Animal Crossing. Everything you ever wanted to know about rampant consumerism wrapped up in cute little animals all speaking in gibberish (which then gets translated into English subtitles). Interpret the title of this post as you will.
I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly why it is that I am so drawn to Animal Crossing. I was big on The Sims when the game first launched 13 years ago, but the appeal to me there was the interpersonal relationships and the havoc that I could wreck therein. There is really none of the in Animal Crossing. I have little to no control over what actually goes on between the characters in the game. No matter what madness I send them in my letters they just tend to compliment me and send me the occasional gift via return mail. More than anything this game makes me do the same things that I do in real life. Work long tedious hours doing what often feels like thankless work in order to pay off my mortgage and make improvements on my house.
With this latest iteration of Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the game becomes even more ironically realistic. Not only do I get to snack on the occasional piece of fruit and remodel furniture, but there has been a real world modification that is affecting my in-game life. Pea is now playing Animal Crossing. I got her a copy for her birthday and passed down my first 3DS when I bought the larger XL version (which has vastly improved battery life and 3D) to keep her from literally wrecking the town of Peaville that I was working so hard to maintain.
And now Little Miss has found a new way to insinuate herself into my gaming space. It started when she discovered that she could use the train station to visit my town from her own (that’s me in my train station). And now she follows me around scaring away the bugs and fish and demanding my attention. She also figured out that there were many things to buy and that Mama had money to buy them. She is doing a lot of shopping and remodeling partially on my dime. While she runs around her own town (ironically named Michigan because that is where Nana lives) picking fruit, fishing, and picking up pretty shells that she refuses to sell regularly, I get to buy her clothing, furniture, and umbrellas (a new one every day). She even comes to my town at night to put her own avatar to sleep in my bed (with me, of course because apparently I am not supposed to play without her).
She is wrecking havoc on my game play, but in all of the umbrella buying, cherry eating, beetle scaring madness I see something. I see that she is learning something that I have been trying (with marginal success) to teach her for a long time…how money actually works. Up until this point I have been successful at teaching her how to save money, maybe a bit too successful. She takes every dollar, every coin that you give her and puts it in her piggy bank. She refuses to use her own money to buy anything that she wants. She could not understand that money was not in inexhaustible supply (this is, in my opinion, one of the downsides of electronic banking and the fact that I never actually carry any cash). Now that Little Miss actually has to go out and work (aka find things to sell) in order to satisfy her umbrella and clothing habit she is finally grasping the concept. Now that she has had to pay her own mortgage in order to get out of that damned tent and has run into the situation where she can’t buy an item that she wants because she doesn’t have enough money she now has a better understanding of why Mama goes to work every day and what that actually means for our family.
Now, don’t get me wrong this has not been the miracle solution. She is still asking me to buy her expensive items and to give her money to help her pay to expand her house, but she has a better understanding when I tell her that I can’t afford a thing and that she is going to have to work in order to earn money to help pay for her own things. So we work together. Collecting things. And then I have to try to convince her not to eat all of the fruit that she picks and to sell the zoids and shells because there will always be more. It’s a bit of a challenge for us both.
All in all, one of the biggest surprises about this whole experience has been the possibilities for education in Animal Crossing. I was feeling a bit guilty for giving the game to Pea after all. I knew that playing alongside her (literally being able to see her screen) that I could work with her and some basic reading skills, but what about the time when she was going it alone? What was she going to learn? Cartography? We learned a lot about maps via Ni No Kuni, so much so that her real life play no sometimes includes maps that she draws for her adventures in the house. Fine motor skills? Hand-eye coordination? Yeah, we have sports for that too. But financial literacy? How is it that in a game that is all about rampant consumerism I failed to think about what my child would and could learn about earning and spending money. And what about the fact that if she had indeed been a child that did not obsessively save her own money that the effect might have been much different. But hopefully one that could have been mitigated by the fact that I have been playing at her side and talking through not only the game mechanics, but the financial implications.
But all has not been wine and roses in Peaville, there has been the difficult subject of race in Animal Crossing. Everyone is apparently white in Animal Crossing. Stick around, we may talk about that one just yet.
