Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Can a Game Take Care of Us? [Paperback]

A moving, personal exploration of what we looked for, and found, in the gaming sensationAnimal Crossingduring and after the pandemi

Animal Crossing: New Horizonswas released on March 20, 2020just as a pandemic kept many from family, work, restaurants, and the rest of their regularly scheduled lives. At its height, the game averaged one million copies sold per day, as players sought comfort, escape, and a virtual means of connection. In this book, game scholar Noah Wardrip-Fruin, isolated with his family by both lockdown and disability, explores the power of this game and the mixed emotions of a player and a parent trying to make it from one day to the nextwhile his kids obsession withAnimal Crossingcreates conflicts between them and pushback against family rules.
 
Wardrip-Fruin helps bothAnimal Crossingfans and newcomers understand the unexpected beneath the games surface: like the story of the firstAnimal Crossing,codesigned by an absent father seeking connection; like the hallmarks of video game manipulation, from streak bonuses to game-determined playtimes; like the appeal of endless shopping, in a kind of safe capitalism; and, of course, like the character quirks of a raccoon dog, Tom Nook, who provides a world of both safety and strange paternalism.
 
For many, this blockbuster game offered a comforting world compared to a reality of danger. In this first entry in the Replay series, Wardrip-Fruin offers an absorbing investigation of a games role in contemporary social life and a book that belongs on the shelf of anyone who loves or is puzzled by this Nintendo sensation.