Nintendo talks diversity in Animal Crossing, wants players to “be who they want to be and enjoy the games how they like”

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch

In an interview with La Vanguardia, Animal Crossing: New Horizons director Aya Kyogoku was asked about representing diversity. Kyogoku was able to speak about how Nintendo was able to take things further in New Horizons.

Kyogoku gave one example by mentioning that “players can now freely change the skin tone of their character”. She also pointed to the fact that it’s possible to customize a host of features including hairstyles, clothes, and more.

According to Kyogoku, she and the rest of the team “always try to take into account this type of diversity, while also compiling comments from the localization teams in other regions.” Nintendo ultimately wants players to “be who they want to be and enjoy the games how they like.”

Kyogoku’s full words:

“One of the pillars of the series is that we want different kinds of people to enjoy the game no matter their age group, and that they can enjoy it in their own way. We had this in mind when making Animal Crossing: New Leaf and it’s something that we tried to continue with New Horizons, even more so than with previous entries.
For example, players can now freely change the skin tone of their character, which was used up until this point to show how tan the character was. For the concept of gender, players have to choose so that the game can utilize proper grammatical rules for European languages, but they have complete freedom for changing things like hairstyles, clothes, and more. For this aspect, the gender they select is not important.
We always try to take into account this type of diversity, while also compiling comments from the localization teams in other regions. Even if there’s a lot of areas in which it’s difficult for us to find a solution that makes everyone happy, our objective with Animal Crossing is that, at least, players can be who they want to be and enjoy the games how they like.”

Thanks to jesusxd96 for assisting us with this translation.