The word “debt” has always struck a chord with me—the kind you hear when a toddler slams on the keys of a grand piano that hasn’t been tuned in two decades. The very term makes me cringe. Whether it was a car payment or student loans, the idea of being in debt scared the absolute crap out of me as a kid. I basically grew up with the notion that debt was absolutely frightening, and having anything hanging over me other than maybe a house mortgage would drown me in financial woes for my entire adult life. I guess I have my parents to thank for lighting that sort of fire under my ass, but I can also thank a little game called Animal Crossing for fanning a flame of debt anxiety that has now become an eternal torch.
My relationship with Animal Crossing is one of both love and hate. It’s an innocent game where you simulate living in a cartoon utopia where your only job is to fish and harvest plants for pay while you expand your home and social circle. The goals were simple, the mechanics even easier. But the game’s real challenges lay in its oddly intricate financial aspect. Living in this animal utopia has its costs, and hidden under its world of adorable anthropomorphized NPCs is a sinister plot to rob the player of their escapism and make them participate in real-life drudgery, anxiety, and toil.
I first got introduced to Animal Crossing for the GameCube at age 10, at a time in my life when I was already saving every penny I had with the dream of one day buying my first car. Right off the bat, the game plunged me into a very similar circumstance, except in cutesy virtual manner: Upon starting the game, you, the player, are given a house and a plot of land that is all yours—and in the same breath, are told you owe $20,000 in loans for the mortgage on your land. Ten-year-old me was flabbergasted. I didn’t ask for this land. Could I have picked a cheaper property? Was the whole world like this? Who was this Tom Nook, and why was I giving him all my money to simply exist here? What the hell were “bells?” How was I supposed to pay this off?
Despite finding my immediate debt to my new raccoon landlord annoying, I pressed on. Though my virtual debt was not real, and I was able to apply my real-life spending habits into my gameplay, the sheer amount of anxiety I got from playing the game was very real. I saved my money (in this case “bells”) left and right. My avatar stayed in the same clothes I started in for months until I could pay off my first mortgage. I didn’t even buy matching sets for my house or any new gadgets that weren’t necessary to me leveling up. In the back of my head, I would not be able to really play the game until I owed absolutely nothing to Mr. Nook.
Turns out, fishing with a flimsy wooden rod made of twigs and shaking a couple apples off trees was a pretty lucrative business plan for this simple virtual life. So I did just that—for hours and hours on end. Just like the American dreamer, my player would wake up, go fishing and harvest some fruit, make their way to the town’s market, and pawn off whatever they had in their pockets that day in order to scrounge together my virtual rent. Then I’d stick all their earnings in a savings account just to do the very same thing the very next day in the hopes of someday getting out from under the mountains of debt the game kept saddling me with.
Things got even more complex when the Wii’s Animal Crossing: City Folk introduced the concept of taxes into this pastel-colored world. Sure, it was only acknowledged as a payment sent out to players as part of a DLC package, but still: Taxes? I didn’t even have a job. Why the hell are these animals paying taxes? Despite every headache this game gave me, I’d play it for hours with my friends. But while they were out buying new clothes, hairstyles, and fancy housewares, I was expanding my property and saving every last bell I could. Or to put it another way: While my friends were actually enjoying the game, I made my avatar become a digital wage slave. Arguably, it paid off in the end, since by the time they were getting bored doing and buying the same things all the time, I was just emerging from my debt panic and digging into all the shopping inventories and matching item sets. My weird financial habits happened to prolong my actual enjoyment of the game, well past my friends’—at least, depending on how you define “enjoyment.”
With all that in mind, you can only imagine how feverishly I attacked my $50,000 mortgage in the Switch’s new Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Not that it’s ever simple with the Nooks: This time, the payer/player is introduced to an alternative initial payment option to get lost in as well, in the form of Nook Miles. From the jump, the game presents you with options to become a premium Nook Mileage member, along with better ways to finance your house after your move to its idyllic deserted island. And while I thought living life in the middle of the ocean might be a little simpler than the previous games, somehow Tom Nook found a way to make me pay to live out of a tent. So many years after establishing my love-hate relationship with this cheerful little uber-capitalist, I’m back at it again, playing with two forms of currency and living in an Animal Crossing-themed home owners association (the insidiously cheerful Happy Home Academy) that I did not voluntarily opt into. If nothing else, Animal Crossing helped me solidify my absolute disdain for HOAs, and I will hopefully avoid living in one until my dying day.
Animal Crossing was my introduction to a lot of the realities of the way the world works. That same realism also destroyed my gaming strategies for any other video game going forward: I hoarded resources and money like it was going out of style, always waiting for the next loan payment to trigger—and even reflected the same behavior in real life. I save my money like I have a tent to pay off, even now. My parents played a big role in my spending habits, sure. But as I grew up, not wanting to be kept under the thumb of “the man” (raccoon, whatever) kept me from spending out of my means, and kept, not only me, but my wallet in line. It might not have always been great for my well-being, but te game has kept the terrifying specter of debt accumulation at bay. I can happily say I passed my old Animal Crossing games on to my younger brothers, so that the next generation can understand the true struggle of being financially indebted to a virtual property mogul raccoon.
39 Comments
My wife and I play this together at night, and she can’t help but laugh at how all of my goals are to pay down our mortgage, which is very similar to our real life financial plan.
Tom Nook offers zero interest loans with infinitely flexible payment plans, the only stipulation being that you can’t take out another loan until your current one is paid off.I’ll take that deal over a real bank any day of the week.
Right? If capitalists acted like Tom Nook, pretty much nobody would have a problem with capitalists.This is such a ridiculous hot take from the aggressively online left.
Seriously, I had an $11,000 student loan that I’ve since paid $15,000 over the years and still owe about $18,000. Where was Tom Nook then?
The only thing I learned from Animal Crossing is that Isabelle, through some artists’ interpretations, is kinda hot.
You just hurt my innocent head. :).
Isabelle was the true Doomguy this whole time.
WTF, did you take out a loan from the mafia? Even with compound interest how does that happen? May I ask what your interest rate is?
Yeah I used to make this same joke about how Tom Nook is a monstrous loan-sharking landlord but then I realized he’s a billion times better than any version of those that exist in real lifealso his store is the only reason you have money to pay him back, he buys all your random garbage you find
And the hoa mentioned literally gives you gifts if they think your house is decorated well. Doesn’t punish you or fine you
Plus Tom will pay you for any random fish you give him right? My bank doesn’t take fish as currency
Right? You know what I’d give to be able to pay off my house by fishing and gardening all day?
(….Yet.) lol
His kids, Timmy and Tommy pay you. But, yeah, they still buy literally anything you bring them.
I’d recommend shifting to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. They would *love* to have your fish as basically their entire economy collapsed in the 1980s-1990s when the fish gave out.
This. Everyone portrays Tom Nook as a villain when he is probably the nicest moneylender in existence. A zero interest debt with no due date that I can pay whenever I want over time? Hell yes I’d take a home loan like that.
The only reason that Nook is so lax with your repayment schedule is that he knows that his unilateral imposition of crippling debt upon you runs afoul of dozens of consumer protection laws and would never hold up in court. I’ll bet he’s not even a registered mortgage lender.
Anyone who will give me a house in exchange for 9,810 clumps of weeds can’t be all bad
Animal Crossing Ehh… debateable…
That same realism also destroyed my gaming strategies for any other
video game going forward: I hoarded resources and money like it was
going out of style…
J’accuse!You’re one of the tp hoarders! Get’em
I swear I have a normal amount of TP. If I hoard anything it’s my Steam library.
when i was playing a force in phantasy star online, i hoarded TP.
Big Supernatural fan?
it always seemed like something i would enjoy, but its gone on so long, would take me forever to catch up. but was making a joke about how in phantasy star online, magic points were “technique points” and thus TP, and the many immature jokes i made laying a magic focused character in it.
If I could pay off anything by fishing in my spare time, my life would be so much better than it is now.
Debt in the simplest sense of the word, sure. Tom Nook lets you pay what you want, when you want…if you even pay it back at all. Sure, you’ll never get anything better than what you’ve already got, but the (adorable) government won’t come snatch away what you DO have and force you to live under a bridge, either. Given the current state of things, where I’m genuinely concerned I’ll be out of work and unable to pay my mortgage, car payments, insurance…all while collecting meager unemployment benefits that won’t cover half of one of those bills, well, let’s just say I’m really enjoying my time escaping into Animal Crossing. It’s not teaching me a whole lot, but it’s keeping me from having a total and complete breakdown. AMERICA!
And you are the world’s worst parent.
Debt schmedt. My house is paid off and fully upgraded with 4.4 million bells still in the bank. You know the how and why and I am not ashamed.
“Animal crossing has given me debt anxiety for years, and i was stunned to discover that there is debt in New Horizons!!!!”It’s mildly hilarious that you describe this situation as one you did not voluntarily opt-in to, as though you don’t have a decade of experience with this game series that you voluntarily installed.
Nook gives you a home and a huge discount on the first loan. Every loan thereafter, while bigger, doesn’t have to be paid according to any schedule. Nook doesn’t force you to pay when you hit a certain amount of bells. If anything, this series makes kids think loans and homeownership is a breeze they won’t have to worry about. You want a game that teaches you the stress and perils of debt, play tales of xillia 2. The main characters get millions of Tales money into medical debt, and have a banker constantly calling and nagging about paying it back. Every time you have a certain amount of money, you’re forced to pay a minimum amount. Poor planning and you could be without items, weapons, etc while trying to grind out more money. It’s truly evil.
If Animal Crossing teaches kids about crippling debt, it must also teach them that the way to get out of debt and become wealthy is smuggling exotic animals to sell domestically.
Eh I just pay 10% of the current debt for 10 days to upgrade my house. And I pick, catch, and sell whatever I can to acquire more Bells and buy more stuff for my house and other villagers. I even deposit Bells everyday too.The game would be a lot harder if food (fruit, fish, and coffee isn’t enough of a diet) and utilities were incorporated but thank the gods that isn’t the case for Animal Crossing. *knock on wood*
I feel like giving someone a free house and then telling them they can pay it back in any degree of installments over any amount of time with no deadline outside of their own desire to upgrade is quite possibly the worst possible way to prepare someone for the reality of real world debt.In fact I feel like it’s sort of not a debt situation at all and more like “here’s a free thing, give me 90 000 bells for a better thing.”
More like preparing kids for the world of drug addiction if anything.
crushing debt from massive overconsumption that you yourself caused because you are greedy, don’t give a shit about the environment, and can’t control yourself.
If you’re taking lessons on debt management from Animal Crossing, you’ve already gone wrong.
Like all games, what it teaches is hoarding and consumerism, but it’s very gently capitalist. Until the origin story of Nook’s Robber Baron, Rubber Plantation owner days, he’s got a very gentle take capitalism.There’s a UNICEF game called Ayiti where you’re a family of 5 in Haiti and you run their life for four years, and that’s always been a stark take on working while poor. Designed for such, obviously, but as such extra instructive.
http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/ayiti-the-cost-of-life/
The message is – the only way to create money is to pawn off natural capital like the monster I am.
I too have been interested in town and community simulation, but I’ve taken it in a potentially much more dangerous direction- I have started a new game of Dwarf Fortress.For those who don’t know, Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy sim where you guide some dwarves to carve out a underground city. It is freeware, done entirely in ASCII (unless you use a hack) and insanely complex, partly due to a very unintuitive interface. You don’t point and click, you use the keyboard to highlight and designate zones for certain kinds of activity and hope your neurotic idiot dwarves actually do what you want them to do. The game tracks all kinds of objects and details ranging from weather to your dwarves’ psychological profiles. You basically need to consult the Wiki to get started. It is uniquely compelling for those who can put up with it, mainly because the procedural generation creates all sorts of weird situations. You just have to be a little patient to get there because the early going is primitive- so far I’ve lost one dwarf to wild animals (badgers I think), another is badly wounded, and we moved into a sandy cave before finally striking some rock and are now making rooms. Even started a little mushroom farm. We’ll see how long this lasts.Just bought and downloaded Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition on my Switch- I’ve played the Wii U version and enjoyed it, but this has all the DLC there ever was, various quality of life improvements (including some from the 3DS version) and is legit worth the upgrade. Going through the story again, and also played Linkle’s first mission. Linkle needs her own game BTW. She is the best.Also picked up Doom 64 since that’s finally been given a rerelease. It’s quite fun, mechanically it’s pretty much still Classic Doom (which is v good) but with souped up graphics, all new levels, and a nice atmosphere. I may yet pick up Eternal but I’m not very good at Doom 2016 and I’m not sure I’m ready for something even harder.