Group Chat
A bit of background about me and my solo experience playing Animal Crossing: I’m Holly, an ex-president of a Video Game Society and a recent graduate currently working as an archive assistant. As a previous Animal Crossing player of New Leaf and Wild World, I pre-ordered the digital version of Animal Crossing almost as soon as it was announced (so I could play it at midnight!).
My Animal Crossing play time currently sits at 305 hours, the majority of which was spent in the first lockdown: building my island and spending NMTs to get Dom, my favourite villager!
I played it daily from March to August 2020 and slowed down in the latter half of the year as I moved back home from University. At the moment, I log in to check on Dom every week or so. I have generally moved to focus on other games due to Nintendo’s lack of updates for the series.
At the time lockdown came into effect, I was finishing my final year of University.
Eager to make use of my Nintendo Online Account, I was looking on Facebook and came across a post on a university page saying if anyone was interested in joining an Animal Crossing group chat, to comment. I commented, and soon enough I was added to an Animal Crossing group chat.
I got to know a lot of these people well and made friends over the course of lockdown. We had several calls, lots of in-game hangouts, and helped each other obtain the items/villagers we wanted as well as cheating the turnip market! A lot of the group became avid players, easily racking up 300-500 hours each. A lot of us followed each other through social media, and the group chat quickly became a space for sharing our interests, cute pets, ACNH memes and our like/dislike for Agent S, a villager (she divides public opinion).
I am so grateful for that group chat as a space to cope with lockdown and get to know other members of the Uni community with similar interests, even though I was in my final year.
We would often interact in ACNH for specific events: usually the summer fireworks, birthdays, and evenings where we were free. There are plans for in-person interaction in our Uni town when we are permitted to.
While quite a few of the people in the group chat stopped playing Animal Crossing in the latter half of 2020, there is still general and Animal Crossing chatter in that group chat.
I also hung out with other friends I had made through gaming in Animal Crossing that were not in the group chat, and we reconnected through it. I attended various birthday parties and even a graduation in Animal Crossing as a small substitute for real events. As one of my friends in the group chat put it when I told them about this, “Animal Crossing WAS lockdown” for a lot of young people. I hope this project succeeds in its goal to capture that essence, and that my screenshots and statement can be of help.