Topic: Is there a wrong way to play Animal Crossing?

[MrPhishfood]

Is there a wrong way to play Animal Crossing?

In a game where there are no objectives there are no ways to lose. You would think there isn't a wrong way to play it and however you want to play it will always be right. That's not true in my experience. I definitely played this game wrong. I didn't have any fun.

Right after Tom Nook forced that ridiculous mortgage on to me I had already lost. I spent every minute of my time  trying to pay that thing off, thinking of ways to make more and more money. Trying to pimp out my house, my wardrobe. I was talking to people for the sake of improving my points in frienship. Who was I even trying to impress? The animal residents? I was trying to win at life itself.

I read in an article that Animal Crossing sets up this rat race just so you can walk away from it and I wish I had read it before I played. I was forever running towards an objective I could never achieve. You don't win at life, you just enjoy the journey and the scenery as it passes by. You could even draw parallels with real life; people who spend decades slaving away in a joyless career only to find they have wasted their precious youth.

I take some small pride in that I excel in the games I've played and I've even enjoyed some time in the worldwide leaderboards. So you can see how ironic it is that I lost in a game with no objective. So if you didn't enjoy Animal Crossing then it may have been for the same reasons I didn't enjoy it.

So the next time the game comes around on 3DS in 2013 I will give it one more go. I will stay away from the forums. I will keep in mind the game isn't about being "better" than your peers. I will just take in the scenery as it passes by.

[Kairon]

The fact that you made this post suggests to me that you've already learned the lesson Animal Crossing wanted to impart. Maybe in order to play Animal Crossing "right," you have to play it "wrong" first.

[ShyGuy]

Don;t be mean to my friend Jay.

[Spak-Spang]

Actually, your post brings up a very interesting point about Animal Crossing.  The false idea that Animal Crossing has no objectives or goals.

The game definitely presents itself with several goals that entice the player to continue playing the game...it is just the objectives can be obtained in several different ways, and don't feel like game objectives because they are more focused on life.

The mortgage is the biggest objective in the game.  What appears to be an annoying debt to pay before getting a reward of a bigger house and more debt is simply a brilliant motivator to play the game properly.  You see the game immediately throws you in a cramped space that prevents you from collecting and organizing too many things.  So to solve this you must do work to pay off Tom Nook...and get that bigger house.  Once you do you can collect more stuff and make your house cooler.  It is a vicious cycle.

These objectives are everywhere in the game.  Collecting fish, stuff for the museum and so on. 

Animal Crossing is such a brilliant little Meta-game in this since.  There are so many objectives and things to see and do...but they are all subtle and you can choose to do them however you like. 

So yeah, there is a right and wrong way to play the game...there are objectives and goals...some are personal and some are carefully placed in the game to motivate the player forward. 

[Mop it up]

Is there a wrong way to play any game? Who is to say you can't play a game however you want?

[MegaByte]

The only right way to play Animal Crossing.

[MrPhishfood]

I played it in a way where I started to feel like "This feels like work. Boring work" It wasn't what I was actually doing in the game that made it boring, it was my mindset. I wanted to achieve something significant but I had to do repetitive and boring stuff to get there. It didn't help much when I eventually paid off my house I got an upgrade and an even bigger mortgage.

I figured the most profitable and least time consuming task would be to plant as many fruit trees as I can. Then every day I would gather the fruit, sell it to Nook and repeat it the next day. I was a fruit farmer. A bored fruit farmer with dreams of being a millionaire.

I eventually thought "okay so after I buy everything I've ever wanted to but then what?" and so I came to realization of how empty my life inside Animal Crossing was. Then when I went online and looked at the forums, people seemed to be enjoying it. They would talk about their fun interactions with characters, decorating their town with flowers and stuff and I didn't really understand it at the time. They were just living, they weren't trying to maximise time/profit, they weren't working.

[Shaymin]

The same way you play global thermonuclear war or Xbox Live Gold.

Edit: misread as "right way". Point stands, however.

[Kairon]

I played it in a way where I started to feel like "This feels like work. Boring work" It wasn't what I was actually doing in the game that made it boring, it was my mindset. I wanted to achieve something significant but I had to do repetitive and boring stuff to get there. It didn't help much when I eventually paid off my house I got an upgrade and an even bigger mortgage.

I figured the most profitable and least time consuming task would be to plant as many fruit trees as I can. Then every day I would gather the fruit, sell it to Nook and repeat it the next day. I was a fruit farmer. A bored fruit farmer with dreams of being a millionaire.

I eventually thought "okay so after I buy everything I've ever wanted to but then what?" and so I came to realization of how empty my life inside Animal Crossing was. Then when I went online and looked at the forums, people seemed to be enjoying it. They would talk about their fun interactions with characters, decorating their town with flowers and stuff and I didn't really understand it at the time. They were just living, they weren't trying to maximise time/profit, they weren't working.

This is why Animal Crossing is so great. What other game can address materialistic greed so well and so subtly?

[nickmitch]

Is there a wrong way to play any game? Who is to say you can't play a game however you want?

Mr. Resetti.

[BeautifulShy]

I played the two console Animal Crossing games and I had  a lot of fun with them.

As far as playing them the right and wrong ways. I think the wrong way would be to go back in time and see if you can play it a little every day. After all the game does only actually needs to be played about 15 minutes or so to do the basics and do what you might want to do once you finish up the early part of the game. Whatever time you put into the game is what you get back from it. I myself typically at the start would go into other friends towns and they would come into mine so we could help each other out with fruit and or coconuts and it kinda became this quazi co-op game where we would help each other out by getting things in each others towns and also getting rare items from other people in return for other things. I know I got a golden watering can faster then I would have from a friend. There is also many small games you can come up with and have fun with the animals and the friends in the town.

Point being I don't think there is a right way or wrong way to play this game because I think there is many ways to play the game.