Animal Crossing: New Horizons just came out, and in writing this, it’s been a little over a week since the coronavirus threat hit the US and social distancing became a way of life. Most of my spring calendar has been eliminated, and as someone whose structure was largely built from those events, I’ve found myself simultaneously listless and anxious, not knowing what to do with myself and unable to do much in the way of normal work.
Trying to make the most of my time, I’ve set my sights on playing old video games I haven’t gotten around to, finishing up the little odds and ends collecting at the bottom of my to do list, bingeing old movies, learning how to make candles, and cleaning parts of the house I forgot existed. There’s something ironically refreshing about the imposed limitations, how there are certain things I can’t do. It requires me to slow down and focus on a smaller, more manageable number of tasks.
I’ve tried to play Animal Crossing games multiple times now. Maybe if I had gotten into the franchise at a younger age, it would’ve clicked for me. But my first Animal Crossing game was a gift from my husband. We’d just gotten married. I’d just been thrown into the life of a Real Adult. Then I turned on a game that was asking me to do the same things I was already overwhelmed with, except in a fantasy world: paying bills, furnishing a house, doing errands. I had to turn it off as I felt my heart race. It didn’t seem fun, it just felt like more work to me.
As I watch my husband play New Horizons, I find myself having an opposite reaction. Everything’s so slow, I think to myself. I ask him, is this all you do? Pick oranges and fish? And he sort of shrugs. That’s the whole point, he says. It’s a chill game. It’s a game that makes you slow down.
In the time of quarantine, I’ve found tremendous comfort in my husband’s Animal Crossing sessions. The music is calming. I contribute my thoughts on where he should put the new museum, or which KK Slider albums he should buy (all of them). I’ll stop what I’m doing to watch, and imagine my day revolving around catching bugs, fish and traveling to new islands. It provides a rhythm to the day, and also gives me permission to stop what I’m doing and enter its world.
In our culture of busyness and productivity, a game like Animal Crossing can seem counter-intuitive. Its slowness can feel uncomfortable. But it’s perhaps that very slowness that is its greatest appeal. Animal Crossing is a reprieve from the relentless pace of everyday life. It’s a place to go for a sense of structure and certainty, but no imposed expectations. It’s a recreation of childhood life, where the most important task in the day is to find a rare butterfly to complete a collection, or to explore a place you’ve never been before.
In a time when so many of the things we expect and depend on have been quickly stripped away, Animal Crossing’s world provides rhythm and reprieve. In these bizarre times, I’m all the more reminded why I love video games: they give me the feeling of escape, but ultimately create a space where I can learn lessons I need to apply to my everyday life. Perhaps the very reason I’ve been so uncomfortable with Animal Crossing games in the past is because they’ve pushed back against the idea of productivity and busyness that I’ve held up so highly. Now that I’m in a time that has stripped away my ability to pursue these values, Animal Crossing invites me to take part in its ethos, stop what I’m doing, and smell the virtual hyacinths.
Meg Eden runs the MAGES Library blog, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel "Post-High School Reality Quest” (2017), and the forthcoming poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (2020). Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.