Melissa Pearson shares her Animal Crossing: New Horizons island with four other people: three kids and her husband. The family of five uses a single Nintendo Switch between the lot of them, each taking turns to collect fossils and fish, chase after bugs, and pay off their loans. After all, Nintendo’s multiplayer functionality is limited.
The sheer number of players on the island means that Pearson and her family must be strategic in how they play. Not only are they sharing time, but goals, too. Pearson, 37, created a plan — literally. A lifelong crafter and planner, Pearson told me that she’s new to the franchise, but got invested when she learned about all the different things to collect and explore in New Horizons.
“[The kids] came and needed help getting the houses set up for the villagers, and I jumped back on and then I was hooked,” Pearson said. “After seeing so many friends who had been playing for weeks, I started to learn tricks and secrets, and I was like, ‘Hold on! I need to write this down.’”
Pearson is not alone. Hundreds of players have posted New Horizons bullet journal spreads on social media, including YouTube creator Amanda Lee (better known as AmandaRachLee on YouTube, where she has nearly 2 million subscribers). There are dozens of pages of New Horizons and Animal Crossing-themed journals, planners, and accessories listed on craft sites like Etsy. And on Planners Gone Wild, a massive Facebook community of planner people, there’s no shortage of posts about the game — people looking for new organizational spreads, but also for others to play with.
Lee told me that the connection between the two makes sense. Her channel, which heavily features videos on bullet journaling, doodling, and calligraphy, is often described as relaxing or therapeutic. I find that to be true: It’s satisfying to watch her pull lines across a page, filling up spaces with little drawings and doodles in different colors. Everything’s neat and orderly, yet her videos often feel undeniably chill — as if it’s easy. (And I know it’s not; I’ve tried to bullet journal before, and was left with 10 crumpled pages of a hand-drawn calendar, each even more messed up than the last.) Plenty of those same words have been used to describe Animal Crossing over the years, but it’s reached a whole new level with New Horizons.
“I think there are similar aspects in [New Horizons],” Lee said. “On Animal Crossing when everything’s perfectly symmetrical and lined up ... it’s a satisfying feeling. And then, there are a lot of things to keep track of — at first when I played the game, I was overwhelmed.”
Indeed, there is a ton of things to track in New Horizons. Nintendo keeps a record of most of this in-game, but to access that information, you’ve got to flip through pages of menus. With your Nintendo Switch in hand, it’s easy to flip through a physical journal to check which K.K. Slider tunes you’ve got before purchasing more. Lee doesn’t keep a full-on New Horizons tracker, but does have a list of “wish lists” for her island — including villagers like Raymond and Rosie.
Pearson uses her planner to optimize her time on the crowded Switch; her big goal right now is to get a three-star rating so K.K. Slider will come play, but she tracks stuff she wants for her home, too. There’s also a list to check off fish and bugs as they’re caught, fossils as they’re found, and hybrid flowers planted.
“Having objectives and goals for ‘my turn’ makes my time much more useful,” Pearson said. “Also, who doesn’t like to cross things off and put stickers down for accomplishments?” She’s also got a dry erase page with a daily to-do list, something that can be wiped and restarted each day. Did you water the flowers? Check. Mine all your rocks? Check. Chat with all the villagers? Check.
Ticking things off feels good. Dr. Matthew Barr, games researcher and lecturer at the University of Glasgow, told me that some people are “intrinsically motivated” to track stuff — it gives them a sense of achievement. Video games are a particularly good way to knock stuff off a to-do list; in fact, plenty of video games are full of them.
“I find it very rewarding and I’ve got my to-do list here, but almost nothing is checked off,” Barr said with a laugh.
“But if I sit down and play a game for an hour, I can check off stuff like you wouldn’t believe. It’s an extension of what already happens in a lot of games, where you’ve got achievements and the in-game journals that track your fetch quests and everything else.”
But there’s a creativity aspect to it, too — whether that’s using the journal to solve problems or document progress, which is what Barr’s daughter herself is doing. As part of her current homeschooling program, Barr’s 9-year-old daughter is journaling her and her father’s progress in Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds. “She’s writing it as if she’s in the game, so she’s getting to practice that creative writing side,” Barr said. “It’s imaginative, but it’s also something we can do together.”
Barr said that New Horizons, though, is one of those games that’s perfectly primed for players to interact with the game even outside of it. “Animal Crossing is a bit more of a sandbox [game,]” Barr said. “But God knows Tom Nook put some structure around it — you’ve got to pay those bills.
“There’s plenty of little micro rewards in there to get your Nook Miles and the rest of it, but so much of the fun of that game is in the social interactions, which aren’t tracked by Tom Nook,” he added.
here’s my completed new horizons tracker!! u were all so lovely about the first page ❤️ and please show me if you have spreads like this !! #ACNH #AnimalCrossingNewHorizons #AnimalCrossing pic.twitter.com/EU6czSJZ2b
— (@giiacrossing) May 3, 2020
Sure, Tom Nook tracks stuff at big milestones, like catching 100 fish or cutting down a certain number of trees. But it can be beneficial or relaxing for some players to keep track of other progress, like how your island design changes and shifts.
It feels especially poignant that people have found themselves so in need of these things now, in the middle of a pandemic. There are so many things that we can’t control: How long will we have to stay at home? When will businesses reopen? The fantasy of New Horizons that appeals to some people is that it’s a whole world that you can control, that you can design to be your perfect getaway. So much of the game is left up to the player. (Which, sure, can be pretty stressful, too.)
There isn’t necessarily a right way to play Animal Crossing; I think that’s why it has resonated right now. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from the dozens of players I’ve spoken to. And like with New Horizons, there are a whole lot of different ways to journal — as complex or simple as possible. For those who just want to track, there are digital planners where you just plug in the information. If you want to take it up a notch (and that doesn’t stress you out), you can go full bullet journal, which has systems upon systems to dive into.
“My island is a calming retreat from real-life stress,” Jade Jones, an Etsy seller and New Horizons journaler, told me. “It’s a work-in-progress, but there’s so much to do that I don’t think it will ever be finished in my eyes.” She started a journal to keep track of daily tasks, like many others. Jones maintains notes on fossils and bugs, recipes and visitors. She tracks turnip prices and visitors, too. When others saw her journal, they wanted their own. She popped the digital files into her Etsy store, and they started to sell. (Other Etsy sellers told me similar stories, that their Animal Crossing journals quickly became their stores’ top items.)
“I have seen a huge demand for [Animal Crossing] planners,” Jones said. “Not only from my own experience, but [others’] shops too — and especially during COVID-19. Since there’s such a large community of people who use planners and journals on a daily basis as an escape, to relax and go over the days’ events.”
Plenty of others agree. Alison Cline, a YouTube creator, told me that she looks forward to taking out her journal. “The biggest appeal in creating a journal for Animal Crossing was to look forward to something in these weird times and to keep track of my donations to the museum,” Cline said. “It’s a good way to reflect on the things I accomplished that week, which villagers I met, and what some of the highlights were.”
I get that, too. It’s a weird time, and if the best thing I can do all week is check off selling my turnips for a good price, I’ll take it.
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