There’s a screen in the Switch interface that tells me I’ve played Animal Crossing: New Horizons for almost 200 hours. That feels by far the longest I’ve ever spent with a single game – though perhaps Fortnite might tell me otherwise. The weird thing is, with New Horizons, it really doesn’t feel like I’ve spent 200 hours with it. Maybe the time has flown by. Maybe. It’s more that my interactions with the game feel, even now, relentlessly superficial.
Animal Crossing is a lovely game about moving to a town filled with animals and then swapping furniture with them. That’s the basics of it, I guess. New Horizons shifts this to an island setting, but it’s the same deal. And yet within this simple set-up – almost a doll’s house really – it can feel like a huge battle is taking place. A battle at the heart of video games. A battle between earning and being. Gosh, that sounded pretentious. Apologies. (For more on this distinction please see Edwin’s infinitely more thoughtful piece on the subject.)
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