Back in 2005, Animal Crossing: Wild World took over my life. I would actually refuse to hang out with my friends so I could run home and hop into my virtual town. It was nothing short of a full-on addiction. While my parents say that I wasted away my childhood, I’d like to argue that I picked up some indispensable life lessons. Here’s how Animal Crossing trained me to be a better adult:
1. Patience is a virtue
As anyone in the Animal Crossing fandom will tell you, if you were not blessed with an excessive amount of patience, this game is not for you. Everything you wanted, from a bigger house to a full museum, took a lot of time to accomplish. Since AC runs in real time, if you had to wait until tomorrow for your house to expand, you actually had to wait until tomorrow. This translated to a lot of time spent doing not much of anything. Thanks to all that waiting around, I was forced to adapt a very patient mindset. Okay, occasionally I skipped days ahead, but for the most part I waited diligently like the goody two-shoes I was.
2. Saving money is important
In the AC universe, Bells (the game’s currency) were everything. You needed them to buy furniture, trade with neighbors, and, most importantly, pay off your home loans. These home loans cost hundreds of thousands of Bells, and since money was not particularly quick to come by, it meant saving as much as you could as fast as you could. While AC didn’t tempt you with purchases like Netflix and 2 a.m. burrito runs, there were still plenty of ways you could blow your cash. In the end, it was all a matter of prioritizing: a bigger house or that snazzy, oversized crown. While 10 year-old me wore that crown proudly, 20 year-old me recognizes the importance of saving those Bells. (Not to mention your real-life landlords can actually kick you out…)
3. Like it or not, looks matter
For claiming to be a “children’s game”, the world of Animal Crossing sure is harsh. Anyone who ever had to deal with the Happy Room Academy (the in-game club that rated your house’s aesthetic) knows exactly what I’m talking about. If your furniture wasn’t perfectly coordinated and placed just so, you had another thing coming. These passive aggressive twerps would send you letter after letter reminding you of how inferior your were. If you got stung by bees while running around town, every single person would comment on how gross your face was. And who could forget Gracie, the giraffe who would tear apart your fashion sense just because she could? (Honey, you wore navy with black. You can’t judge me.) Unfortunately, real life’s not too different. People will judge you solely on outward appearance, but it’s up to you to decide whether to take it to heart or not. Better to grow a tough skin now than cry later.
4.Capitalism is odd
Even after having taken classes about how capitalism works on a conceptual level, I still couldn’t really tell you how capitalism manages to actually function. So of course, little 10 year-old me didn’t really have a shot in hell of understanding it, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Now, I get that taking economy lessons from a game where the merchant is a raccoon isn’t the most reliable, but there’s still a couple of core lessons to be learned. First: people place value on the weirdest things. When in-game I can make more money off a fish than of a T-Rex’s skull, we have a problem. It’s like how people spend $300 on ripped jeans. Someone please explain it to me. The jeans are ripped, and this fish is so common and easy to catch. Who decided this stuff was actually worth anything? Animal Crossing also taught me the importance of competition. When the aforementioned raccoon is the only merchant in the game, (unless you want to deal with the Black Market fox, but that’s another story) the price you see is the price you pay. There’s no negotiating or Googling better options; it is what it is. These are the moments I become thankful for Amazon and Target, and the fact that neither of them is run by a Bell-mongering raccoon.
5.Cheating gets you nowhere
There was a well-known cheat in the AC universe known as the Weeds-to-Bells cheat. Using an Action Replay cartridge, you could turn every weed in your town into a bag of 69,000 Bells. (Very mature, Nintendo.) Now at the time, this seems like a great idea. No more scraping for cash! You can breeze through the game and buy whatever you want! Now skip forward 5 years to when you haven’t picked up the game in months and you decide to get back into it. Well guess what: there are bags of money everywhere. While this sounds like a great thing, I assure you it’s not. In fact, it’s a giant pain in the ass. You will spend literal days cleaning all of it up, and when your bank account maxes out, the problem becomes even worse. Real life’s the same way: cheating in the short-term always seems like a great idea, but the long term effects will make you scram in frustration and yells senselessly at inanimate objects.
6. The importance of a healthy and active lifestyle
In today’s world, we’re always looking for ways to get and stay healthy and lean. While there are dozens of diet options out there, I like to base my health lifestyle on some tricks I picked up from Animal Crossing: spend all day running around and eat nothing but fruit. It sounds a little intense at first I know, but trust me, it works*! Do you want to be fat? No. Are the Animal Crossing characters fat? No. Coincidence? I think not. If you want to be healthy and lively, this way is the only way to do it. Just suffer through, and you’ll be on your way to a better you in no time.
*I do not only eat fruit and exercise all day. No one should ever be eating only fruit and exercising all day. Don’t be an idiot.
7. The stock market is an art form
Some might say that 10 is a little young to be learning the ins and outs of stocks, but I say it’s never too young to make your first million (Bells). That being said, with my limited (aka Animal Crossing-based) knowledge of stocks, it’s a total crapshoot. I’m sure there’s some intricate system and way of doing things, but for the average Joe, we’re basically taking a shot in the dark with a blindfold on. Still, I would persistently stock up on my turnips every week and wait for what I thought to be peak buying time before attempting to make a profit on weeks-old vegetables. So I have a newfound appreciation for all those who have aced the game of stocks. I personally like to think that with my years of knowledge in the vegetable trade, I’m a real aficionado. Watch out Leonardo DiCaprio, there’s a new Wolf of Wall Street.
8. The importance of handwritten letters
Sometimes, all people really want is a letter letting them know you care. What’s even better is that, in real life, people can actually read and understand what you’ve written to them. Even when I sent nothing but strings on nonsensical letters and words to my Animal Crossing villagers, they were always so delighted that I’d written them at all. It even got to the point where they’d keep these letters and show them to me months down the line. If only my mom was that appreciative. Still, it serves as a reminder that people just want to be reached out to. So next time you’re procrastinating on calling your grandma, just write her a letter. Not only will she adore you for it, you won’t even have to talk to her. Everybody wins.
9. Sometimes, people just suck.
Animal Crossing nailed this part of life simulation. Some of the villagers that will move into your town downright blow. No matter how many presents you give them, tasks you run for them, or letters you send them, they will still be rude and abrasive. Then you change tactics. But still, no matter how much you ignore them and refuse their requests, they won’t ever leave you alone. They just suck for no apparent reason. Like it or not, real life also has these people. No matter what you do, you just can’t win with them. You can’t befriend them, and you can’t make them go away. You will just have to silently suffer through until they decide to get up and leave on there own time. But don’t worry, in the end they always do.
10. If you want it done right (or at all), do it yourself.
People really hate doing work. This is just a fact of life, one that I was taught early on. There are upwards of 10 people living and working in your town at any given point, and yet no one, not a single soul, can be bothered to do anything related to your town’s upkeep. You want a garden? Hope you really enjoy watering. You want more trees. Plant ‘em yourself. Is you’re town full of weeds? Get used to pressing that B button. You’re town is nothing but a bunch of squatters. Hell, the most the mayor ever did was give me a sparkler on New Year’s. Like, thanks Tortimer, but what do you suppose we do about the tarantulas that keep popping up everywhere? In the end, the only person you can ever really count on is you, in-game or not. So find your inner Miss Independent and run with it, and you’ll find that life becomes a lot more manageable.
