EARLY ACCESS: Animal Crossing and Expectations of Video Games

I think Animal Crossing is really just not for some people. Especially the ones who enjoy story mode type games, or adrenaline type. I love animal crossing cause it’s a time waster and it’s relaxing (in my opinion). I can listen to a podcast while playing it, there’s no dialogue I have to pay attention to, and I love that! Also, I don’t know people are bored at 60 hours, I’m at 100 hours and still finding new things to do.☺️

iguessAlexandria

I feel like the reason people might be expressing their boredom with Animal Crossing might be due to how there is no definitive end to the game. With most games, whenever you reach the end is typically when you stop playing, but with Animal Crossing when you stop playing is more or less up to you. Instead of stopping after finishing the game, people are stopping when they are bored which may feel weird to them because most games are not designed that way.

I've never played Animal Crossing or Fortnite or Minecraft, just never saw the appeal. But I generally play a game until I'm bored of it and by that time another old classic feels new again so I repeat with that game. Still playing (and enjoying) GTA IV and V, The Witcher 3, Skyrim and others. Not looking forward to anything except Cyberpunk 2077 which looks awesome. Happy gaming Buckley and have a great week :D

This is a very interesting topic, actually. Makes me think. But I'm a simple man, I think the best parts of this video were the fish flavortexts and Buckley's "Social Media Mouthbreather" voices. :)

Pim

Game designer and lifelong Animal Crossing fan here! Those kind of people drive me crazy. AC games just aren’t designed to be played like that. People are like “I used to spend all day playing but now I just log on and do my dailies”—believe it or not, that’s how the game was made to be played. We’ve been spoiled by devs with 200+ hour open-world adventures, and a lot of the community came in thinking it would have that amount of content. (Which I think is kind of a weird assumption, but it’s been ages since the last AC game, so whatever.) You log in and do a bit every day and watch the world change over time. It’s not an achievement hunt (besides the museum), it’s not a game-as-service, and it’s not something you binge for 200 hours during quarantine. Corona and an overhyped community will do that to a game.

Emily

That reminds me of ~20 people in our pokemon go community who called me a fucking retard for deleting my account after I was done with the game (after about 2 years). They just couldn't believe someone can have better things to do after that many hours. I also think they spent 100 times more money than me to buy coins in the game. The game just stopped being fun for me and I wanted to be more social outside rather than checking my phone for pokemon all the time. I also think they prefered for me to sell my account (which is prohibited actually) rather than delete it but it's my account and I'll do what I want with it. Looking at the games with 1 $/ hour is a fine idea to me, probably because I like to get invested in the game and spend way more time in it than most people do, probably because as a kid I was piss poor and could afford maybe 2 new games a year, less if I had to upgrade my pc or get a newer console. When it comes to animal crossing I still enjoy it but I play for 1 hour a day since that allows me to do all the daily stuff. And early reviews of the game already said that there isn't much to do in the game so all those people can blame only themselves for buying a product without doing research before spending money. And yeah, after ~40 hours of playing and enjoying the game they sound like fucking idiots expecting more stuff to do now, game is out for like 3 months now and it's not a mmo or fortnite to expect regular updates with new content.

Michał Michalski

Nooks having an offshore black market for incredibly specific things isn't THAT unbelievable to be honest

I won’t be the first to say this, but I’ve played more than 200 hours and I’m still really enjoying it. I think it depends what you expect out the game you’re playing and how you play it. For example, people who time travel (which my opinion on it is do what you want but a lot of people are against it) will be more likely to fatigue faster than someone who isn’t, and is obtaining collectibles at the season it was meant for. Also people who played it for 12 hours a day during strict lockdown compared to a key worker who only gets an opportunity to play say about 2 hours a day, and casual gamers compared to ‘gotta catch em all’ achievement driven gamers. People just need to adapt games to their play style. Also, there are lots of planned updates coming out soon and throughout the year (which if they brought them out straight away, burn out would have occurred anyway) so patience from all types of players is needed.

When Animal Crossing came out I decided I wouldn't be picking it up because I was already tired of the hype it built up, and everyone talking about it at work and online made me even more uninterested. It came out and from what I can see it's basically the same game I played on GameCube and DS. Maybe I'll pick it up when it gets a really good sale, but I don't need it. Currently playing an indie game I picked up for 20 bucks. It's really easy to complete in one setting but there's so many different characters and set ups to use that I've put over 100 hours into it and I'm nowhere near bored yet, and I only paid 20 bucks. When I do get bored of it I'll know that I more than got my money's worth.

Jacen Dane

I love Animal Crossing and I’ve played every North American release. It’s crazy to me that people found this specific game boring because there was way more goals to achieve then any of the past games. I know a game like this just isn’t for everybody and the amount of players it drew in at first had to drop eventually but for people to be shocked after playing any game for that long that it gets boring is just ridiculous

Beep Boop

The way I see it, I’m willing to spend $4 on a coffee that entertains me for like... five minutes max, and that’s the equivalent of $60 for 75 minutes of entertainment. Sixty dollars for even SIX hours of entertainment is a great deal - when was the last time even the cinemas were that cheap?

lol, every time I think I'm a nerdy pervert, I can say to myself "I don't play those weird pervert games on Steam" and be reminded I am not part of some online Incel group. I feel a little more confident now.

Dirrdevil