Category: Gaming

Animal Crossing: Who knew crippling debt could be so relaxing?

Posted on by in Gaming

Nintendo is known as one of the most successful and popular game companies of the past few decades, with their leading man Mario becoming a household name throughout the world. So, when they come out with a game not set in the Mushroom Kingdom, it tends to turn a few heads. Imagine our surprise when the game they produced was all about… everyday life. Animal Crossing came out 18 years ago and has inspired sequels for each of Nintendo’s consoles, with a new instalment coming to the Nintendo Switch sometime this year (hopefully).

I never played the original, as I grew up as a PlayStation child – living vicariously through the lives of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon. When I finally got my hands on a Nintendo DS, my focus was more on trying out these “Pokémon” games that everyone was raving about rather than some weird town simulator featuring goofy animals. Looking back on that time in my life, I wish that I had picked up the series sooner as it would have brought my young self so much joy. Though I can’t deny that Pokémon Diamond brought me dozens of hours of happiness during the long car rides to Scotland.

pokemon diamond
Amusingly, it took me several years to actually beat the Elite Four.

Animal Crossing is very much a “Marmite Game”: Either you love it, or you hate it. Despite being in constant debt to Tom Nook, receiving verbal lashings from Resetti and having to deal with the UNGRATEFUL TOWNSFOLK WHO DON’T CONTRIBUTE TO ANYTHING AND MAKE ME DO ALL THE HARD WORK… I still love the franchise to pieces. I do have a love-hate relationship with Pocket Camp though, as I have little patience for picky animals demanding specific types of furniture before they will be my friend.

pocket camp
As much as I love Animal Crossing, I have to resist the urge to run over the campers with my caravan.

Despite the constant tasks and never-ending loans, Animal Crossing is a very peaceful game. It is a simplified version of real life, removing many of the stressful activities that we must complete on a regular basis. Sure, you owe Tom Nook a ridiculous sum of money, but you have an infinite amount of time to pay him back and unlike student loans, he does not take a cut from your paychecks! Yes, the neighbours can be frustrating with their constant demands, but it is literally impossible for them to hate you. Trust me, no matter how many times you hit them with a net – they are angry for about 2 minutes and then they invite you over to their house.

The games work on a day-by-day system. It adheres to your system’s calendar (which you can manually change to speed things along), to decide what the date and time are. So, if you play normally, each day you can collect a few fossils, catch some fish and bugs, visit the museum, go see what is new in Tom Nook’s store and chat with the villagers. The options available to you are different for each game in the series but these five tasks have remained consistent throughout the main game series – ignoring Pocket Camp as it is a mobile spin-off.

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I think K.K. Slider is making fun of my lack of friends.

To some people, this may seem repetitive and could get boring quite quickly. However, to anxiety sufferers, this game can provide a relaxing space for them. During the time you are playing it, the external world falls away for a while. All the stressors and negative thoughts can be pushed aside for the moment, allowing you to focus on this alternate life that your player avatar is living. It’s quite hard to put into words how much of a calming influence these games have had upon me, as my own experiences with anxiety will not be the same as any of yours, dear readers.

Let me try to explain with an example. When people go through a stressful period in their life, they turn to certain activities or vices as a coping mechanism. These can calm them when they feel overwhelmed or help them process the events that have been unfolding without as strong a negative impact upon their psyche. For some, their pets can help soothe them in times of need. An animal’s sensitivity to their human’s mood is remarkable and can be a great comfort in their time of need.

In my case, video games are one of my coping mechanisms. Not just for anxiety, but that’s what we will focus on here. Being able to lose yourself in another world, only worrying about the immediate problems facing your character such as a giant dragon trying to eat you or how much Tom Nook is going to charge you to change the colour of your roof, is a relief. It is an escape where your actions are only judged by lines of code and as much as they can have impacts on the rest of the game (looking at you Telltale), it is all fictional. It cannot harm you.

tom nook
Tom Nook – Totally not looking at the secret camera he installed in your home.

A key part of what makes Animal Crossing so beloved in my heart and in the fan community is its consistency. You could argue the same for Nintendo’s other long-running franchises such as Mario and Zelda but these both must try new things to remain interesting to the gaming communities. (Though I would say putting Link on a train derailed the franchise) Nintendo’s cute little life simulator is under no such restrictions. Each game, although slightly different from the last, has the same, if slightly tweaked mechanics and feel to it.

Animal Crossing is about joining a community that has nothing but praise for you, with complete control over how you want to spend your time. No work, no university, no weekly bills to pay. When I was younger, I used to go to my older sister’s town and run around wielding an axe just because I could. Surprisingly, several of her villagers decided to move to my town… I’m still not sure why to this day. It provides a freedom that day-to-day life does not provide. You are under no obligations to perform your mayoral duties in New Leaf or visit the city in Let’s Go to The City. Apart from the introduction with Mr Creepy Cat and the tutorial, there’s nothing you are required to do to enjoy the world of Animal Crossing.

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Anyone who has to say “I’m not crazy” is probably crazy.

Everybody’s experience of Animal Crossing will be different as a lot of the game’s enjoyment comes from how much you are willing to put into it. Some enjoy filling the fish and bug encyclopaedia, others wish to create the perfect house or upgrade all their tools to “gold” standard. I’ve been playing these games for about 10 years now and I can say with certainty that I still enjoy them as much as I did a decade ago. I am intrigued by the upcoming Switch entry in the series, despite the complete lack of information provided about it. By intrigued, I, of course, mean RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED.

 

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Animal Crossing has always been the perfect game for handheld devices. Hopefully, the Switch version does it justice.

Obviously, this game series is not for everyone. After all, nothing in the world is. How we seek to comfort ourselves in times of stress, is of course up to us. If you’ve never tried the games or didn’t enjoy them at the time, do give the new Switch instalment the benefit of the doubt. After all, who doesn’t want to be in debt to a manic racoon? Just make sure you lock your character’s door at night… who knows what ends he’ll go to in order to get his Bells…

See you soon,

CaitlinRC (Not Tom Nook)

 

The Walking Dead: More than just a river of tears.

Posted on by in Gaming

I’m not an openly emotional person. Sure, video games and their stories can move me in ways that I’d never expect, but I’m rarely openly sobbing with grief or screaming in fear at a jumpscare. One company that can consistently move me emotionally though, is Telltale Games. Obviously, they’ve been in the media recently due to the financial troubles and mass layoffs they’ve been experiencing. However, despite this they managed to finish off the story of Clementine – a character from their Walking Dead series that we as players, watched grow from a frightened child to a badass survivor who was probably more capable than every player combined.

Clementine in Season 1 – a sweet, innocent girl. For now.

This emotional journey is one that we can all relate to, despite the fictional setting that it is based in. As players, we walk alongside Clementine as she grows up, faces hardship and struggles in a cruel, unfair world. Sure, we don’t have the living dead walking around trying to chew our flesh off but then again, have you been to a student night out when they run out of Jaeger? By the time we, as the players even meet Clementine, she’s been surviving on her own against the undead population for three days already. Her parents are gone, her babysitter has turned into a monster and her life is turned into a manic scramble for survival.

Why am I talking about this? Well, the four seasons that follow Clementine have recently come to an end. For me, that’s closing a big part of what has formed me into who I am today. My experience with games such as those written by Telltale, ones that demand choices and force you to think about how your actions will affect others, have always had a strong impact on me. I make it my motto in life to never allow my actions to cause harm to another, be that emotionally or physically. Obviously, I cannot always be successful, as is the way of life.

Little Clem isn’t so little anymore.

Games like the Walking Dead demand a moral choice from you, but they do not provide a truly “good” option. They force you to choose between a rock and a hard place. Do you allow a father to shoot his dying son or do you do it yourself? Strong arguments can be made for both sides and there will always be repercussions. A good game leaves a strong impact on you, even weeks after playing it. The Walking Dead is one of those games for me, considering I haven’t played the original season in about 5 years and I’m writing about it right now.

How does this relate to mental health then, I hear you cry? After all, this whole site is about gaming and mental health! Well, the morality of your decisions, be they in a fictional world or in your everyday life, will affect your mental state. One of the most commonly portrayed symptoms of anxiety in media such as games and films is panic attacks caused by overthinking. Normally, it is visualised by a protagonist receiving bad news or a negative response, then spiralling internally until they struggle to breathe and cannot stop shaking. Some people do experience these types of attacks; however, it is not a universal anxiety symptom.

The right choice is never easy to make.

The smallest choices we make tend to be the ones that come back to haunt us the most. For example, if a friend had suddenly stopped messaging you, some people’s reaction would be to think that they had done something wrong and made them angry. The mind would pour over past events, searching for the tiniest detail that might explain their behaviour and latch onto it, ignoring the more logical option such as they may have turned off their phone in the cinema or their parents rang them.

This is often seen in Telltale’s games, where your idle conversation with the colourful cast of characters is brought up later down the line, either in support of you or to put you on trial as the bad guy (despite the millions of zombies surrounding them). This is particularly focused on in the final season where the choices you make and the lessons you teach to young AJ, mould him for the rest of his life. My favourite example of this is in the first season, where if you swear in front of Clementine early on, she will continue to swear later down the line. Though considering the trauma she ends up experiencing throughout all four games, I say swear all you want kiddo.

Don’t swear in front of the child Lee!

The powerful sequences written by Telltale, combined with a loveable cast of characters (except Ben, screw that guy) results in painful decisions that genuinely hurt you. This cannot be said of every Telltale game, but we’ll get to that another time. Every person you come across in the fictional apocalypse feels like they could walk out of the screen and sit in front of you. Which is why those decisions you make about their lives, become so much more than just choosing between a few boxes on a screen. If you are playing with a kind nature at the forefront of your mind, each loss comes as a personal attack on your choices.

One thing I will repeat throughout every article I write is that mental health is entirely unique to each person. My experience of anxiety is completely different from that of my friends or my family. This is because it is based on both my unique biological factors such as genetics, as well as my past experiences – e.g. any traumatic incidents or childhood fears etc. Poetically, everybody’s experience of a game like the Walking Dead series, is completely unique as well. There is a very small statistical chance that people will have the exact same run through, dialogue trees and all, but their reactions to what is occurring on the screen will still be unique.

Trust me when I say, Telltale aren’t messing around with this disclaimer.

That unique impact on your mental state, on your future decisions and on how you approach these types of games in the future, is a tribute to how important and powerful video games can be in shaping us. Although it was only a small factor of my younger years, I can say with absolute certainty that those games have moulded me into the person I am today. As a writer, a student, a friend and a family member, I owe the kindness and resilience I learnt from these games to those who created it.

More games in this genre do exist, not just ones created by Telltale. Though there is room for more games, and I welcome any developer who wishes to take a crack at it. I’ll talk about another game close to my heart soon. I’ll give you a hint, it involves debt and angry moles.

Till next time,

CaitlinRC.