Antiquarian Chronicle Trying Animal Crossing: Unforgettable First Years of New Horizons

“Seriousness of time [Animal Crossing: New Horizons] “It’s ridiculous,” says Lex Roberts, curator of Britain’s National Videogame Museum. animal Crossing Diary. Assignment or Project “Cultural event that aims to capture after release Animal cross … In March 2020, the way the world was changed by the epidemic. “

new Horizons Quickly unbreakable with COVID-19 review Construction The sudden mention of how much we all needed to escape in the form of lockdown and quarantine. As it became clear that social disturbances would be for a long time, the game became a venue Weddings, History, Protest, And for political propaganda, just to name a few.

But it is not possible to experience it new Horizons As everyone was playing in the spring of 2020. “You can’t play the game and understand how people used it and what is the experience of playing in it [early days of the] There was an epidemic, ”says Roberts.

Kelsey Levine, co-director of the Video Game History Foundation, noted that the social experience has changed as people have moved on. “[Early on]”Six years ago, a coworker just randomly roamed my town, because everyone was playing and my gates were open,” she says. “If you were to simply show up randomly to someone’s island [now], It will not be taken in the same way. “

“What’s important to the future is making sure that we have some sort of record in these moments of time, which was like a game.” This is why the National Videogame is aiming for the museum, and requires only being able to use a Nintendo Switch and a game cartridge.

“It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a while at the museum,” says Connor Clarke, its marketing and communications lead. “A lot of the history and preservation of video games looks at the technological progress of the games and doesn’t really pay too much attention to the cultural history surrounding the game.”

Seriousness of new Horizons’ The release date was his opportunity to try something new. Clarke says the Eskimi Fairbair Foundation, a grant-donating institution, asked cultural heritage organizations to “collect history as it is happening,” and the museum’s application to use the game for this purpose being successful.

“Playing the game is not the best way to understand a game,” says Roberts. Instead, Open Call asks what data volunteers want to offer. “We have … audio recording, we have video recordings of people talking to the camera, we have people have written diary entries of their experience, ‘This is a progression of my island compared to last year.” We have some interesting essays from people that actually reflect their experiences and things that have happened. “

Both Levine and Roberts emphasized the value of paying attention to the ordinary within the turbulence of 2020. “It is really important that we were able to capture all the incidents related to the protests and the huge epidemic … which are expressed in it AC, But also everyday. We are not really keen to recall the experiences of those nights like date nights and hanging out with friends, ”says Roberts. They give an example of an entry where the person’s happiness-con was broken, meaning that they started playing on television with their family in lockdown. “It meant that their family started seeing what they were doing … and the parents really got involved.”

“There is a lot that is still reported when it is very meaningful,” Levine says. “What’s going to be important is that we’ve documented what he liked to play… what was going on at the time, what was the context, what was the community interested in and talking about, and social What was the dynamics going on. “

This is something that is easier today than before. “Because people weren’t interviewing children on playgrounds, if you’re talking about games of 80 or something, [magazines] Actually we all have them, ”says Levine. “But Twitter is the new playground buzz, isn’t it?”

This is, at least in part, what the digital humanities aim to explore, although scholars Quinn Dombrovsky and Liz Grumbach say a complete definition is clear. “If we put it in our own words, the more people agree, the more they disagree,” laughs Dombrovsky, who works in the Department of Literature, Cultures and Languages ​​at Stanford.

Grumbach, who leads the digital humanities initiative at Arizona State University, essentially gives it his best shot. “I usually say that it’s either using digital tools to explore something that humanitarian research will do or using humanities methods to detect digital… or it’s both at the same time . And when it’s both at the same time when it’s really, really good. “

Both are running A series of power talks Where other scholars of digital humanities have been invited to speak from within Dombrovsky animal Crossing Island. Attendees can go to the game or watch To twitch. Although talks do not usually take place animal Crossing By themselves, they have some insight into why this may be so popular, especially during the early months of the epidemic.

“What do I think animal Crossing So good that it reflects the feeling of traveling in a time where we cannot travel to see the people we care about, ”we say. He and Dombrovsky are old friends, and they find out that playing animal Crossing “Sounds like we’re hanging out,” in a way that’s more practical than a voice or video call, or even other virtual locations that try to emulate physical people, like Gather. The island setting helps; Grumbach calls it a “truly joyful environment”.

“One of the things I like animal Crossing Compared to some of those other platforms, the fact that it is personal, ”says Dombrovsky. “When you go to someone’s island, it’s something that they’ve spent a lot of time with, the way they like it … and you can water their plants for them, and their physical digital Presence is something where they have adapted the way they look. “

The idea of ​​putting together the COVID collection was a popular one in the digital humanities last March. Although Grumbach and Dombrovsky caution that there are potential ethical considerations around asking people to process these events, as well as sharing them for analysis and consumption, the former Arizona State highlights Plague journal of the year, And the latter has also written something Their own thoughts About playing new Horizons During the epidemic.

As the anniversary approaches, museum researchers begin to think about what kind of exhibition they will gather with the collected data. “We really tried a lot, when we opened the project, people didn’t make assumptions about what it presented,” says Roberts. “So this is a very exciting next phase.”

They see topics as submission rolls, citing examples Recent collection Together they made love for Valentine’s Day, with people expressing creativity through filmmaking and comics, as well as how people made connections with non-playing villagers in the game. And, an echo of Dombrovsky and Grumbach, they note that many productions appear to be visible new Horizons In a way, other social games, such as a specific location Mario KartWill not done.

The museum hopes it will be a springboard for more cultural history projects in the future. “We’re constantly looking at … different ways to showcase the history of the game,” Clark says. “We are constantly trying something new and trying new things there because it is a very interesting subject. Video games are a very difficult subject! “

“You just have to think about it: is it important to know about this game in 100 years? What is it that we want to keep? And not an easy question to answer, ”says Levin. “But if we really want to do a good job of preserving the history of video games, those are the questions we need to ask.”

“I think it is now compulsory for us to filter and collect this stuff before we try and find it and try to pick up the pieces later.”