Animal Crossing: New Horizons localization staffer on the game’s comfort and positivity, sea bass joke
When Nintendo announced the delay for Animal Crossing: New Horizons last year, it probably couldn’t have anticipated the massive impact that move would end up having. The game couldn’t have launched at a better time as it’s taken off in light of the global pandemic we’ve all been facing over the past few months, leading to massive sales and causing a buzz on social media. Many players have also been connecting with friends and family online in ways that normally wouldn’t be possible right now.
Over on Twitter today, Nintendo staffer Rob Heiret – who worked on the localization – spoke about the comfort and positivity that Animal Crossing: New Horizons has provided. He also commented on that sea bass joke you’ve probably seen if you’ve given the game a shot.
Below are Heiret’s full words:
During the localization of Animal Crossing New Horizons, we joked repeatedly that we were building the next 5-10 years’ worth of memes. We knew the game would be big, but we obviously couldn’t have imagined the real-world circumstances of its release.
We’ve never had a time like this, where safety and responsibility to one another keep us physically distant, and digital tools have taken the place of face-to-face contact. But Zoom and Twitter and the other platforms are, by design, rather plain. Animal Crossing is different.
The AC aesthetic is cute. I’ve seen people here observing that even the tarantulas are cute. Even the CHAIRS are cute. But it’s more than cuteness–it’s comfort. It’s positivity. It’s a retreat.
If you’ve played the game, you’re tired of the sea bass joke. I get it. *I’M* tired of the sea bass joke, and I wrote it. But here’s a secret about the sea bass joke: It was originally “I caught a sea bass! Well…maybe a C- bass…) And when we were workshopping the fish jokes, someone pointed out that, as a joke people were going to see many, many times, generally along with disappointment they didn’t catch something better, maybe it would be better to spin it positive. Make it a C+ instead.
From a comedy-mechanics perspective, it’s the same joke, relying on the homophones “sea” and “C” to change how you perceive the description of the animal (and, let’s be honest, it would work better as a verbal joke than it does in print, but that fish has sailed).
Anyway, my point is, we were doing our very best, down to details you might not have considered, to make this the most positive, comforting, funny game we could. And I know the dev team was doing the same. So it’s been humbling to see this thing we worked on become so important to people, in part because of the weird accident of history that it was released during this scary-ass time.
I wasn’t *really* surprised when people started having their birthday parties in the game (hell, mine’s next week and I’ll be doing it). After all, the game has specific mechanics to acknowledge your birthday, so it’s a bit of a no-brainer. But today I saw a screenshot from someone who, unable to visit their real mother’s grave for Mother’s Day, created a place in the game to visit. And that feels important.
Not only is Animal Crossing: New Horizons a safe, pleasant, perpetually smiling space, it’s a world of its own that the player can shape to their whim. Obviously the real world feels very out-of-control right now, so that, I think, is the secret sauce to this game.
When Nintendo first showed off the terraforming options in the game, I saw a lot of jokes about “the last game made you a mayor, this one makes you a GOD.” But in the time of COVID19, we don’t need to be gods, we just need agency. We need a comfortable bed where we can arrange the blankets JUST how we like them. That feels like the single most important part of the game’s popularity to me.
Anyway, it’s an honor to have been involved in a small way in this thing. Here’s hoping we don’t need the eventual next game in the franchise quite so much.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched on Switch on March 20. A few days ago, Nintendo announced that total sales surpassed 13 million units in six weeks.
