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Gaming, In My Opinion
Warning: Those in denial will find many of the topics covered in the article rather familiar and may have to face their own conscience. You have been warned.
First off, we in Europe are yet again behind the rest of the world, and I’m a little more behind. Animal Crossing has only available in the UK for two months, and it’s our first visit to Miyamoto’s animal world, having missed out on Animal Village and Animal Village Plus. Nevertheless, I’ve been eagerly following the coverage in NGC Magazine, and last week I finally had the money and time to buy Animal Crossing. A week later, I traded it in. I had my reasons, and they’re perfectly valid, but I’m not going to spend this column explaining myself to you lot. Maybe later. As I played it, I was fairly disappointed in the apparent lack of effort bringing the game from the N64 to our underrated ‘Cube, but I was instantly taken by the gameplay and how different it was from any of those other life-building games that I despise. But, hey, this isn’t a review, so I’ll move on to the main thing that struck me: the psychology that the game inflicts on the player. You don’t know what I’m on about, do you? Neither do I. I didn’t read it in any reviews, but it’s there all the same. First of all, there’s the laughably-named mole, Mr. Resetti. Sounds like Nintendo’s attempt at a gangster character, doesn’t it? You’ve all met him at least once. If you can’t be bothered to slog your way back to your house, and you haven’t accomplished much (if anything) since your last save, you just turn it off. The next day, I turned on my gamecube and, as my little character stepped out of my little house, he was confronted by a rather psychotic mole – the aforementioned Mr. Resetti. And I sat through his long, and admittedly amusing, lecture about why you shouldn’t reset the gamecube, but I didn’t read it. Instead, a thought struck me. This game may be aimed at all ages, but, let’s face it, it’s kids who are going to enjoy playing it the most. Granted they may not appreciate how different it is from other games, but they will enjoy it the most. And every time this Resetti character lectures them, they’ll become more and more cautious about simply turning the power off. Since they’re at such a young age, they’ll get into the habit of saving and quitting games properly. Can’t see where I’m going with this? Look back at your gaming past and tell me, honestly, have you ever reset a game to avoid something. You know what I mean, don’t you? We’ve all done it once. For example, you’re playing a particularly tough shoot-em-up, or something. You come up against with a colossal boss, and you’re armed to the teeth with all sorts of Napalm-fuelled weaponry. But you die. Always happens. You start again from the last save point, and all you have left in your previously devastating arsenal is a pistol and a crowbar. Or something equally weak. What do you do? Do you go ahead, knowing that you’ll die anyway? No, you reset the game, load up the last save and try again with your weapons of mass destruction. Well, having grown up with Mr Resetti, kids might not do that later in life. True, this is unlikely, but at least Nintendo are trying. It’s not just Animal Crossing either. Unless my copy of Super Mario 3 for the GBA is truly screwed, it’s another game that deters resetters. Every time I turn off to retrieve a saved game with 20 or so lives, I find that my lives are still there, but I’ve been sent back a few levels. Why else would I spend a month on World 3? Second piece of gaming psychology. Tapping B. We all do it. Don’t get me wrong – I love lengthy detailed cutscenes in an epic story-driven game, but when it’s a badly drawn goat asking me to pick up his glasses case from some hen that doesn’t even wear glasses, I get a little impatient. Some of you do, as well. Be honest. With Animal Crossing, tapping B can be the worst thing you could ever do. Tapping B will inevitably turn down an animal’s request, which makes the very angry. So angry, in fact, that unless you take the time to write a letter of apology to them, they won’t speak to you for another day or so. And then they’ll spread this anger to anyone that is nearby. Since the majority of the game’s tasks come from these animals, this can diminish the amount of things you are able to do per session. Again, children will be the more influenced and will grow up, resisting the temptation to tap B, for fear of upsetting one of the characters in what ever game they’re playing. But the most powerful psychology that Animal Crossing evokes is what I call ‘the guilt trip’. From the very beginning of the Animal Village/Crossing series, Mr ‘Motes insisted that this was a game to share with you family. If the other three houses in the game are filled with your family members, you can write letters to them, send them presents or sell them stuff you don’t want– the latter of which I found the more amusing. For a time, I embraced these features. I sent my sister several letters letting her know what I wanted to sell to her, what I’d received from our animal neighbours, and so on. It is while I was typing away that the Guilt hit me. My sister was in the next room, doing nothing more than watching telly. I could have easily walked to her room and asked her if she wanted that rug, or boasted that I had just received a new wardrobe. Hell, I could have shouted it to her. But no. I was typing it in a letter. And the Guilt spread. All that time doing those menial little tasks for the animals could have been spent tidying the house, or washing up, or doing my uni assignments. All that time working off my debt to Nook, I could have been doing overtime at Tesco to avoid working up a real debt. I doubt this was the real intention of Nintendo, but it was the effect that Animal Crossing had on me. It was the first game that made me realise how much I play games and what I achieved doing so. A short half-hour session in my animal town soon turned into two hours, and all I had to show for it was some semi-satisfied neighbours and a pile of stationary I didn’t want. Ultimately it was the Guilt that made me trade in Animal Crossing. That and the fact that mum and my sister got bored of the game within twenty four hours, rendering me friendless, and the fact that I only got to sit down with the game in the late evening, by which time most of the animals didn’t have jobs for me and went to bed. Needless to say, I traded it in for something that makes me feel far less guilty – Metroid Prime 2. |