Last night, I visited a neighbor’s home. Then, I went fishing and sold some wooden stakes I made to the local general store.
Of course, I did this all from my apartment while eating sushi delivered to me by a guy in a face mask because the coronavirus means that I, like millions or even tens of millions of other people across the planet, am only living in community through Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
I played Animal Crossing: Wild World on my Nintendo DS religiously as a child, and then I got a life. Three months ago, the notion of spending a Saturday night as a cartoon girl next door in the inane pursuit of Animal Crossing’s meaningless meandering would have made me gag. Today, it’s a lifeline, a semblance of normalcy in our deeply creepy times. And apparently, I’m not alone in thinking so.
At its launch in late March, the latest installation of the social simulation obliterated previous sales records for the Nintendo Switch. In Japan, the game sold nearly 2 million physical copies upon launch. At an absolute minimum, the game has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, but likely far more.
Like all semidecent things in our pandemic-plagued times, the Chinese Communist Party has tried to ruin all the fun. After pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong used the game’s communications to organize protests, the dictatorship, which, might I add, is responsible for our global shutdown, coerced small services selling the game into shutting it down. The thugs scared of cartoon kitties are definitely the ones we ought to trust about live-saving medical research.
Last year, a productive day included a 4-mile run plus 20 minutes at the squat rack, 10 hours of writing, a television hit, a radio interview, and then dinner with a friend. Now, it’s just writing, making (attempting) dinner, and trying (and succeeding) to catch butterflies on my Nintendo Switch. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, and strangely enough, that’s more satisfaction than I’ve felt in years.
