How To Win Friends and Influence Animals

Almost 2 decades of playing Animal Crossing

To understand what Animal Crossing means to me, I have to tell you a little about what I was like in 2001. I was a gawky 15 year old, attending public school for the first time ever after being homeschooled. I was immature for my age, I still played with dolls and action figures. I didn’t really know how to operate socially outside of church. My family had just moved to Illinois, where we didn’t have a church, where we knew literally no one.

I’d also just moved in Animal Crossing. Into a town where I had a tiny house of my own. And cute animals were my neighbors. There was Tybalt, a tiger that liked sports. A snobby horse that wore flower shirts named Cleo. A lazy bull named Stu.

If you aren’t familiar, Animal Crossing is a video game. It was first released in the United States for the Game Cube that year. Some describe it as a “social simulator” game. And boy was that something I needed.

My entire life I had been friends with people merely because they were around. They went to our church. Or were also homeschooled. I never thought about making friends. Friend were something you didn’t…