Animal Crossing - Case Study
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What are Nintendo's Properties?:
1- Mario Cart (Nintendo's best selling game)
2- The Legend Of Zelda
3- Splatoon
4- Metroid
5- Pikmin
6- Animal Crossing New Horizons
Exam Prep -
Paper two, 'evolving media' focuses on how media industries adapt and change over time. We have 2/3 case studies/industry based questions in this exam, the game Animal Crossing, radio One Breakfast Show and the film Shang-Chi and Snow White.
Production Consumption > Distribution > Consumption
8-9 months minimum platforms internet release across
right acquisitions tv
voice actors social media
coders
About Animal Crossing:
Nintendo is the company behind Animal Crossing. The show has been on television for more than 20 years, starting in 2001. According to its official description, the game is a social simulation that mimics many real-life hobbies (such as fishing, gardening, decorating, etc.). The game was planned and made by "Katsuya Eguchi" and "Hisachi Nogami". The game wasn't released until March 2020, even though it was meant to debut on the Nintendo Switch in 2018. Despite the excitedly awaiting previous fans, it became the first console game to exceed 5 million digital sales in a single month. This was undoubtedly caused by social alienation and stay-at-home orders during the protracted COVID-19 pandemic.
At the 2020 Game Awards, the game even took home the Best Family Game title. Within six weeks of its debut, New Horizons surpassed the lifetime sales of previous versions, and with 37.62 million sales, it became the second best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch. With an estimated $2 billion in sales during its first year, it became the fifth-highest video game ever to do so.
Key Aspects of Animal Crossing:
-Multiplayer
-Social Simulation (gameplay is like living another life)
-Relaxing, colurful, natural (untypical of games therefore different)
-Gardening, building, fishing and chatting to NPC's
Animal Crossing profits off of its consumers due to its escapism aspect.
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Microsoft have a 100 year plan for their computer games.
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Macro (big) facts about the industry
1. Video game industry itself is much younger than the other industries i.e films and tv have been around much longer than video games itself therefor people often underestimate it.
2. The software market (the games not machines) was worth just over £4bn in 2021
3. It had grown 11.4% in comparison to a £3.8bn total from 2019 figures.
4. Spending on digital console games has decreased slightly by 5.59% to £1.65bn. This is mostly due to the lack of huge releases like 'The last of Us', 'Animal crossing' etc, although is still impressive due to video game performance during the pandemic.
Playstation 2 is the biggest selling console of all time.
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Release Dates
The release of Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing on the same day, had made their sales help each other similar to snowball similar to how Oppenheimer and Barbie had in the cinemas. Switching between the two with an almost barbie-like gameplay with Animal Crossing compared to the first person shooter of Doom. The creators of these games were aware of this and often times, companies will always time the release their media on specific times i.e. family movies are often released during half terms where families spend the most time together.
Fandom - Henry Jenkins
One of the most important aspects of media is what fans do with it. Henry says "if it doesn't spread, its dead". This is where the consumers become the producers themselves, and act as the producers themselves. Fans these days are textual poachers (thieves) taking certain parts of media and reshaping it to show what they want. This is an active show of participatory culture and theory with fans inevitably acting as unpaid labor advertising force. This is called spreadable media. An example of this would be fan art:
from the DOOM Crossing music video
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About Nintendo:
1. Nintendo's Headquarters are located in Kyoto, Japan.
2. Nintendo have sold 5.5Bn games.
3. Being a commercial success, estimated value of $55 Bn - which is still less than Sony and Microsoft.
4. Animal Crossing is the 13th highest selling game of all time with Minecraft being number 1
5. Animal Crossing is also a critical success having an average 90/100 on review sites.
Nintendo Copyright Strikes:
Youtubers with a collective large amounts of followings had been experiencing huge amounts of copyright strikes on their videos from Nintendo, this had ranged everywhere from 'modding', soundtracks and in some cases, playing the game. This had rivaled big fans up and had expected an apology from Nintendo yet they did not reply and continued with this behavior, this pushed a lot of big fans away from the company. On the other hand, this is understandable a Nintendo had wanted to be protective over their IP rather then allowing youtubers to pollute the reputation of the their game.
* Video Games usually take 8-9 Month to develop! (Think of it as the computer game being the producers baby)
Money / Monetization
Monetization is to turn something into a money generator - This is part of evolving media. Going back 20+ years, there was only really one revenue stream, the game cartridge / disk itself. Heres some other ways on how games companies make money now;
- In-game currencies / stores allowing people to purchase things within the game (the internet had made this possible) these are called Micro-transactions.
- Expansion packs and DLCS (Downloadable Content).
- Nintendo very carefully embrace merchandise and synergy.
These days, if you wish to download something, you will have linked your bank account to these game companies to remotely download content through the internet.
Synergy - When companies merge together for a mutual benefit.
Controversies
Pay to win - some consumers aren't happy with this as fairness has gone.
Loot boxes - encourage internet gambling for kids.
Spending of kids - wildly out of control this creates a bad reputation on the game companies.
"He has been charged £3160.58 between 18 February and 30 May 2019, clearing out his entire savings.
I contacted iTunes, who were extremely helpful but were unable to refund the amount and suggested I contact Blastworks Ltd, the app developer and game provider. [Under European rules, Apple users in the EU can request to cancel an order within 14 days of purchase, external].
I have phoned and emailed several times but have had no response."
'My son spent £3,160 in one game' - BBC News
"My 11-year-old daughter made more than 300 in-app purchases over five days on Roblox, the online games platform, resulting in a £2,400 bill on my wife’s PayPal account.
At the time, my wife was in ICU recovering from a 15-hour operation to remove a brain tumour. Incapacitated, and without access to her phone, she was unable to authorise or monitor this spending.
The first I knew about it was when our bank informed us that we had exceeded our overdraft limit.
My daughter managed to make 48 separate purchases, totalling almost £250, in a single day. At what point does a company step in to investigate this level of activity?"
Our 11-year-old daughter ran up a £2,400 Roblox gaming bill | Money | The Guardian
EA had made 1.6 Bn from loot boxes in one year from one FIFA game.
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Morals
Nintendo initially resisted any type of monetization for years and years, they avoided any types of loot boxes for years and tried to avoid a lot of DLC's. They focus on releasing high quality, bug free games. However, this means they take a lot longer for the release of their video games in comparison to other companies. You can buy games via subscriptions through Nintendo now. Nintendo online also allows you to visit other islands and there are 38 Million people subscribed to this. When animal crossing was first released, it was sold for £50 in comparison to top end PS games which cost £100 on the higher end.
One way of keeping your audiences wide is by keeping your game ratings low. For example, Animal Crossing's age rating is a 3 due to the lack of content descriptors.
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Types of Gamers;
Casual - May dabble in some games here and there, usually just play for the fun and escapism.
Core - Regularly play games however, are not super seriously competitive.
Hardcore - Having high end equipment, play the game most of the time and are often competitive.
Companies these days, use 'CAGED' when attempting to appeal to a certain audience.
(Class, Age, Gender, Education and Disability/Other).
How could Animal Crossing, appeal to different people from Class?
Class: One key part in playing games, is wishful design. Buying and decorating a house/ doing something that a lower class may not be able to do to their fullest ability, can be explored and allows this class to have the enjoyment of this which they may not have outside of the Animal Cross world. On the other hand, for upper class there are still different reasons they might be, for example both classes involve escapism and be free from the real responsibilities.
Age: Appeals to a younger audience as they would want the freedom and independence without any forced guidance however, it also appeals to the older generation as they might wish to escape the financial responsibility full of taxes and would allow them to relax. Fans of the original Animal Crossing (2001 when they were kids) may be wanting to play the new horizons game when they are 32-33 due to the nostalgia aspect.
Gender: Statistically, the computer game industry had been mainly directed towards men, however, mobile phones had tapped into the female market a whole lot more. For Animal Crossing, the game is mainly directed towards women in compared to men. Social games which has positive relations, there are more attraction for women whereas men are more likely to want to play games that make them feel competitive and independent.
Audie, an 87 year old woman, has played almost every day for 4 year with 3500 hours and had the game since Christmas 2015 However, she has had her 3Ds a lot longer. Over 3Million - 4million people had seen the tweet and are impressed with Audie's devotion to animal crossing. The company had caught wind of this and intricated and memorialized Audie into the game. Meet Audie the fox:
Animal crossing also involves a gay couple names Flick and CJ which allow Animal Crossing users to feel more welcome and accepted into playing the game.
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Animal Crossing could not have been better-timed. The game doesn't suddenly fast forward generations / years, you play in real time. The slow pace of Animal Crossing matched users slow engagement with he outside world. Generally, the pandemic had a huge negative effect on the economy however, the percentage of people who were playing games during this time increased by 60+%, therefore gaming and streaming services really benefitted from this pandemic. In 2020, 36M people in the UK called themselves 'gamers', during this time, these gamers spent 11-13 hours playing games. 13% of people returned to gaming. 37% of people said they were trying to escape boredom. 30% of people said it was to cope with stress. 91% of games said they love playing solitaire. 34% of people said they prefer fighting games over other genres during the pandemic. 4% of business reported significant growth in regards to gaming at the start of 2020. The fact that these characters are animals, there are less gender stereotypical regards towards the game. YouTube, twitch and other streaming websites have promoted not only the game, however the love for specific characters inside the game. This game aims to spread the message that it doesn't matter who you are, everyone is accepted into the community.
Tip for exams: giving a more obscure game that an exam board perhaps hasn't heard of is good as it appears more comprehensive.
QUESTIONS
Q1. Why has 'PRIDE' became so popular in Animal Crossing after release?
During the game, you aren't limited with appearance and gender as you are in the real world - this may mean that more members feel free to express themselves within the game, becoming more popular with the LGBTQ+ community.
Q2. Why are videogames a good place to share political views and expression?
This is because in the outside world, people may be limited or scared to express their views due to the reaction of other people, limitations in geography or regional ideology whereas, in a video game, you can be yourself and not worry too much about other peoples opinions - almost acting as your dream persona.
Q3. What other political and social causes?
Famously, the black lives matter movement and other events joined together to create their own in-game protest which circulated a fair amount of attention. There are also other events such as a community coming together to memorialize a user/player of the game that they look up to.
However, it's important to understand that in the game, there are profanity filters which allow these certain events to not go out of hand. This disables users from expressing racist, homophobic and sexist remarks within the game.
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Gilette collaboration
Gilette partnered with a fan to create custom, inclusive designs including disabilities, skin conditions etc. Many people are debating on whether this is to do with Gilette just using this as a PR stunt and all for the money or not. In my opinion, despite the intentions of the company, this for the most part is great for the users of animal crossing who will feel more accepted and seen in the community having their skin conditions and disabilities presented in such a popular game.
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The first screen in the character selector, you choose to either have short or long hair rather than choosing to be either 'male' or 'female'. However, this is only displayed in the UK and USA, other countries such as China, Japan etc do in fact have gender oriented roles.
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