Animal Crossing and Social Gaming
Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved video games, and in ever since growing into an adult, I’ve been trying to recapture the feeling I had when I first plugged my NES into the TV for the first time. The video game industry has been a disappointment to me in recent years. As gamers have grown older, most games have also lost their sense of fun and imagination. Nintendo is one of the few companies that dares to buck that trend, so I always have high hopes for their games.
Animal Crossing on the Wii, which was unveiled today, was one of those which I had such high hopes for. I enjoyed the game on the DS, although it never quite matched my expectations. Despite its promises of creating a real-time interactive world based on community and communication, its world always felt a bit static to me.
You were able to create a town, personalize it, and hook up to other players and explore their creations, yet all of the towns looked remarkably the same. Hosting people in your own town was a chore, as you had to find someone who you could exchange numbers with, and plan to be online at the same time, and there was little reason to do so. Your characters would celebrate New Years and some other generic holidays, and the trees would bear fruit or snow with the seasons. Still, once you got to know the main characters and explored the town a little, there wasn’t enough time-based content to warrant going back into the game day after day.
This new version doesn’t look to have improved much upon the formula, and even features many of the same characters and activities as the last game. The graphics are pleasant, but barely upgraded. There seems to be so little new content that I wonder what the developers have been doing for the past few years. However, it’s still early. The game could go through some large changes, or perhaps additional features have yet to be announced. Hopefully, things will change as its release date approaches.
Part of the reason I’m an illustrator is because I’m motivated to try creating a culture that I wished existed, but doesn’t. When I’m writing a story or creating a character, it’s because I have an idea that I want to put out there because nobody else is. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of creating some sort of social game, such as Animal Crossing, because I think the genre has so much more potential. I’ll probably buy it anyway, but this all makes me wish that I was a programmer, or knew someone who was.
