‘A fascinating insight into pandemic psychology’: how Animal Crossing gave us an escape

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It was the biggest online game in lockdown. Now the National Videogame Museum has collected players’ experiences to find out what it meant to them

oday is the first day of your new life on this pristine, lovely island. So, congratulations!” says Tom Nook, the benevolent tanuki landlord, a few minutes into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Many players read this comforting message at a destabilising and frightening time in the real world: Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out onon 20 March 2020, a few months into the Covid pandemic and a few days before the UK entered its first lockdown.

“I’ve never identified as a gamer and it’s the first game since being a pre-teen that I’ve bought and played,” Amy says. “I could see the sense of community it was offering my friends when we couldn’t do things in real life. We had date nights on there, star-gazing, visiting friends and taking photos with people I was very far removed from in reality.”

“In the future, we’ll be able to look at those and say that’s representative of what the pandemic was like. But actually, I think that theDiaries, as an archive of people’s experiences, gives a fascinating insight into the psychology of that time,” he says.The entries are deeply personal, and allow us to relive an aspect of the pandemic through someone else’s eyes, fromdocuments the creation of their island, Bollywood, “to pay homage to my cultural upbringing”.

 

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