Animal Crossing through the lens of Mental Health.
As the world shut down, a game about making friends with cute animals helped people come together and feel connected once more.
Before this article begins, I would like to warn readers that discussions around depression are a large part of the second half of the article, as well as a mention of sexual assault and anxiety disorders, reader discretion is advised.
I have been attached to the franchise “Animal Crossing” from when I was knee-high to my parents. The series has been a constant in my life through some of my highs and lows.
Growing up, I often times found myself feeling different from other individuals, and as a result, had a much harder time connecting with my peers. I’d often run home, excited to immerse myself once again in my digital town, filled with relationships I had formed through hard work and occasionally gifting a ‘villager’ a couch made out of futuristic looking metal.
Animal Crossing is a ‘social simulator’ game, published by gaming juggernaut Nintendo, where you play as a human in a town full of animal friends. The series originally released in the early 2000’s and filled a hole in the Nintendo machine.
This game brought about something that players had yet to experience from the company. The idea of a game being low stakes, and not running off of a combative or competitive metric, was something relatively unexplored by Nintendo.
As years passed by, and multiple more iterations of the franchise have been released, including “Animal Crossing: New Leaf” for the Nintendo 3DS family of consoles, a much broader fanbase has formed around the series.
On the evening of September 13th, 2018, fans across the world learned that not only we were to get a character from the series in “Super Smash Brothers Ultimate” the fighting game that brings gaming icons together to brawl it out — we also heard the news that we were getting another instalment of the game, which we now know to be “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”.
As development for the new title experienced delays, the game’s launch date moved into “Q1” of 2020. All that means is the first quarter of the year.
As the world started to slowly spiral into what is now considered ‘normal’ — people realised how beneficial the franchise could be, and how digital communities could come together in this new 8-player space.
Releasing officially on March 20th, 2020, the game could not have released at a more perfect time, not only did this benefit Nintendo as sales reached dizzying heights for the title; but it also benefitted the players. For a lot of people, this game kept them going through the pandemic.
Personally, I used this game to keep me feeling connected to my peers in college. I was meant to have sat my A Level exams during 2020, however, instead of sitting to talk about how “Pulp Fiction” is a glorified poetry anthology, I was sat huddled in a ball while talking to a pixelated dog who needed my attention more than my real one.
People, like that of Reddit user ‘82MacReady’ — claimed that they used Animal Crossing to “save their family’s sanity.”
Their children had just come on spring break. Something of an ‘Easter holiday’ in England.
The Reddit user had expressed that “it gave us something for us all to do, and it was more fun than I expected” also going on to express how their whole family found excitement in “finding new things that [their] family hadn’t found yet.”
They also claimed that “my wife and I were out of work, and everywhere was a nightmare to shop at or closed.”
While they believe that their story isn’t something all that “emotional or groundbreaking” they did express that the game “kept the boredom and stir crazy at bay” — something we all struggled with during the pandemic.
Another Reddit user, who wishes to remain anonymous, as such will be referred to as ‘A’ — used Animal Crossing as a way to cope with their mother going through an extreme depressive episode.
“New Horizons singlehandedly saved my mental health at the start of the pandemic. The same week that everything went haywire around the world with COVID-19, sometime in mid-March 2020. I believe that my sister and I learned that our mother was going through a major depressive episode.”
“The only light I remember from the time is that New Horizons had just come out, and I had something to distract myself from my very serious, very harrowing, reality.”
“Because I was going through this with my mom, the “mom” letters and gifts in Animal Crossing meant so much to me at the time.”
“That game deserves all the flowers in my opinion.”
The third and final story I want to tell, is my own.
My own experience with Animal Crossing has helped me with my own mental health journey, also. Being able to cultivate these relationships and create a digital world has sheltered me from some of the most traumatic moments of my 20 years.
Oftentimes, on days where I feel as though I was struggling, I would put on Animal Crossing and allow myself time to decompress. Sometimes chuckling at some of the funny moments the series can offer, sometimes not. I wouldn’t always be able to see the funny side.
I played this game when I was 9, and showing signs of an anxiety disorder.
I played this game at 15, when coping with the damage that being sexually assaulted had caused.
I played at 19 when I felt my world completely fall apart, and then got diagnosed with depression.
In those moments, this game helped me reconnect with myself. It sounds silly, but this game managed to patch me back together.
While the world shut down, this game about creating a community opened up a digital world full of support and positivity. Watching people come together gives me the same feeling that you get when you sit by a campfire with your friends.
I’m going to be okay.
