After six months of quarantine, my wife and I had exhausted our hobbies of welding and running an online clothes store. Netflix was drained and so were we; we needed to do something about it. We had never been gamers of any type. We thought the idea of an immersion world game would be an obvious choice under the circumstances. Our real-world interactions were gone so this would step in as a replacement, so we took a chance.
As it turns out, a game named Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a wonderfully constructed immersion world of self-expression that was just the thing to kill our time. It also helped me to understand non-binary gender identity in a unique way.
For clarity sake here is how the game works :
Animal Crossing is the last in a series of its life simulation game by Nintendo. It puts the player on an island and through gathering resources they can build an identity for themselves and show their personality through decorating the entire island as they see fit. It mirrors the ideals of conservative capitalism with infinite resources but that is another topic for another day. The island is an aggressively safe space, the scariest thing that can happen is that you get stung by a wasp and your face looks weird until you take free medicine. Safety also comes from the positivity of the computer-generated characters, there are eight distinct personalities programmed into a selection of 300 characters, all of which are kind and only have positive messages. The object is to build a happy life with a happy island of people who all like one another. The game also works online where the player visits other islands created by other real people in costumed in their avatars.
At the beginning of the game, you pick your avatar from a selection of two that has vague gender features, and the identity is labeled as “style.” You can look any way you want, all possibilities are gender-free and faces can be constructed generally to look like a “Nintendo style” face in a variety of face structures, colors, moods. All clothing worked with all avatars. For the first few weeks I wore fabulous dresses with matching hats, it felt very freeing.
Only the English version of the worldwide game presents the characters as genderless. This is a new feature in the series of the Animal Crossing series and worth exploration. While it is promoted as a children’s game, the average age of its players is in the 20-35-year-old age range. Stripping away of all gender associations sends the message that all genders are completely equal. By gender stripping the characters it allows the player to understand that gender is fluid and all differences, when it comes to expression, are equally weighted.
Nintendo is behind the curve with the use of storytelling with LGBTQ+ characters. Studios are making games like Bugsnax, The Last of Us Part II, and Hades that were hailed for their LGBTQ+ characters that break stereotypes. Nintendo’s approach is to eliminate the power behind the stereotypes themselves by creating rules that leave gender under the control of the viewer .
This is a great message and something that is uniquely suited to the video game industry. The medium allows for a complete identity stripping given its anonymous nature in the media.
In a Washington Post Story, Aya Kyogoku, and producer for Hisashi Nogami said it is “not just about gender,” but relates to the team’s overall feeling that “society is shifting to valuing a lot of people’s different identities.”
“We basically wanted to create a game where users didn’t really have to think about gender or if they wanted to think about gender, they’re also able to,” she said.
Games Don’t Judge You for Expressing Your True Self
https://popmatters.com/animal-crossing-new-horizons-2645979937.html
https://www.wired.com/story/stardew-valley-gender-euphoria-games/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/03/23/nintendo-explains-philosophy-behind-animal-crossings-big-changes-like-gender-expression-terraforming/