UK News Outlet Calls Animal Crossing's Nature Day "A Farce", Says It "Teaches Kids Toxic Lessons"

You know the games a smash hit when people are popping in trying to ruin people’s fun and troll fans. Because the game was huge before and not a peep from news outlets.

Don't fed those trolls.

I honestly didn’t even think of that. To be fair, they have a point given that you essentially turn up to a desert island, destroy the environment, industrialise and wipe out the local fish and insect populations for your own amusement.

Controversy creates cash

-Eric Bischoff

Unless the author of that independent article lives their life as a fallen fruit person and lives in a mud hut then they are hypocrites. To live as a human is to consume resources, at least the game teaches kids that fact.

Look at all the controversies GTA has spurned over the years and it's still one of the best selling franchises of all time. The latest game is several years old and still tops the charts regularly. No worries to be had for Animal Crossing, it will keep selling even after those articles.

This is why we don't like mega normies

I'm now tempted to completely deforest and litter all over my island to spite these illegitimate self-pleasuring barely literate tabloid doodlers.

It's almost a shame that my little heart sings for these cute animal friends.

Their own subscriptions must be going downhill because of lack of Real News so what do you do but deflect from your own mis-managed News Business in hopes more people will subscribe to your miss-aligned world views. So where were these news reports about the Piss Poor environment that the CEO were destroying the environments not reporting on these real crooks. One thing They were on the payroll to not write stories about these crooks.

@SwitchForce We live in a society

The Independent - that's all that needs to be said.

However I'll add that they awarded Astral Chain 4/10,calling it a button masher. Even away from that, they're a joke of a news outlet.

Edit, I'm wrong, it was actually 1/5 they scored Astral Chain. So, even more ridiculous.

I know people are enjoying Animal Crossing as a whole, but when I go to Twitter, my timeline is generally filled with 3 things AC related - crying about turnip prices, how bad the events have been so far, and how things aren't perfect.

I mean you do you. I played the original, loved finding NES games. I got the 3DS version, but the fun fizzled quick without that carrot. I'm just going to enjoy the SMM2 update and you guys enjoy virtual botany. At least people are happy while quarantined.

It you can always replant and regrow said trees. If you do this with foreign fruit you learn that living off the tree rather than chopping them down yields much better rewards. Also that pruning said trees (in game) gives a much better supply of wood.

@nessisonett wasn't this a Utopia????

After playing animal crossing I was inspired to fly to a deserted island and chop down all the trees

What about the the trees and plants you plant as well?

The person writes for a paper owned by a Russian ogliarch who owns significant amounts of Gazprom and Aeroflot, so seems a bit silly for them to criticise a virtual representation of an ecosystem when in the real world their boss/owner significantly contributes to actual environmental damage.

"You can deforest, fish and generally pillage to your heart’s content"... sounds like that Animal Crossing/Doom crossover is becoming a reality

I am beyond sick of these moral busy bodies in the media who can't separate fiction from reality. Been reading stupid crap like this since the early 90s. I've always said and will keep saying it... Games are an escape for a lot of people and have no effect on the real world. Don't like the content? Great, move the hell on and find something else to play, especially these days there are more than a few other options. And let people who want to play Animal Crossing have their fun.

Nothing to see here. Simply existing requires consumption of resources. It's the way of life. Plus, it's freaking game!

The Independent has sound environmental principles such as not being commercially viable to print.

Ugh. People are so boring. Let us chop down as many virtual trees we want.

Are we back to MARIO TEACHES KIDS TO STOMP TURTLES levels of journalism now?? What is wrong with people?

Hey, you super intelligent and professional news people, it's a completely fantasy video game set in a world where animals talk to each other and the player does a bunch of very gamey things to achieve whatever silly goals. I'm pretty sure kids aren't learning that it's okay to destroy the Earth from playing it. In fact, I'd wager that roughly zero people who've played Animal Crossing have went out and chopped down a tree at any point in their life. But hey, I'm no scientist or psychologist or whatever.

If Animal Crossing is a farce, then I imagine the author hasn't watched young children play Fortnite.

Actually, I thought the ability to recycle trash fished from the rivers into nice items like succulent plant pots to be a nice lesson rather than a toxic one. But who am I to disagree...

And what are newspapers made of, Mr Newspaper person?

Kettle . . . black. . . .

@Yattaze he is talking specifically about Mystery Islands, which are not rated by anyone.

To be fair, it is kinda creepy when you think about it: you arrive on a random island, exploit its resources and probably leave its flora and fauna in ruins, and then just abandon the island and everybody forgets it existed.

And it's totally fair to ignore it and pretend it's just a meaningless game mechanic, but it's a mechanic basically centered around nature's exploitation for profit. And if the same game then proceeds to teach you a lesson about being eco-friendly - well, that's kinda dumb.

Maybe they could tackle similar real life issues with equal vigor? This article (The Independent's I mean, not NLife's lol) is a little low on ambition!

Kind of got a point to be honest especially as the game even asks you to chop down a tree every so often for Nook Miles

Oh well

Watch that the rest of the industry is “funding” these articles now that it’s coming out how successful this game is, AC will be way more successful than “next gen” consoles and games and they have that so the narrative must be controlled.

Suppose the Independent will rip Mario apart next for stomping on turtles heads, eating wild mushrooms & sacrificing pets with long tongues to reach new hights. Surely this fictional game is a better role model than say games that feature a core mechanic of shooting people in the face, running around a field with a ball making millions a week or killing innocent visitors from outer space allegedly being refered to as 'invaders'.

The only farce I see so far is an article bashing a video game with toxic misconceptions of how to process Fiction's content and themes.

Again, a tabloid (or what's the euphemism now, "mainstream media"?) jumping on the bandwagon of the fandom's "job" due to the subject being a hot topic at the moment. Peculia non olet.

Everyone knows The Independent is for the privileged people and they’re still sore about the ban of fox hunting.

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

It’s a cartoon video game. Not eve thing needs to teach a lesson.

Is this the Onion or something? This can’t be real 😳

@Zuljaras Hahah! Brill!

To say that what we do in a game will affect what we do in real life is fecking stupid. Years of analytical studies has shown us that this is not the case eg game violence.

Now, where's my axe; there are a couple of trees down the way that need felling. And I need to sell some pesky wildlife to a geezer in the local shop.

Well, actually, as a counterpoint, my sons and I were in our backyard, where we noticed a little bug. From the looks of it, it was a stinkbug, which my boys also recognized as the same creature found in Animal Crossing.

Now, they didn't run inside to craft a net to catch it or anything, hoping to make money. Oh no, they looked at it, examined it a little, appreciated the spots on its back, and respectfully left it alone to contine with whatever they were doing afterwards.

Also, I may have seen one before, but only now did I recognize it, so I in fact learned something new as well.

People shouldn't assume videogames bring out the extreme in everyone. Just because I play a shooter, doesn't mean I feel like killing people. Just because I play a racing game, doesn't mean I feel the urge to overcome my fear of driving and finally get my driver's license and race really, really fast. And just because I catch bugs in Animal Crossing to sell them, doesn't mean I am doing that either...

This is hilarious

We are currently Living in a world where we have to stay at home and just twiddle our fingers, I honk the person who wrote this article is clearly an idiotic person, clearly click bait at its finest

They are not at all skilful in their message – but they are not entirely wrong either - just mostly.

For a game that outwardly sells itself on 'niceness' there are some morally grey activities that are staples in the game.

Now for MOST of us intelligent folk we remember it's just a video game and don't let it effect our real life habits. For instance I would never consciously harm the environment - or ever engage in fishing for that matter (If you do that's fine – it's your journey) - because there is plenty of scientific and direct experience to support the fact that all 'beings' experience pain.

However for very young kids and the more easy to influence – there likely is (but not definitely) an effect on their view of the world – such as growing up with a degree of casualness towards nature.

We ARE sometimes effected by what we expose ourselves to – even by non 'real-world' influences such as media – and the people affected most tend to be the ones who would deny any effect takes place at all!

Anyone ENTIRELY dismissing some truth in this is, I'm sorry to say, a fool.

And that, my friends, is a lot of people. So is this journalist being over dramatic? Yes for sure – but they are not completely 'wrong' either. However their title is pure sensationalist TRASH and I'm sure most of the full article is too.

Guessing the author got hit over the head with a net one too many times as a child.

@nessisonett,

Well I knew you would think they had a point, when in fact they don't.

@Yattaze I don't believe so. If you travel to an island, you can pretty much strip the entire thing down without any consequences.

I mean.....they’re not wrong.

In other news, I got five stars today!

@FatHedgehog Very cool - well done. I'm not even close.

Why does everyone and the mother wanna rip Nintendo's cutest IP to shreds all of a sudden? Don't like it, don't buy it!

@johnvboy Good to know you can spout opinion as facts. I really think you’d fit right in at The Independent.

The author of that article actually has something very interesting to say.

Unfortunately, it’s often true that journalists do not write their own article headlines - the headline is obviously sensationalist which is a bit comical given it’s in regards to Animal Crossing.

@nessisonett,

It's a video game fella, get over yourself, you are just such a negative glass half full person, no wonder you fit right in on here.

How many trees have been chopped down to produce the newspaper printing this? No one is holier than though.
I thought correlation between games and real life had been kicked out years ago as nonsense. If little Denise asks for an axe for Xmas be scared, otherwise just move along.

On a side note my favourite copycat story was one I heard about trying to create the flying potion from Warlock. Extremely evil but funny at the same time.

@Enigk,

So true, the article is just pure click bate, and it's easy to hate on things that are popular.

@Northwind Your reply basically is how I feel Twitter is about AC.

"I love the game, but... let me rant for 3-4 tweets about what I don't like about the game."

I am a bit amazed they are going more mobile-ish considering they have a AC mobile game that I don't think did great for them.

@ShadowSmile Do you even understand what you’re saying? The Guardian and Independent are the furthest thing from ‘far left’. Hell, The Independent literally supported the Tory-Lib Dem coalition even in 2015. The Guardian are veeeery soft left leaning in the sense that they pretend to be liberal while still being entirely anti-Corbyn. Don’t bother repeating garbage you hear on Twitter if you don’t understand it.

If you derive all of your life lessons from video games and take them verbatim as the essential teachings then you have more problems than simulated tree chopping, bug genocide and over fishing.

Video games are a tool for escapism much like books and movies. The pandemic did cause the SJWs and Snowflakes to enter a period of silence for a short time.

I suppose they do have a point. I've quipped about this more than once around family. But I really think they might be taking it a little bit too seriously if they aren't just using satire. I imagine most people know that it's horrible and wrong to go around deforesting and devastating nature. The Nook Miles program in particular doesn't just promote deforestation - it also promotes growing new trees and flowers, etc.

It's really on you if you decide to go digging holes and cutting down trees, deforesting entire islands instead of using a stone axe that doesn't cut the tree down but still gives you wood. Catching bugs and fish is also completely optional.

@TryToBeHopeful Still? It used to be very good, but in recent years has degenerated into a blog.

I learned from the other article that if I disagree with someone like this, it makes me the bad guy.

Guess I'm a bad guy.

I mean, isn't Earth Day in itself a farce? We aren't given off work on Earth Day, so people still drive to work, polluting the air, people still consume products, polluting the earth, no factories close for the day, no oil companies take a day off. If anything, his description of Nature Day is an exact comparison to its real life counterpart.

@nessisonett
They both remind me of the NYT. They seem left to me but almost all newspapers lean one way or the other now. They do not seem far left though. Just some garbage in there with some subtle attempts at influencing socialist behaviors.

@nessisonett The action in Animal Crossing do not deplete natural resources. Before the Agricultural Revolution, this is how every human had been collecting resources for nearly 200 thousand years. Fishing and catching bugs for personal gain is just what every other animal does. It is only when done on a large business scale where we fish out thousands of fish a day when it becomes a problem. As for chopping trees, the player is punished for having few trees so it is balanced. I believe most people overestimate the effect just one individual has on their surroundings.

brain Independent from body.

@Obito_Sigma
You hit on the essence of the point we need to make. We are at the top of the food chain and the chain is designed to be manipulated from the top down. We fish, it keeps down over population. We cut trees, it thins the forests, new trees grow and other plant life thrives.

It is the greed that that destroys the chain not the thoughtful use of the earths resources.

I guess I can understand the point to a degree if applying the actions to real world situations.

But the outrage on this falls a bit on the disingenuous side as it doesn't put things into the context of the game. It's not like you fish and fish and fish and there's ultimately no more fish. Or that there aren't resources to replant trees or flowers that you may raze. You are given direction to continue to use the resources you gather to cultivate more resources.

@nessisonett

The Guardian and Independent are pretty extreme on the liberal spectrum (social values). But moderate on economics (left).
People just confuse economics with social issues. They're largely independent of one another.

A. ‘Video games cause violence because video games are violent’’

B. ‘There’s no scientific correlation between video games and violence discovered in 40 odd years of games being popular’

A. ‘Oh....well they cause .... erm, .....’

B. ‘I’m waiting.....’

A. ‘Damage to the environment!’

B. ‘....here we go again...’

The Independent was, once upon a time, a well-regarded quality newspaper. Sadly, it has now joined the race to the bottom that has characterised news in the digital age. It's now little better than the likes of Buzzfeed and, at times, reads almost like a left-wing version of the Daily Mail.

Rather than jumping on the rage train regarding this article, we should be pleased that Animal Crossing has now become so popular that even mainstream publications are talking about it. Chances are that articles like this will do little to damage this popularity, either. I remember at the height of the Wii craze in the late 2000s, every other week there seemed to be some drivel in the likes of the Sun about broken TVs and injuries caused by careless Wii Remote waggling. You know what they say - any publicity is better than no publicity...

@TriforceBun I've been playing Mario since I was a wee lad, and now every morning I inject a mushroom and jump on some heads to start my day. Other gaming influences have found myself going into strangers houses and opening their chests / drawers.

Look, people can only take so much news about death and corona and the inevitable apocalypse that is sure to come from all this... so let them report on stupid things like this. It’ll all be over soon anyways.

It also taught me to bury my money!

@OorWullie Ah, yeah. Those geniuses who called Astral Chain a button-masher while their own screenshots and text gave away the fact that they were playing on a difficulty too low to be counted in the game's letter ranking system.

What next? Stories from the daily mail about how one of the young characters looks great in a bikini and how she will look amazing when she’s fully “filled out” and an adult (genuine daily mail story)

@Northwind I think people don't realize sometimes how much they focus on the negative.

I used to listen to podcasts a lot, now I barely do. One reason is that people would be talking about a game. They would talk about the cool aspects for about 1-2 minutes, then for 10 minutes talk about that 1 thing that annoys them. Then at the end, they go, "it's a must have." But I listened for 10 minutes how awful that one part of the game was, and I often think, "well, I'll get it on clearance maybe."

That's all. Not attacking you, or anybody else specifically. It's just an annoying people do with video games, movies, books, TV shows. They could love it, but man do they love to tell you the 1 thing they hate about it.

Someone needs to teach that person the skill to tell videogame from reality... which gamers usuallly DO have...

Yes! Because so called environmentalists and the old hippie movement who have moved into power a long time ago, totally are not deforesting on a global scale to feed their biomass industry. LOL.

A lot of people in the comments talking about how if you mess up your own island there are consequences, but I believe the article is referring to mystery island tour islands. There, you are not necessarily incentivised to destroy the island but people do wipe it clean to spawn tarantulas. That is not what the game pushes you to do, but it does happen. I actually have one qualm with the game, that being there is not a garbage can on the mystery islands, forcing me to leave tires boots and cans all over the beaches. Maybe just a line from Wilbur telling me that he will clean up any of my trash?

@brunojenso @Finlderp well put. I agree with both of you when you say that there is some truth to what the article says but it focusses too much on the negative.

First of all let's not forget that it's a videogame and as a commercial product it doesn't need to be instructive, just recreational.

That being said the game has a lot of features that promote a positive approach towards nature. The game wants you to plant trees, water flowers, recycle trash etc. In previous entries trash was just trash and the only way to relocate a tree was to chop it down and plant a new one.

The idea of pillaging deserted islands to your heart's contempt is where it gets a bit sketchier but imo not even that much.

While it's true that you can chop down the trees it's also true that you only get 1 more resource for doing so and that it requires a specific tool which is more expensive to craft. The way I see it the game is not incentivising you to chop down the trees as much as it's giving you an option to do so at a (slightly) higher cost and with a very moderate reward.

Either way it really seems like the writer of the article tried hard to find the negative message in a game that is probably one of the most wholesome and overall positive games I've ever played.

I wish we could down vote news articles for their stupidity and crap journalism, like the referenced one from the independent

Well, that was stupid.
Of course, Animal Crossing is a bit at odds with actual environmentalist logic. It's the one lesson PETA never learns from videogames in general.
That said, it's a good sign people are using New Horizons as a bandwagon. It means it's a hit, Business Insider and other dumb outlets be damned.

Newsflash! It’s just a video game!

Isabelle has told me three days in a row my town has too many trees. Residents are getting lost on their way home and miss their favorite TV shows. Trees will be coming down as I've planted lots of cherry and apple trees which are worth more than the native pear trees.

i wanna get this game just to make them mad

@Narrator1 Yep, that lot. Rarely am I irked by a review but that one really annoyed me as it was clear the reviewer was lying about how he played the game. Then he dug himself into an even deeper hole on Twitter trying to defend the review. I think he just wanted to be wanted to be 'that guy' on Metacritic.

I forgot, it was actually 1/5 he rated the game, not 4/10.

While these people might be slightly insane (like PETA), they do a great job at building their case. Yes, while Nature Day does seem kind of funny to be included in a game that rewards you for chopping down trees, it's also a game I don't take serious. It's not meant to be taken serious, it's an escape. Everyone is so big to bring up faults or criticize the game, but why aren't they commending it for being one of the few refreshing games that isn't the same cycle of MURDER! BLOOD! VIOLENCE!

I can't take a game serious when I have sheep that are fitness freaks or cats wanting to be pop stars.. nor is it trying to be realistic. No game is going to be perfect, because everyone has different likes and interests. Just enjoy this super chill game for what it is. Considering how the current climate is in the world, I'd much rather people play a game like Animal Crossing than a game that you're a killing machine. Now go catch some bees and chop down some trees.

I've been saying for a while that it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between liberalism and satire.

Where were these people when everyone were clearing their farmlands in Stardew Valley?

Because we don't stop deforestation on Sumatra by yelling about video games.

Someone needs to tell the Independent that it’s just a game. Sheesh.

Here we go again with the old games equal toxic lessons for kids argument, which is a very one sided view, and the same argument can be used for any game, if all you want to do is see just the negative side.

Not everyone wants to use a game mechanic just because its there, and although we could easily show the kids they can raze an island and get a stack of tarantulas we have chosen not to. We would much rather they find things out for themselves and decide if that's the root they really want to take. Personally its of no interest to me buy I know my daughter likes to do a bit of tarantula farming when the grand-kids are in bed.

At the moment the three grand-kids aged 7, 9 and 12 are enjoying a lot of co-operative play, for example after learning that none native fruit sell for more to maximize the amount of bells they could make they needed to work together. Along with sharing fruit with each other to grow on their islands, they have a daily native fruit swap so that they all maximize the amount of bells they can make.

They have also learned to manage island resources, balancing the need to make bells from gathered resources against the need to make tools and other items, so more trees are planted than they ever cut down and the islands are covered in flowers because they quickly learned that more flowers results in more bugs.

Obviously we are all they are playing it wrong lol.

The game does feed toxic capitalist ideals. Despite featuring a deserted, forested island for camping to start with, the player is encouraged to cultivate and cull and terraform and transform the island into their perfected image of suburbia, all the while trying to meet an every expanding debt to landlords by reaping the harvest of the island.

Don't get me wrong: it's a great and fun game, and I play it daily. I'm not trying to crap on the game by any means. But a BETTER game would make sustainable management of your resources a critical component of the gameplay. Overfishing/overlogging/overharvesting would lead to a greatly degraded ecosystem and poorer quality of life. Too much building might pollute the waterways. Etc.

I'm not saying don't manage nature - we HAVE to given that there's NO way to be truly sequestered from negative human impact - but manage natural resources responsibly and with positive, ecological and community-focused goals in mind.

There ARE games that allow such things, but they don't have the staying power or FOMO feedback-loops of franchises like Animal Crossing or Pokémon. I don't think it's impossible to create such a feedback loop for sustainable management; games like Pokémon GO have already figured out how to get us doing positive activities like moving outdoors (well, not the best right now, but it was a great idea 4 years ago when the game came out).

Games like Animal Crossing thrive on hacking the humans brain's pleasure centers with addictive loops to push players to keep playing. This leads to a "take as much as possible" mentality: one that's highly symbiotic with capitalist economics. If we want sustainable management of resources, we need to figure out how to make "take only what's necessary and no more" to be a goal.

Gamers tend to be smart people, and they're not being brainwashed by these fun games. But let's not crap on the ecologists who are looking for positive reinforcement of sustainable living. Animal Crossing doesn't provide that - but it gives token lipservice to Earth Day. It would be nice for a future game to provide more than that.

• from a gamer/urban forester

@nessisonett Yeah but then your island looks ugly. The truth comes out when the player looks at what they have done and question if they could have been better or if they don't care.

What the hell is up with some of these comments? It's like I walked in on some antifa wokey wokey meeting. Or sociology class in the 70's.

Mountain_Man got a point. This is just an absured premise. How is there even debate? Silly willies.

This article has 'boomer' written all over it

The quote in the article is absolutely right.
And I've been wondering at times if the ACNH team put some of those things in there with some irony, as if they wanted to point out or express certain things that are going wrong in the real world. And I'm pretty sure here and there they did.
But all of that doesn't take anything away from the game - if anything, it adds to it and makes it even better.

Oh my god, it's a game. This is progressivism at it's most regressive.

Considering Isabelle thinks my 4 star island is too "rural" for her tastes and she wants a bunch of trees chopped down...yep, typical hypocritical ecoidiot.

...Don't be a PETA...

Yep. This is a smash hit. Anytime something becomes Uber popular, the people who aren’t part of the fan base and are annoyed something became popular before they discovered it have to dump on it. It’s something that happens over and over.
Other smash hits that people hate because they’re popular include games like fortnite, undertale and minecraft.

"The author of that piece appeared to confirm that it was only created to wind fans up and earn him some money in the process."

The same reason you shared it on here 🤡

Clearly a slow day in the office for that chap...

@Yattaze i deforest and virtually destroy every island I visit in order to catch some tarantulas $$$....
So not that much penalized really.

I guess not everyone can distinguish between real life and a video game. Nor do they seem to realise that some of us don’t rely on video games to teach our children - we actually parent them. Other than those basic flaws in the author’s piece, I’m sure it was a riveting read

is the Independent a tabloid now, geez

People who write articles like this usually know nothing about nature preservation and ecology.

...and Fortnite is teaching kids to kill each other.

Articles like this are just proof of how big a deal Animal Crossing has suddenly become. I doubt this guy even believes a single word he's written, he just knows, like that other boring hipster troll guy from earlier in the week, that writing an article like this and slapping a provocative headline on it is an easy way to get some rage clicks right now.

God, what a stupid thing to be offended about.

This is being discussed in a game where you're on an island with humanoid animals?

"Grown ass man complains about videogame" should have been his headline

Must have been a slow news day for him

He has a point, that I think many of you missed. I actually have felt kind of bad after a visit to a Mystery Island, if I have left too much "ruin" behind me Making tarantula islands is probably the worst example of this.

Sorry, but its not a game company's job to teach your kids how to save the environment. Its the parents and the kid's job to learn that nature is important. This is AC not Captain Planet.

Everything living that you can catch - you can let it free again!
And you never have to axe trees - you can dig em up with roots unharmed and find a better place for them!

The game teaches kids a good and a toxic way. That's way better than a one-sided perspective, way better than the uninformed and limited horizon of that UK news outlet!

However, before a game teaches anything to kids, we have to teach our kids that it's just a game, and even the most realistic games are not like reality. Make sure your kids understand the difference, then the content is secondary.

Oh look the old gurd Desprtly trying to look relevant

Never felt an interest for Animal Crossing. It does look like a boring pointless game, but then again, I dont like any sim games, so I wouldnt know how good it is compared to other games of the same genere.

That said, there are good objetive reasons to hate animal crossing, and it has nothing to do with nature. It is a lot more simple: Nintendo could be investing their time and money in more interesting games xD