The Rhetoric of Video Games

Animal Crossing is an “animal village simulator” for the Nintendo GameCube and DS video game consoles.1 As the game begins, the player has just left home tomove to the game’s small village. There he meets a host of cartoonish animal residents and settles into a new life. The player is penniless upon arrival, and the game quickly thrusts him into the reality of making ends meet. The village’s resident real estate tycoon and shopkeeper, Tom Nook, helps the player out, offering him a small shack to live in and a job of planting trees, delivering goods, and creating marketing materials on the town notice board (see figure 1). After completing these chores, Nook releases the player to explore the town on his own. He may then work, trade, and personalize his environment. The game offers a series of innocuous, evenmundane activities like bug catching, gardening, and wallpaper designing. One of the more challenging projects in the game is paying off the mortgage on one’s house. Animal Crossing allows players to upgrade their homes, but doing so requires paying off a large note the player must take out to start the game in the first place. The player must then pay down renovation mortgages for even larger sums.2 While the game omits some of the more punitive intricacies of long-term debt, such as compounding interest, improving one’s home does require consistent work in the gameworld. Catching fish, hunting for fossils, finding insects, and doing jobs for other townsfolk all produce income that can be used to pay off mortgage debt or to buy carpets, furniture, and objects to decorate one’s house. When my then five-year-old began playing the game seriously, he quickly recognized the dilemma he faced. On the one hand, he wanted to spend the money he had earned from collecting fruit and bugs on new furniture, carpets, and shirts. On the other hand, he wanted to pay off his house so he could get a bigger one like mine. Once he managed to amass enough savings to pay off his mortgage, Tom Nook offered to expand his house. While it is possible to refrain from upgrading, the unassuming raccoon continues to offer renovations as frequently as the player visits his store. My son began to realize the dilemma facing him: the more material possessions he took on, the more space he needed, and the more debt he had to assume to provide that space. And the additional space just fueled more material acquisitions, continuing the loop. This link between debt and acquisition gives form to a routine that many mortgage holders fail to recognize: buying more living space not only creates more debt, it also drives the impulse to acquire more goods. More goods demand even more space, creating a vicious cycle.