Never played it (don't necessarily plan on it either) but I love capitalism! I love America!

wtf

Have you ever played it?

No

I remember playing the original Animal Crossing title a little bit as a kid. We picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch a few days ago and my wife has been playing it.

It wasn’t really my cup of tea then, and it’s not now.

The basic premise of AC: New Horizons is this. You sign up to go colonize a deserted island along with a small band of animals. You’re handed a tent and a few other supplies. The company boss-man, Tom Nook, gets you acquainted with how things run. You are conceded the small gesture of naming the island and are given an honorary designation like Island Representative or some such. Once you do a few tasks to get oriented, Tom Nook presents you with an astronomical bill for the travel and set-up expenses, expenses that were not previously disclosed.

Don’t worry, it’s on a “very lax, interest-free” payment plan.

You proceed to spend the rest of your days plucking fruit, fishing, chopping trees, planting crops, catching bugs, digging up fossils, crafting tools to help you perform all of the above, all in an effort to pay off your debt and buy overpriced furnishings for your new home from the monopolistic company store.

You can and are expected to travel to other islands to despoil their natural beauty in pursuit of profit, stuffing everything you can possibly fit into your pockets because as the pilot helpfully reminds you, anything you leave on the island is lost forever. For some mysterious reason, they never return you to the same island twice.

There is no “force of evil” that you will encounter in this game, unless you want to consider yourself evil for being a rapacious resource-hogging, environment-destroying slave of the system.

The other characters on the island aren’t really “good,” just weird and self-involved. Kind of like how most people are, so I guess that aspect of the game is realistic.

This game is supposed to be cute but the whole thing just feels really deeply dystopian once you look at it from the jaundiced eyes of an adult.

Cuck joke incoming in 3, 2, 1...

Wow, it was really nice of your wife's boyfriend to get you a Switch.

Yeah, I think you're reading way too much into Animal Crossing to find something to distort to fit your agenda. I've never played AC, have no desire to. Based on your description, yeah it does sound like it plays heavily on capitalist themes. But why is that a bad thing? We live in a capitalist society, if kids have a game that teaches them what economic system we live in and how to get ahead in that system, I see that as a good thing. Who knows, maybe Generations Z and Alpha will be the most successful generations in a long time because we know how our economic system works from a young age. I hope so, because the stereotypical Millennials have been such a bad name on today's youth, it seems Gens Z and Alpha have to work extra hard to shake the stigma Millennials left us with. Even if you want to go the enviromental route, capitalism has a way of resolving that as well. People can form organizations that can either go directly to where help is needed and clean it all up or talk to the people and convince them to change their consumer habits so companies respond to the shift in the public mood. Even using the government to force companies to change their habits requires lobbying, something a capitalist economic system allows for.

TL; DR: Capitalism is actually not that bad, if you know how to use it.

Wifey and I manage to be pretty good capitalists ourselves, unless you consider lawyering to be rent-seeking.

Heck: Even if you do! We all gotta go for ours, right?

Now, if Animal Crossing had a bit more of a story-arc or more compelling characters, then it’d probably be more enjoyable. But the endless pursuit of more stuff and attaining different levels of arbitrary goals like catching 50 fish in a row just feels really hollow.

Then again, titles like Minecraft and others in the genre show there is a huge market for this kind of a game. But the Animal Crossing “open world” feels rather closed. You are literally stuck on an island after all.

Tl;dr: AC didn’t live up to the hype for me.

Now: Zelda: Breath of the Wild? That one does. Plenty of good ol’ buying and selling but it’s in the service of a larger goal.

I want the next generation to be financially successful but also realize there is more to life than the daily grind.

I think most video games are hollow and mindless and don't always teach good values but what do i know I don't have the time to waste playing them. Maybe you've been on lockdown too long when you start philosophising video games, lol

We don’t always play video games, but we decided for lockdown to start on our 4th time playing through Zelda: BOTW. It’s such a huge game with ridiculous replay value, but wifey finally got bored so that’s why we picked up Animal Crossing.

But yeah Zelda kind of spoiled me as far as graphics and expansiveness and a good story-line so Animal Crossing felt like going back to the kiddie table.

Which: Is pretty much exactly what it is!

Wifey likes it though. :) Sometimes she just needs to do something mindless to decompress from her stressful job and that’s fine.