Are People Still Playing Animal Crossing?

“Animal Crossing: New Horizons” is a simulation game from Nintendo that took over 2020 with a whopping 32 million games sold and counting. With the pandemic at an all-time high, “Animal Crossing” was a welcome reprieve, making even the most mundane tasks like watering your flowers feel like a warm hug from an old friend. 

With big events and holidays like “Festivale” in February or “Turkey Day” in November, “Animal Crossing” seemed to be on track to consistently update the game (for free!) and listen to the player base in order to offer quality-of-life updates, like more design spaces. 

By the summer of 2020, Nintendo’s updates included things like swimming, dream addresses and seasonal items. And yet, when the 1-year anniversary rolled around, the player base was considerably… less. 

In an article with The Verge, Andrew Webster addressed this. 

“The result was that a lot of players, or at least most of the people I know, burned out after a few weeks or months,” wrote Webster. 

While this wasn’t entirely to do with the lack of updates, Nintendo left much to be desired for “Animal Crossing” players, as they found things like “Brewster,” a pigeon who ran a coffee shop in previous games, unused in the code. This led to player speculation about when he would make his first appearance, and ultimately disappointment when he never did.

At the Nintendo Direct in June, players anxiously awaited an update to celebrate a full year of “Animal Crossing.” In what seemed like the last straw for some, players waited for nothing. Nintendo Direct came and went, and there was no mention of “Animal Crossing” anywhere. 

In a blog post dedicated to “Animal Crossing” news, one user wrote just that. 

“This year’s E3 Nintendo Direct would have been the perfect time to offer some sort of communication update on the state of the game, and stop leaving fans in the dark,” they explained.

The blog post continued to describe the player base’s frustrations with both Nintendo and the lack of communication. 

“While some of the response could certainly be called dramatic, we do think that feeling disappointment from Animal Crossing’s showing at E3 this year is an understandable reaction,” they wrote. 

“After all, New Horizons has felt like it’s been running on life support for about half a year now, leaving many fans to view the E3 2021 Nintendo Direct as the ‘last hope’ for news.”

However, most recently Nintendo announced another free update to mark the beginning of summer. Much like last year, they announced the fireworks shows that will take place every Sunday in August. 

This time, though, they promised “sweet” new items that differentiate from last year and announced new seasonal items that would be made available throughout the summer as well. 

So, are people still playing “Animal Crossing?” 

It stands to reason that a large portion of players have fallen out of love with this game, largely due to the lack of quality-of-life updates, as well as no variation in the repeating events throughout the year. 

Although, “Animal Crossing” has still retained some of their original player base, as some players do not play to get something new from the game but rather to adhere to their beloved routine. 

“Animal Crossing” was a game that comforted many at the height of quarantine, and although people have been burned out on it, it can still be argued that this game continues to provide what so many people loved about it, to begin with—a return to normalcy that the real world lacks.