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Who says video games are bad for you? Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a best-selling and beloved social simulation game, helping millions of players around the world cope with isolation during 2020’s global pandemic lockdown. The reasons why are more meaningful than one may think.

Nintendo’s Animal Crossing New Horizons was released on March 20, 2020, the week the world was hit by an unprecedented lockdown due to a global pandemic.

Its arrival was most welcome for gamers around the world, but who could have predicted that a simple, low-stakes, and cute game would become a massively popular hit, and end up teaching its players valuable coping skills during a time of isolation and loneliness? 

Animal Crossings: New Horizons is played on the Nintendo Switch console. Gameplay requires the player to create their own virtual village on a deserted island. Encouraging social interaction between players around the world, New Horizons is a game that many of its players, and even mental health professionals say has many elements that a player can take from the game into their real life, allowing them to lead a “fulfilled and contented life”. 

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Tracing the game’s origins to Japan in 2000, its original designer and creator Katsuya Eguchi said that Animal Crossing has three central themes: family, friendship, and community. From the game’s very modest origins of a game designer wanting to create something to help with his loneliness, a movement was born.

The Joy of New Horizons

The vision of the original game has stood the test of time. Thanks to modern innovations bringing players together online no matter where in the world they may be located, the sense of community and bonding, and the importance of having social interactions became some of the social simulation game series’  strengths.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons opened up a world of creativity for players. It allowed them to build their ideal spaces: from homes to villages, to entire islands where others could visit or be invited to stay. Many created music videos and even versions of existing media using characters in the Animal Crossing world, opening up even more possibilities for how one could play the game.

New Horizons is a game that cuts across age and culture. Apart from the wonderful world-building, characters that populate the game, and very engaging graphics and music, New Horizons impacted players because of how it made them feel. It made a lot of people feel good. It made many feel safe. It gave millions hope.

The Value of Playing

Many mental health professionals and psychologists who play Animal Crossing: New Horizons emphasize the game’s importance in building valuable skills for coping with loneliness, reducing depression, bolstering resilience, and improving overall mental health, especially during 2020’s lockdown.

Psychologist and writer Sam Dylan Finch writes in his feature from Healthline about the five biggest takeaways Animal Crossing: New Horizons teaches us about real life. Among these are how simple, everyday interactions with other people are vital to leading a meaningful life.

The writer cites a TED Talk made in 2017 by psychologist Susan Pinker that supports his point: It isn’t just our closest, most intimate relationships with friends and family that make our lives meaningful, but also the basic, everyday, neutral human interactions we have with the people around us that strengthen our mental health. Having a healthy social life extends beyond forging tight bonds with people we love to include everyday faces we may not even necessarily have a deep connection with.

In the world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players can interact with other players by greeting them casually and treating others with basic kindness, friendliness, and decency. Finch says this type of interaction matters when it comes to building social integration, or one person’s sense of belonging, especially to a community.

Social integration is steadily reinforced by everyday interactions and one’s familiarity with a place. It’s in the transition of one place being just “a place” to “the place one belongs to” that’s important because that’s seeing social integration working. If that isn’t incentive enough to become more generous with greeting our neighbors a good morning, studies show that there is a direct link between social integration and life longevity.

Another lesson that Animal Crossing: New Horizons teaches players is how purpose motivates us to keep going.

Because the game is driven by plenty of goal-driven behavior by giving tasks to be completed, and goals to be met, it has become very effective in providing players with a sense of purpose.

The repetitive nature of some of its tasks has not stopped or bored the game’s players. When psychologists look into why this is, they note that it isn’t the task that is important, it’s what the task is for.

When a player completes tasks on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, they gain a good reputation for their island, and they can invite other characters to visit them or live on the island. This creates a unique community and camaraderie between players. Players share resources and tips, and provide services for whatever it is other players may need to build their islands and make it the best island ever.

That’s the goal: to make your world a better place for you and for others. And if that isn’t the biggest and most meaningful lesson one can get from a cute and simple video game, then we don’t know what is.

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