that they were good at, and that could sustain them. What if they could thrive with no job at all, a s

What the hell kind of video game consigns you to a mortgage when you boot it up? But Animal Crossing had taught my young son about the trap of long-term debt before he ever had a bank account

But the size and economies of these villages were too modest even to sustain their basic familial and mercantile needs, so the villages would take on collective debt—to pay for fishing nets and supplies, say. But nobody would ever pay back the debt, Clark explained. They didn’t have the money! Instead, it would bind the locals to their village—you

The furusato fantasy offers one view on the fusion of commerce and the countryside, but it doesn’t really land in the West, especially in America. Here, capitalism and pastoralism are often seen as opposing forces. So, too, personal benefit and collective good.

The game, she argued, is a nostalgic fantasy for the Japanese furusato, a pastoral hometown. Before industrialization, a seaside fishing village or hillside paddy-field farm might have sustained a simple, deliberate life of basic subsistence and straightforward agricultural trade, much like the life the player leads in Animal Crossing.

John Locke, who held that individuals had a right to turn natural resources that belonged to no one into individual property for personal use, through labor. The Lockean idea justified all manner of accomplishments and violations in American history, including the colonial seizure of Native lands and the justification of resource extraction via the