Project of Merit Winner
The Consumer Experience of Animal Crossing: New Horizons Players During COVID-19 Lockdowns Raquel Holliday, David Rogers, Dr. Natalie A. Mitchell Abstract Due to COVID-19 global lockdowns in March 2020, Nintendo’s spring release game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACHN), garnered massive popularity and unprecedented sales. The simulation game involves creating a new life on an island. As life events such as high school and college graduations, proms, weddings were cancelled, and consumers experienced anguish due to isolation, consumers took to ACHN to recreate the same life events within a digital world. Instant success led to broad acceptance with consumers sharing examples of replicated life events in gameplay on social media sites. In this study, we investigated the influence of ACHN on culture, how consumers engage and connect with others, and their adjustment to COVID-19 lockdowns through their gameplay as shared on Twitter. These inquiries center around digital virtual consumption, which is heightened during a time of a global pandemic lockdown. The research team used a combined method approach which involved gameplay and a textual analysis of 1,000 Twitter posts to assess insights and images related to ACHN gameplay. Reoccurring themes of real-life simulation, co-creation and extended-self were found in the data. An unexpected finding included a first-ever in-game political campaign and many brand integrations. Insights developed from this research indicates how deprivation and scarcity within a global pandemic yields social connection, and creative, replicated lifestyles within simulated video games, affording players full control of their mediated worlds, despite external factors producing uncertainties
