Games Aren't Numbers

Nature's most beautiful creatures are the most dangerous, and sometimes the cutest and most passive games are the most incredible. As Animal Crossing slid into my disk tray it masqueraded as typical casual game while completely hiding the power held within that polycarbonate. I loaded the game, created my character, and was welcomed to my brand new town. It seemed as simple as its box suggested, but I only had to play for a few minutes when I realized that I was dealing with a game unlike I had ever experienced before.

Although I wasn't conscious of it at first, I have been conditioned by years of videogame canon to believe that content equals physical space and location has a direct relation to time. These apparent laws of games are rarely violated even in non-linear designs. But somehow Animal Crossing casually casts these conventions away. My first instinct was to explore the entire town and see everything it had to offer, subconsciously believing that when I have been to every location I will have reached the “end,” and the game will be “beaten.” In only ten minutes later my quest was complete. “That was it?” I silently and unconsciously asked. It took a moment for the knowledge to sink in. I felt like I should be watching the credits roll. Isn't that how games are supposed to be? You move your avatar through the world until you get to the end, and then the game is over. But that isn't what happened at all. Nothing happened, Animal Crossing just doesn't follow that rule. The world is small and every part is as equally unimportant as every other. You never need to go anywhere, or you can go everywhere. It doesn't matter, and it's effortless to do either.

Time in Animal Crossing is independent of any mechanic within its system. Most games are like the third level of Braid where time is relative to your position in the game. Go back a checkpoint and the past is there waiting for you. Time is manipulated by triggering specific actions. Go through the door, talk to the NPC, and the plot advances. But Animal Crossing has nothing like that tradition of malleable videogame time. Time cannot be controlled by any in-game mechanism, it moves freely by itself.

What exactly is Animal Crossing anyway? It's not a simulation. At least nothing appears to be simulated. The game presents itself as a virtual reality, but it simulates real life about as well as Halo simulates a real war. Sure there are plenty of people, object, and activities in the game which are clearly based on certain aspects of reality, but these are not actually anything like reality at all.

It's not an RPG either. RPGs have stories, Animal Crossing does not. It's not the MMO breed of RPG either, since it's primarily played offline and alone. In RPGs you take on the role of a character. Actually, in virtually every game that has characters makes you take on the role of one. In Animal Crossing you don't pretend to be anybody, you simply are yourself.

It's not a sandbox game either. Although the player is given control of a few certain aspects like a few textures, interior decorations, and snippets of dialog, the player's amount of control is ultimately controlled by the game. These are features rather than the game itself. In fact the vast majority of the game acts independently of the player.

All of those genres, the simulation, RPG, and sandbox, are part of Animal Crossing yet it is bound to none of them. I'm not a believer of strict categorization, but I can't help but be intrigued by games that break conventions like this. The most enigmatic aspect of it is how this game can't be categorized or described easily, yet it seems so familiar and digestible to players.

After my first entry into the world of Animal Crossing I left confused, like I was a character in a science fiction story and had just experienced something that by every law of physics denies as possible. It abode by no rule I could think of. And yet, somehow it existed. And it not only existed, it actually sustained itself, and worked as a videogame. And it's popular too! I had no idea how to easily describe what I had just seen, and I still don't.