New Horizons or: Is It Abandonment If They’re Not Real?

I’m coming up on my 100th KK Slider concert in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and I’m stuck with this question that I’ve been grappling with for a while: When do I stop playing? With no major expansions expected for this game that has become a part of my daily life, do I call it quits after finishing my last achievements?

When Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out, it was during the start of the COVID pandemic hitting the US and rapidly spreading back in March of 2020. Up to that point, we’d been hearing the opening reports about COVID and it went from an “oh yeah a bunch of people on a cruise ship got infected in Europe” to “some guy in the US left his hospital and infected people at a party he attended” to “we’re going to see non-essential businesses starting to close”. I remembered debating on whether or not to buy the game physically from the local game store. The dire straits had been laid out when the staff admitted, “if we have to shut down before DOOM and New Horizons come out then we will never open up again.” Luckily they made it (though I still ordered the game digitally) and since that day in March 2020, it has become part of my routine. 

Initially I was playing to grow my island and explore. I was giving gifts willy nilly, catching fish and bugs for my museum, and buying everything I could. I played naturally without time travel or hacks. It was a great period where people were realizing they could still connect with friends through this. You could pop into the game and see that friends just left their islands open for you to visit. As people were figuring out what they could do in the game, it felt very relaxed. Sure, there were the people whose islands were wonderlands that were full of custom designs on the ground and carefully manicured aesthetics. I personally took a more rigid and controlled approach to my island with a woodlands section that a friend called “deeply unnerving for its layout.”

And a few months in, people slowly left the game, similar to any video game craze. You went from seeing casual friends getting on daily and inviting you to visit to just the hardcore players. My intentions in the game changed and it became more focused on completionism. While previously I’d casually catch bugs or I might hunt for a specific fossil in the Discord groups I was in with friends, I started looking to online trading networks on Twitter for specific villagers that I might want (or to get mine adopted). When I reached the point that I learned your villagers would give you their photos after a certain level of friendship, I was taken aback because I realized I had lost villagers without getting photos from them. My good boy Marcel had wanted to move and who was I to deny him his wishes? He’d also stopped existing, but that wasn’t a crisis I’d consider until later.

I kept playing through the summer, engaging with the new seasonal content. I used Twitter regularly to invite people to see shooting stars or to trade. There was a large community, but I felt like I needed to do more.

I started planning for my 31st birthday in November, which among other things involved a full island remodel to try and match the tone of my last birthday. I previously had set up the island with houses anywhere as the island naturally expanded, but once money was no longer a priority for me, having paid off my house and moved into saving up my Bells, I built a residential area. The party planning led to me terraforming the island into a multi-level village and constructing a pirate ship, which required me to get into using Nookazon to get rarer pieces. 

Nookazon is a website set up by fans to trade goods and services (weeding your island/paying off your loan) outside of messaging people on Twitter or relying on your friends. Nookazon initially pulled me in with the chance to get Marcel’s photo. My kitchen in the house had become a sort of memorial for the villagers who had come before and I had to complete it. Obviously. The idea of completion then expanded as I started to get into the trading of art and other rare items. At the height of my Nookazon days I was playing the game for 5-6 hours in the evening plus checking in periodically to handle the offers that came in. At one point I paid someone in Australia $60 on Etsy for a set of the original Hello Kitty tie-in amiibo cards. The items that were exclusive to the card’s bearers’ could fetch big prices in the Nookazon market to other completionists. Nookazon took over as a side hustle in the game since the fall season was slow for games.

So when my birthday came in November, my art and fossil museums were complete, my bugs, fish, and sea creatures were complete for everything I could get without time traveling. In essence, I had created the world that I wanted and I got to see my friends. For a few hours we ran across the island playing King Tut Tag and had fun.

And then came the winter and my job laid me off without warning. I remember I got the call while I was getting a snack in the Taco Bell drive-thru. I had money saved up in real life to hold me over while I looked for new work, and with more free time, I fully dug into Nookazon and the holiday content, while I also started playing other games on the Switch. 

My interest in New Horizons turned to become more transactional – I’d get on specifically to get the day’s tasks done – complete the double point tasks for Nook Miles, talk to the villagers to give them gifts to get closer to receiving photos, dig the fossils, etc. There was one night I’d been caught up with Slay The Spire that I almost forgot to log into the game until 11 pm and had to quickly do tasks, failing to talk to every villager. And by this point, the fan base had started to fully drift away. When I had my first villager enter the void without someone adopting them, I took it hard, almost ridiculously, as a personal failure. A preprogrammed set of responses in code, who I’d slightly customized, no longer existed in the world. But at the same time, that had been part of my life the months that they lived on the island. I would remember their existence going forward. 

But my interest in the game continued to wane as the depression season hit along with a slow job search and one night when I’d set up some trades on Nookazon and then got distracted by another game – tragedy struck. Someone new to using Nookazon was unable to wait for an auction item that they won, and they gave me a 1-star review. That review, which went against the 48-hour delivery policy, had scarred my perfect rating. The player also never came back to Nookazon after that day and so the scar stood, and still remains on my reviews, a true mark of shame. 

It was a big demotivator for me though because I couldn’t balance it all well anymore. While I continued my job search, I cut down on the time I played to just daily check-ins. I completed my seasonal bug and fish catching for the museum and the game slowly got small updates. When villagers wanted to move out, if they had photos I worked to get them new homes. It was a long search but eventually, I got a new job where I was much happier (and spring helped to end my seasonal depression and I got engaged). 

Then in October of last year, the DLC expansion was announced for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and it was released in November. There was reinvigoration in the game. Friends who I hadn’t seen in months planned to pop back on. I also burned through the additional content. Being able to design vacation homes for residents was a delight, daily island trips broke up the monotony – as did the coffee shop, growing plants  and being able to do exercises in the town square. There were even new songs from KK Slider to request, and slowly I became increasingly aware I was going to reach the 100th show, sooner rather than later. 

I remodeled the island again, had my 32nd birthday party though fewer came than the year before. I completed the achievements for the new content, and once more counted down to the New Year with my residents. I’ve had residents continue to come and go from the island – with more of them entering the void than I’d prefer. I’d love in some ways for them to end up on someone’s island where they’ll never play again and can just go on infinitely, existing if anyone looks, in a quantum state of preservation.

But as I write this, next week is my 99th KK Slider show and the week after that is my 100th, and I only have 3 achievements left. I need to finish making 3000 tools, making 3000 pieces of furniture, and then I need to remodel the outside of my house for the 4th time. 

I’ve debated how to consider finishing the game. One way is ending the game when I get those achievements completed. This is responsible. I’d have other goals left undone – I’ve been naturalistically working on getting all of the fish and bug models from CJ and his boyfriend Flick – but if I wanted to, I could easily complete that with minimal gameplay. 

The second way is that I could try to get every villager’s photo by having them live on the island for a while. This means continuing to play the same way I have, giving villagers wrapped gifts and visiting Katrina to boost their friendship with me, but at a rate of 2 villagers a month, this would take over 15 years for every villager to serve a term on the island. I could increase the rate but it still feels untenable.

The third way that I debated was trying to complete the catalog of items. With the introduction of Cyrus and Reese in the expansion, the items that previously required trading to obtain are simply a matter of bells, time, and spreadsheets to manage everything. I could do some trades on Nookazon and just keep it part of my life while I work on the task for the indefinite future. 

Of course, I could also just call it quits, within spitting distance of that achievement completion. I could just choose not to open the game up tonight. I could let my whole village move into the quantum state where it continues on without me. I’ve done horror podcasts about this and it seems almost like a punishment for these little bundles of code that I have on the island. 

But on the other hand, I’ve entered into a hauntingly transactional relationship with them, where I give them gifts for photos until they desire to leave. Is this not perhaps worse? After all, I’m a soft touch who was too fearful for my PokeMon in PokeMon Shield that I refused to start the DLC I was gifted because it would mean either starting the game fresh, banishing my old PokeMon into the void or feeling guilty about not seeing them for over a year since I completed my PokeDex.

Have I entered into a sort of empathetic hell world where I cannot stop playing a game because it is meant to be about friendships with tiny fake creatures that I am emotionally attached to and that I will not allow to die? Is it best to vanish and never return, resisting any temptation once a series of achievements that these creatures cannot recognize have been completed? Is a game without an ending possible, or do we simply need to impose our ending and forget these characters we were told to see as friends and neighbors? Should we dehumanize them? Am I playing this game wrong if I have built so much empathy into this whole setting?

I don’t have an answer for myself, but if I worry this much about the game, maybe the quantum state is the best. The friends can continue on the island, maybe missing me, writing me letters hoping I’m well. My wealth I could never dream of attaining in real life will continue to earn dividends. My job designing luxury island homes might make me wonder where I went. But then, where might I go in real life?