you don't get seasick, do ye?
I was re-reading one of my older newsletters and saw a comment I wrote, fretting about having a "normal" amount of spoons and how I might end up with a bad day. I didn't have a bad day. I had a bad <i>month</i>. And it was worse that most of the bad days I've had over the last few years, and I guess it was part of the reason I kind of disappeared. But just a part of it. Or maybe all of it, if you consider the fact that I've been spending all of my meagre amount of spoons on masking (it wasn't even enough - there were more than a few days of me finding myself in the beginning of a full meltdown while still on the way home from work), and haven't been able to manifest any buttons to give myself even the slightest bit of interest in anything happening in my life.
Until the Animal Crossing Direct. I don't know why, it really felt like someone hit a switch button in me when I was waiting to watch it live.
If you know me at all you know I am obsessed with New Horizons, and to a much lesser degree, Pocket Camp. I was going to do an entire newsletter with a very detailed review of ACNH a year down the road (I started playing in May 2020) but I thought that might be a bit too much. And so, I'm going to bombard you with ACNH feels instead.
(What's the difference? I don't really know, since my "reviews" are all just feels, anyway.)
I was watching a pretty good long video review of the game (it was 1 hour plus) and I liked the points it made about how this game had a lot more newcomers (myself included) than the previous games in the series, and how a portion of these players end up saying, "there's nothing to do" in the game, and leaving it. I never understood this, because I seem to have the opposite problem - there is too much to do. But this review commented that as a sandbox (and social simulation) game, ACNH doesn't <i>give you directions</i> and instead allow you to explore and figure things out yourself. For gamers used to instruction or clear directions/goals, this can be confusing, and they might feel that there is nothing to do. I have to admit, I also managed to see a bit of this perspective after reading the Webtoon "Let's Play", where a YouTuber who's used to slash-and-hack gaming (which, let's be honest, can be very cliched and tropey) get confounded by a puzzle adventure game that rewards exploration and out-of-the-box thinking. And that's a pretty valid preference/experience, I guess.
When I shared this with my dad he (ever the teacher) said that it can be like a leadership test, and those who can't think for themselves can't play Animal Crossing. I don't really subscribe to this idea, because there's a lot of strategising going on in other games, even if they might not let you get as creative. But it does make me think about what do I personally get out of this game, and I think it's the opposite of what my dad said - I am severely anxious all of the time, and I have barely seen what is outside my own apartment or the building where I work. I don't like trying things for the sake of trying them. A lot of the time, I can't talk to people I haven't met in person - like, <i>literally</i>, I have no buttons for that (see one of my previous newsletters for the button theory.) It's not like I <i>never</i> talk to strangers online - I count a few people as "online friends" - but I never feel comfortable enough, I guess?
Which personally sucks for me, because other introverts I know seem to get over their introvert-ness when it comes to online communities, and I... get even more withdrawn. The thought of interacting with a complete stranger online can give me anxiety attacks for days, especially when I'm already overwhelmed by IRL stuff. So... I'm the exact opposite of an adventurous, outgoing person.
What ACNH gives me is a safe space for exploring. In ACNH, I can do all the things that my anxiety prevents me from doing IRL. I can even do all the things I don't think I would enjoy IRL, but I strangely find relaxing in digital simulation, like fishing or bug catching. Collecting items satisfy the part of me that gets obsessed with Pokémon - another game I love for very similar reasons. And not just that - even while this game makes me feel safe enough to try things out and go a bit further than what would've normally been out of my comfort zone, this is a game that rewards repetition. Like I said, I'm not someone who likes trying things for the sake of trying things. If I like something well enough, why should I discard it in favour of trying something that I may not like as much? I tend to eat the same things, at the same places. And in ACNH, I keep (mostly) the same villagers. I don't have a high turnover of villagers, and I still have 4 of my first 5 villagers on my island more than a year after they moved in. I've received Sherb's photo 4 times. And I still talk to him more than once every time I play, and you know what? I get unique dialogue <i>almost</i> every time. There are players that complain about the lack of dialogue, and I guess the characters aren't as mean as they used to be in the previous Animal Crossing games, but after you're done with the initial generic small talk they always greet you with, more often than not I would get to know my villagers better the next few times I talk to them in the same day. This tends to happen more with the villagers that I've had for a LONG time, way past the threshold of first obtaining their photos. I guess it's the little things like this that keeps me coming back to talk to them.
During the ACNH Direct, the long-awaited 2.0 update was finally announced. I am a little torn on this announcement - on the one hand, Nintendo is giving us nearly everything fans asked for. On the other, (1) it feels like too much too fast after the slow pace of this year, and (2) the lack of future major updates worry me a little. I wouldn't mind if there are more paid DLCs in the future, like the newly announced Happy Home Paradise DLC. I'm just not as convinced as some fans are that there will be. But - I guess, we'll see? And the 2.0 updates will tide me over for more than a year, probably. Especially with the Happy Home DLC, which seems to be a fun minigame with an even more fun endgame (redecorating your own villagers' homes). I'm going to <i>try</i> to take things as slowly than I did last May, but what is self-control, anyway.
I wish that all of my friends are playing this so that this can be something I share with all of them - and really it's a social simulation game so it's definitely more fun if you have friends to be social with! - but it's expensive and it's not for everyone. One of my friends stopped playing, and I bought his Switch Lite to start a second island. Part of it was so I could enjoy the beginning of the game all over again without deleting my current one, but another part of it was so I could have an extra "person" to play with? It's whatever. I know this game isn't therapy, but it does give me a kind of structure and outlet that I really need right now, and I guess that's good enough for me.
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Will this newsletter go back to its previous weekly schedule? I don't really know. I might be busy over the next few weeks, because of the ACNH update dropping early. And I'm not actually <i>better</i> - I just have a better way of getting to the next 5 minutes, and the 5 minutes after that. So we'll see, yeah?
Until next time!