Animal Crossing: Fun or a second job?

    I'm going to start out being honest.  I don't like games where you need to make your own fun.  What do I mean by that?  I mean games that give you a bunch of tools and say 'go ahead, do what you want.'  Minecraft is one example.  I can't play the game more than 20 minutes or so, while someone else is spending a week constructing a scale model of the Enterprise.

Every version of the Enterprise exists somewhere in Minecraft.

    Now this is merely my own opinion.  I am not criticizing people who enjoy this sort of thing.  It's not for me, but that doesn't mean I can try and figure out why it's fun.  When you build the Enterprise, you have a feeling of accomplishment, right?  You've made something big and difficult that you can be proud of.  But was the actual construction project fun?  Is the hours of work enjoyable, or is it all the means to a goal?

    Lets talk about something I've been hearing a lot about lately, Animal Crossing: New Leaf.  I see lots of people playing and talking about playing it.  I played the original Animal Crossing back on the Gamecube because people poked me about how fun it is.  It wasn't long, however, before I discovered that I was logging onto the game because I had to, not because I was having fun.  Need to get to the store while it's open, need to pull some weeds.  New Leaf makes you the mayor of the town, so there's somewhat more reason why everything goes to heck without you.  But not much, honestly.

That'll teach you to go away for the weekend.

    Is it fair to be punished for not playing the game?  Animal Crossing isn't the only thing to do this, of course.  Some games are worse than others.  These days, MMOs like the idea of Daily quests.  Sure, if you don't log in, you're not losing anything.  You are, instead, missing out on something.  For a lot of people, the idea that you missed out on some experience, items, or achievement points, is the same as having them taken from you.  They are things you would have had if you had logged in.  I often see people saying they are 'doing their dailies' and it's all they log in for.  Are they having fun?  I'm usually told they are.  But if playing the game is so fun, why are you only logging in to do a daily task?

    When you get a reward of some sort, part of your brain makes you feel good.  Your brain can't tell if an item is real or digital.  To your brain, you have received something that is of value to you, and so it rewards you with warm fuzzies.  So sometimes you go 'that was fun,' but it wasn't fun, you just liked being rewarded.

    Animal Crossing makes it a bit worse.  Rather than just having to do something daily, it follows a clock.  You might need to play it at a certain time.  When I played Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, I was working all day.  I'm aware that I probably wasn't the target audience, but that meant that whenever I had time to log in, it was the middle of the night.  Sometimes I'd try and get in before work, when it was the morning.  It didn't take me long to realize I was playing because I felt like I had to.  So I stopped.  If I ever decided I wanted to play again, my town would be a mess.  I'm punished for putting down the game.

    What is the goal in Animal Crossing?  Well, it's to do whatever you want.  The only real goal is paying off your debt to Tom Nook.  All the jokes aside, he seems to let you take your time in paying that off.  For me, though, I need a goal.  Once I had paid him off in the original game, I felt no more reason to play.  It was the 'I win!' moment.  The whole town is still out there, though, with all the same activities.  But for me, there's no reason to do them.

"But I need more Nintendo Related house decorations!"

    If you have fun with this sort of game, that's fine.  Everyone enjoys their own thing, after all.  Fishing and shaking trees and chatting with animal people are all things to do.  You should just make sure that you're playing for fun.  If you find yourself saying 'I don't feel like playing right now, but I need to pull some weeds' or 'I have to get to the shop before it closes' or 'I'd better check what items are selling good today', then maybe you're not playing for fun anymore.  Maybe you're trying to maximize your profits or you're worried about the animals giving you a guilt trip.

"Dangit Sally, I have my own life!"

    I've watched my boyfriend be obsessed with MMOs, rushing to do his dailies and becoming upset when he missed them, all the while insisting he's doing it for fun.  All I'm saying is to judge your own feelings.  If you start finding yourself feeling that you 'have to' hop onto Animal Crossing instead of that you 'want to'... maybe it's time to let those animals fend for themselves.