Animal Crossing island of Joshua Wong, leading Hong Kong democracy activist
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has only been on the market for under two weeks, but its user-generated content features have already encouraged quite a lot of emergent gameplay. Hong Kong protesters are using the game to create protest imagery on their islands -- including the Animal Crossing island of Joshua Wong, one of the movement's seminal figures, who tweets: "The #Covid_19 pandemic has halted public demonstrations, so protesters are taking their cause to Animal Crossing"!
"I'm in love with the ways Animal Crossing has become a full-on Second Life-style virtual social space despite Nintendo's actively hostile infrastructure," game academic Em Lazer-Walker observes. And as an example of that, notes how Animal Crossing players have figured out how to sell virtual items within the game:
A Chinese Animal Crossing player has set up a store on their Island where other players can buy custom designed in game items from them.
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 29, 2020
They added their WeChat Pay and AliPay QR codes as a custom design in the game so people can send them real world money for the items. lol pic.twitter.com/eCeRDZ1O9v
"Mobile payments are extremely popular in China," reports Asia game industry analyst Daniel Ahmad. "You just scan the QR code of the other persons mobile wallet and you can send them money instantly. Which is what they have done here. The dude basically created his own in-game economy."
Knowing Nintendo, I can see the company trying to put the kibosh on these edgy forms of creativity, but that animal may have already crossed out of that barn. (See what I did there?)
Update, 5:05pm: See also this real life artist recreating real life art works in Animal Crossing (hat tip: Kitty Revolver).
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