The unique world that players inhabit in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons has helped a lot of people cope with the events of the last two years, and the curators at the National Videogame Museum have embedded themselves within this welcoming community, collecting stories from the public for their excellent Animal Crossing Diaries online exhibition.
Recently, the UK-based museum expanded their oral history project with the launch of The Animal Crossing Diaries podcast on Spotify.
The National Videogame Museum began collecting stories about the public’s lockdown-fueled fascination with Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in August 2020. The museum’s curators and archivists solicited hundreds of diary entries from players all around the world, all of whom were more than happy to share the details of their island adventures with Tom Nook, Isabelle, Blathers, and all the other villagers.
Now, after more than a year of hard work, the NVM is finally ready to open the virtual doors to their Animal Crossing Diaries online exhibition:
While the world was on pause, the island paradises of Animal Crossing: New Horizons thrived, welcoming those in isolation with open arms (and paws). The game became a routine part of everyday life. Cancelled plans were reimagined and reprogrammed to the virtual sandy shores of players’ islands. For many people unable to socialise in real life, the game became a vital creative space for personal connection.
Using Animal Crossing: New Horizons to maintain that personal connection with friends and family quickly became a huge part of the game’s appeal. Players also gravitated towards it’s strong emphasis on creativity and personal style, as well as the importance it placed on maintaining a daily routine. The NVM saw these common threads appear again and again throughout the diaries, ultimately sorting each entry into one of five categories:
Keeping A Routine – Faced with an uncertain day to day life in lockdown, players turned towards the game for an escape. If you couldn’t find a comforting routine in real life, the game could provide. For many players, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was not a comforting distraction. It saved 2020.
Making Your Space – An island can be a place of comfort to create a world that expresses its player’s personality. It can be a social, artistic and cultural space shared with others across the world. For some it is a space in which processing feelings of stress, anxiety and grief can take place. Players making spaces to travel, connect and share experiences opened up new possibilities. For many players, events were accessible for the first time via virtual spaces.
Representing Yourself – Many games, like Animal Crossing, have a main hero you can customize to look like you.
Sharing Creativity – The closure of museums and other cultural events limited access to creativity. And while the island does have its own museum of art, insects, fish and fossils, it also has a range of design options. You can create your own outfits, patterns and even games! Players could recreate cultural and artistic events that couldn’t happen in 2020.
Staying In Touch – For many people, the pandemic means social distancing from friends and family. This creates a sense of isolation many struggle with. In the game, welcoming new neighbours to your island placed a big focus on social connections.
Visitors to the Animal Crossing Diaries exhibition can also explore diary entries through a timeline feature that highlights important days on the New Horizons calendar (like Wedding Season and Toy Day), along with more impromptu in-game events (such as Biden Island and Pride Month) that were created by the players themselves.
The NVM plans to maintain and expand the Animal Crossing Diaries exhibition project going forward, and you can add your story to the collection using their Online Submission Form.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone indoors, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was trending towards a massive launch. But I’m not sure anyone expected it to break as big as it did.
Nintendo has always played the long game, and they attracted a small, but very devoted, community between 2001 and 2017 after releasing four games (and a handful of spinoffs) in the Animal Crossing franchise. But after only four months, the consolemaker has already sold more than 22.4 million copies of New Horizons, making it one of bestselling games on the Switch (it currently trails only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe).
New Horizons promised players colorful island vistas and adventurous travel to faraway lands, so a lot people jumped at the chance to escape from the real world for a few hours every night. From there it exploded into an outburst of creativity, billions of requests for good turnip prices, celebrity sightings (including Elijah Wood, Danny Trejo, and multiple high end fashion designers), and a talk show hosted by Rogue One screenwriter Gary Whitta. In short, it was the right game at the right time.
The United Kingdom’s National Videogame Museum will attempt to capture this unique moment in gaming history with their next project, The Animal Crossing Diaries. Players from around the world will be able to submit stories about how they played Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the pandemic, which will help the NVM in their goal to “record for the first time a highly meaningful but ephemeral and intangible experience through the perspective of its players”:
This new collection will focus on the cultural phenomenon that followed the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch in March 2020, just as the world was transformed by the pandemic. This videogame rapidly became an international sensation in which millions of players have been creating and managing their own tropical island along with a cast of talkative animal neighbours. The game became an important social and creative outlet for people unable to socialise in person during lockdown.
This innovative online exhibition will open up new ways of collecting and archiving videogame histories, and record for the first time a highly meaningful but ephemeral and intangible experience through the perspective of its players.
Iain Simons, Director of Culture for the NVM, said “Animal Crossing is the perfect experience for a lockdown. The coincidental timing of its release provided a welcome relief for millions of people who wanted to go outdoors but couldn’t, who wanted to meet friends but weren’t allowed. It’s no surprise that this incredibly creative, social space became a safe haven for millions during this turbulent year.”
Please visit TheNVM.org to learn more about future updates and events related to The Animal Crossing Diaries.
The National Videogame Museum, located in Sheffield in the United Kingdom, has launched the Videogame Heritage Society, a new video game preservation initiative that will bring together a network of libraries, museums, and collectors.
The Videogame Heritage Society is a collaborative project that aims to share knowledge with all members about the best way to preserve and exhibit video games:
The National Videogame Museum is launching a new initiative today at BFI Southbank, leading a network of museums and independent collectors who are engaged in videogame preservation. The Videogame Heritage Society (VHS) includes the Science and Media Museum, Bath Spa University, British Library and Museum of London as well as many independent collectors. It will develop best practice and share knowledge across the museum sector and beyond about preserving and exhibiting videogames.
“This group is for anyone who cares about or works in videogame preservation,” said British Games Institute Chairman Ian Livingstone. “We recognise that in the UK and around the world, the expertise in this field isn’t just locked inside museums and heritage institutions, but also inside a wide range of dedicated and passionate private collectors. The VHS will bring everyone together to preserve the important heritage of videogames in our country.”
More information about the Videogame Heritage Society can be found at The BGI‘s official website.
