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Social Stimulation: A Comparison of Digital Life By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman At one point Animal Crossing was amongst the most played games in my video game library, even though many consider Animal Crossing to be less of a game and more of a life simulator. You start off as a newcomer to a small village, named to your choosing. On your way to town you’re asked a series of personality test based questions and in classic Japanese video game style the way you answered them determines your avatar’s appearance. Once you make it to town, you’re immediately moved into your new homestead and are given the hefty bill for the house almost as quickly. Having no cash to give the realty trading/store managing tanuki (oriental raccoon dog) named Tom Nook for the house, you’re then asked to work in his general store to pay off your debt. Working for him not only lightens your debt, but also serves as a tutorial “mission.” After you finish working for Tom the actual “game” begins. The days pass in true real-time, meaning if your Gamecube’s/DS’ internal clock says it is 6:30 am, you’ll be prancing through your town in the bright and early morning. You spend the day: talking to your townsfolk and doing errands for them, maintaining your town (doing weeding), making money (either through treasure hunting, “stock market” trading, or selling/trading goods), and upgrading your house (be it the size of the homestead or with furnishings). There is so much to be done in the “game,” that one may find it hard to do everything they wanted to accomplish in a single day. However, once a player gets used to the chore demands, Animal Crossing becomes much like an MMORPG, where the player goes through a systematic list of obtuse tasks for a basic reward (a new piece furniture, room extension, snapshot of a villager, etc).
As Animal Crossing was at one point dominating my life in one way or another; I have now found a new, yet similar “addiction” in updating my profile and checking others’ on various social networking sites. Even though I briefly mentioned this before in a previous article, I felt that the analogy of Animal Crossing is much like Myspace/Facebook/Friendster was uncannily true and thus must be written about. One of the biggest similarities between Animal Crossing and social network sites are the “digital chores.” In the game you can write letters and send gifts to your animal neighbors in town or you can spend the day: watering flowers, pulling weeds, growing/picking fruit, and other things that you would hate to do in real life, yet find entertaining in game. The same can be said with social networking sites. You can literally spend hours leaving your friends comments, messages, and “super pokes” (a sort of digital “high five” system) in efforts to further raise your digital social status. Or if you grow bored of trying to be some e-socialite, there’s a multitude of solitary tasks one can do on such sites. I’ve often found myself in a time wasting vortex: rearranging the layout of my profile, creating clever logos and photoshops or even drafting out blogs for my profile (as if I feel like I don’t write enough for RwN). Some may argue that these little tasks you’re able to do with these sites may actually help bear some fruit in your friendships. However, I honestly see them as the same type of jobs presented in Animal Crossing; jobs that have “physical” equivalents that would be infinitely more productive/effective if they were performed “in real life.”
Going hand in hand with the “digital chores” is the next similarity between Animal Crossing and social networking, the shallow reward system. While it may seem quite fun at first to receive a new piece of furniture to deck out your house or to dig up a rare fossil; you’ll soon find yourself wondering why on Earth you’re trying so hard to make friends with Derwin the duck just so he’ll give you a snapshot of himself to place in your house. The shallow rewards system mixed with the open ended nature of the game create a sort of MMORPG styled addiction. In that you slowly become a slave to the game and while you’re conscious of your addiction and the fact that you’re not being fulfilled by the gameplay. You continue to play it in hopes of completing your bamboo furniture theme or your collection of fish despite your unhappiness. The same can be said about social networking sites. While it is nice to keep in touch with friends, classmates, and coworkers from years past; is there any benefit to the kid that used to catch lizards in the local park with me back in 5th grade when I contact him or leave him a comment saying “Hope you’re doing cool… Here’s some generic youtube fodder I found. Hope you have a great day!” or some other generic drivel? And does it really get me “further along” to leave “Hey cutie! Are we hanging out this weekend?” comments on the Myspace page of the girl I had my eye on, rather than texting, calling or just asking her face to face? Even though I do feel it’s necessary to have friends and build lifelong bonds with our fellow man. I doubt that doing so in the digital forum with the sort of implementation offered with social networking sites accomplishes much of anything. Does this mean I’ll be deleting my Facebook and Myspace account to seek some sort of path of friendship enlightenment? Not only is that impractical as there are some benefits to social networking (just as there are in playing some real time life simulator with anthropomorphic animals). And again I'll say "no," I see it as quite stupid, as I also use my profiles to advertise for RwN. The final similarity between social network sites and Animal Crossing is a more personal one for me. As I stated in my last point, I use my profiles on Myspace and Facebook to advertise this site along with keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances. Perhaps, I have some twisted, heterodox desires to have fans over friends. But to be perfectly honest, I’d be more excited to see a random person joining the RwN page on Facebook than if some cute girl or good friend I knew from back in the day tried to contact me there. Admittedly, I also had an ulterior motive for picking up the Animal Crossing game for Gamecube years ago. I heard on the web that you were able to unlock classic NES games in the form of gifts from your animal friends. Being the 8-bit game fan I am, there was no way I could have passed up an opportunity to essentially pick up 19 NES games for less than $50. Just as I hadn’t anticipated it to be so hard to effectively advertise for an obscure social commentary website without coming off as some sort of spam whore. I also failed to realize how hard it was to become good enough friends with the various animals, to the point where they’d eventually gift me a game. Sadly, I never got a single NES game during my year of playing Animal Crossing on Gamecube, not even the mediocre Donkey Kong Jr. Math. However, there was something going for that game that made me buy the sequel presented on the DS, despite the fact that there were no NES games in that version. In the same light I told myself that I’m just starting that Facebook account to advertise for RwN. However, I soon found myself getting wrapped up in: games of Scrabulous (their version of Scrabble), making graffiti (the MS Paint style comment system) and my Lil Green Patch (a virtual garden promising to fight global warming and save tropical rainforests the more you play).
While I’m not saying a game that’s meant to be some sort of simulation of friendship is a totally unnecessary thing. I am saying much like many of the options and functions offered in social networking sites, there are other things we can do to strengthen our relationships with others and our own self-esteem. Instead of leaving that hot girl from your class some urbane comment on her Myspace in hopes of securing your “mack position.” Perhaps, you could handwrite a letter; not only showing her that you have class, but also showing her that you can communicate on a deeper level than contemporary net speak. Or how about giving your best friend a pat on the back (or a platonic affirming hug, if you’re confident about yourself and your sexuality), rather than hadoukening them via super poke? With that being said, I now have a “thinking of you” card with a heartfelt message to draft to the girl I’m crushing on; me and my big mouth.
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