Getting Out All My Terrifyingly Subjective Thoughts on New Horizons

So that update huh? Man.

I want to talk about the features of the update at some point, so I probably will, but since I’ve only had a few days to take in the massive amount of new stuff that came in the 2.0 update, I’ll save my review for a later day when I’ve experienced it all and gathered my thoughts. Instead, I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind as I’ve seen the excitement and joy on social media over these new features.

If there was ever a game in need of some goodwill, Animal Crossing New Horizons was that game. While it came into a world very much ready for it, enjoyed months of praise and hype, and (in my view, at least) can be viewed as a stunning success, a growing chorus of voices were unhappy with it in recent months. While I think for a normal game this would be an expected life cycle – huge hype around the game’s release, a gradual slowdown, then eventually only hardcore fans continuing to play – but New Horizons is not necessarily a normal game.

I’ve already made a post discussing my thoughts on the idea that the latest installment of Animal Crossing is an empty, broken, or unfinished game. My feelings on this haven’t changed it is flawed, but I think most people complaining that the game is “unfinished” simply played through all the content much faster than they would ordinarily thanks to the combined context of social media competitiveness and the pandemic.

As with any video game opinion nowadays, though, this is a weirdly contentious one. People get mad mad about this sort of thing. There’s something about Nintendo fans in particular, it seems, that makes claws come out when conversations turn to whether or not a game is good. Lately, it feels like defending any game from accusations of being a “waste of money” or “unfinished” is a particularly unpopular one.

And yes, it certainly does not bring me joy to come to the defense of any huge mega-corporation, but I don’t think I’m wrong for saying that of the mega-corporations, Nintendo is the one that has drawn the least amount of ire in recent years. I don’t think their long history of public goodwill is invincible, but it has held steadfast and part of the reason that is so (at least compared to their fellow video game peers), might be their historically broader appeal. Back when most large video game companies were focusing their attention on the Quintessential Gamer ™, the cis, white, heterosexual man in his late teens to mid-twenties, Nintendo’s most flagship franchises have traditionally catered to families. So yes, they cared about the Gamers ™ but they also cared about kids and their parents and… shock horror… women.

It’s for this reason that even as a kid deeply self-conscious about my status as a Gamer ™, I still played and loved almost entirely Nintendo games. During a time when I was convinced that my gender meant I could never actually pursue my interest in video games, or at least when it meant I needed to restrict myself to only those Games for Girls deemed acceptable enough for the gaming establishment to ignore (rather than openly ridicule), I felt comfortable in the space Nintendo created.  I loved Mario Party and Mario Kart. I loved Nintendogs. I loved Pokémon. And yes, I loved Animal Crossing.

The conversation about gender is relevant to Animal Crossing, maybe more than some of those other franchises (except Nintendogs, but that’s barely a franchise), because it is the Nintendo franchise most commonly associated with “girly games.” Obviously it is not only women who play and enjoy Animal Crossing, but I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that traditionally it is considered a “girl’s game” more than, say, Pokémon or the Mario series mostly because of its de-emphasis of motor skill or strategy (read: “masculine” game traits) and emphasis of creativity and community-building (read: “feminine” game traits). It’s an open-ended game with no combat, no tests of reflexes or mastery of controls, that focuses instead on social interaction, collection, curation, and creation.

I don’t think anyone would argue that Animal Crossing is not a video game, but plenty of people will argue that it isn’t a real game. What they generally mean by that is that it’s not challenging in a competitive sense – there’s no scores, no win or lose. Success in the game is self-directed. The skills it tests (and yes, it does test skills) are mainly soft ones. And yet, a game series that would ordinarily be put on a backburner in favor of the more “gamey” games in other companies has long been a jewel in Nintendo’s crown. No matter what you might think about New Horizons, I feel like it’s impossible to think that Nintendo isn’t aware of how much clout and popularity it has. It’s this wonderful and unusual example of a game series that, no matter its “femininity,” is still considered important.

So yeah, I feel a bit defensive about this series. This is the conflict I find myself hitting against as I try to evaluate this game. It’s nostalgic for me, yes, but it’s also one of the few games that I even felt comfortable claiming as my own. Not to mention its uncanny ability to release new installments when my life needs them the most. City Folk came into my life when I was in middle school, a creative escape for a lonely, weird kid. New Leaf came into my life as a freshman in high school, when the control and creativity it handed the player for the first time felt particularly relevant. And New Horizons. Well. It hit us all at the right time, didn’t it?

It’s hard, though, because there are things I’m frustrated with when it comes to this game. For one, the update schedule. The energy and mood was as if updates would be regular, consistent, and seasonal. While they were at first, they quickly dropped off with very little communication from Nintendo. This is part of the reason I think opinion soured on the game so quickly – where players thought they’d be getting occasional improvements of the game they loved so much, they received total silence. This also sours my view of the update somewhat. Official word is that this will be the last “major free update”… both “major” and “free” in that phrase setting off rightful alarm bells in people’s minds. Does this still mean we might get minor updates? What does a minor update even mean? And will the future of the game require microtransactions beyond the Paradise DLC?

We just don’t know, leading to the possibility of another long period of uncertainty. And while the update has appeased a lot of people complaining before, I envision a return to uncertainty causing a subsequent return to unhappiness.

There’s also a lot of quality of life issues left in the game. There’s still a lot of small things that are frustrating or tedious in a way that doesn’t seem harmonious with the spirit of creativity and freedom present in the rest of the game. Whether these sorts of fixes could ever be made in the scope of a “minor update” is yet to be seen. I think it would be a huge mistake to let these mistakes lie, though. It wouldn’t ruin the game for me personally, but it seems like it would tarnish its reputation.

So I’m torn. This is a game special to me. It’s brought me so much joy and comfort in a time where both of those things were in short supply. And the update is great, from what I have experienced of it. But at the same time, I feel uncertain that my positive feelings are entirely earned. I hope I get those feelings proven wrong in time.