Game Theory: The Animals in Animal Crossing Aren't Animals! (Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

no man is an entire island in himself each one is a piece of the continent a part of each man's main house diminishes me but I am involved in humanity therefore not knowing for whom the bell tolls it tolls for you meow bells someone said Bill, here's a ring of a bell, hello. The Internet welcomes Game Theory, literally the only show you'll ever see that can insert a John Donne poem into an online video about

animal

crossing

. I mean, there is quality content right there, my friends. It's definitely worth subscribing to hint, hint, nudge, nudge, the button is right below this video, so Animal Crossing is two months later and I'm still doing my daily tasks.

Are you picking weeds? It's up there, damn it, but beyond the thrill of catching tarantulas, the most exciting thing about this

game

is how the current world situation has changed the way it is played. A company in Singapore created its own island getaway to attract Animal Crossing tourists. The Getty Museum has made its collection of classic works of art available to you. to download and print it right now so you can display it in your own home. Now you too can hang a fifty-four million dollar Vincent van Gogh painting right next to your bathroom corner. Although my favorite has to be the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was recreated in the

game

and offers real tours anyway today's

theory

is not about any of that, it is about something much more serious and much darker Today's

theory

takes a gamble and sticks it into the beating heart at the center of Animal Crossing because you see, I don't think this game is exactly what it appears to be.

I think there is a tragic truth bubbling beneath the surface of carefree

animal

s and ridiculously sized fish, so here I am, taking a night walk, a virtual night walk, of course. I don't walk much in real life, I just slosh from the couch to the kitchen to the couch next door, so anyway, I'm strolling around the city center enjoying the relaxing music and serene views when suddenly a owl perched on top of the community. board was not stupid the refined curator of the museum would recognize him in his irrational hatred of insects anywhere it was not Celeste his sister the astrologer either no this owl was different he did not speak he did not interact he did not even interact he walked, he flew like an owl, an owl real and when I looked into his bright little eyes I didn't see the burden of mortal consciousness of sensitive sand.

This owl was just instinct and animal reactions when I stepped forward to get a closer look, it flew away. The night disappeared as suddenly as it had come, but it made me think about all kinds of things I had never stopped and questioned before. Well, Mather's Celeste Cousteau squawked at Wiggy, I mean, they're all

animals

, that's the game name Animal Crossing but they stop, they walk on two legs like my human character in the game, but the owl in the square, the frogs that you catch in the lake, the yellow birds that appeared in previous games, I mean, they are all

animals

too, but they are different they behave like normal animals they run by instinct they do not speak they do not live or work in the town there are also fish and turtles in the water butterflies fluttering through the air insects crawling among the flowers and yet here is an owl and here is an owl, there are hamsters that you keep as pets and cages and hamsters that walk around your city and talk like humans, what does it all mean?

Well, after a little research, I think this is our first and most obvious clue that Animal Crossing isn't just a story about living in a sharp town fishing, protesting the local aquariums and sometimes having to watch out for the killer Bunny Rabbit. Easter hiding in the bushes no, I think our character in Animal Crossing is surrounded by real human beings, nonsense Tom Nook Isabel all of them are all humans, they are all real people that we only see as animals, that's why we can also see real frogs, owls, fish and real birds along with these more humanoid ones, but why?

I think it's the end result of our characters' rare and very unusual mental illness, so hold onto loyal theorists and prepare to go down the Hopkins rabbit hole with me, as your fond memories of this game won't be recovered anytime soon. of what we are. What we're talking about today is an incredibly rare and very unusual condition known as clinical lycanthropy which is not to be confused with normal lycanthropy, which is someone who simply turns into a wolf. Yes, it's werewolf syndrome. It should also not be confused with another rare werewolf syndrome called hypertrichosis, which causes excess.

Hair growth all over the body that makes people look like Michael J. Fox from Teen Wolf. No clinical lycanthropy is an unusual belief or delusion in which the patient thinks they have transformed into an animal but clearly our character is not the animal in Animal Crossing, right, it is literally everyone else around our character, well, it's because That is, there is an anthropic intermetamorphosis that causes the victim to see another person or even a group of people transforming into some type of animal. Now you can begin to see why this is. The theory could work Clinical lycanthropy is so rare that it is difficult to find a specific number of how many cases have been diagnosed.

An article in LiveScience reported that since 1850 there have been 56 original case descriptions of people believing they were in fact metamorphosing into an animal now I know what you're thinking, I'm sure you have villagers like Fang Chief Kyle Wolfgang, all of whom obviously They are wolves, there are many more types of animals present in our village, why would a werewolf related syndrome be applied to them? Well, it's important to note that while lycanthropic internal metamorphosis is named after turning into a werewolf, the actual condition causes patients to see all kinds of different animals. A 2004 review of medical literature lists more than 30 published pieces on lycanthropy, but only a few of them have a dog or wolf, other animal theme.

The ones that tended to appear included cats, horses, birds, tigers, frogs, and foxes, and those are just the animals that appear in Animal Crossing. Real life patients also saw or felt themselves transform into non-profit creatures like bees, hyenas, snakes, so you can see how this. It's not only a real condition that someone can have and how they can see other people as animals, but also how it is entirely possible for them to see the wide variety of animal types that we see present in the Animal Crossing games; In fact, in a specific case from 2009, the patient believed that his father had transformed into a wild boar and was attacking him, his brother had transformed into a horse and sometimes kicked him, and his mother transformed into a donkey and he even heard her break like that. which as you can see the cases that are reported are pretty wild in one, a 24 year old man believed he was a cat trapped inside a human body for 13 years and claimed that he knew it was a cat since the family cat the one he grew up with had imparted the secret to him. who later taught him the secret language of cats in his free time lived with cats hunted keys with cats frequented cat nightspots, which is a direct quote from the research paper I read and I can't even imagine what that means to him they liked the trash cans the milk bar yes cats the movie taught me something he was in love with the tigress at the local zoo that we hoped to one day free from captivity in another story of lycanthropy do you remember the guy who eats Florida's face uh no, actually the flip side eats guy in Florida, wow there's more than one that tells me there are too many incidents of face eating happening in Florida anyway, the one I'm talking about happened recently in March 2019, when a man who suffered from clinical delusions of lycanthropy was accused of murdering a couple and then chewing the face of one of his victims, in this case the man believed he had become half a man, but that's okay, obviously there's not much that eats the face face in the world of Animal Crossing and it sure does. some normal animals running around the world that force us to ask some very serious questions about the humanoids we see walking on two legs, but what else can I tell you to try to support this crazy theory?

Well, let's start with Firstly, how this disorder might develop, what causes it, certain people are more likely to suffer from clinical lycanthropy than others. Well, most doctors believe that clinical lycanthropy is related to schizophrenia or mood disorders such as bipolar disorder. In fact, many doctors don't even classify it. Clinical lycanthropy has its own syndrome and they prefer to diagnose it as a symptom of other serious psychological conditions and, as with all mood disorders, there will be many different variables that can possibly trigger them. Family history, age, a sudden stressful event in a documented case of Clinical lycanthropy doctors believe the man's condition was caused by taking the drug ecstasy.

He reported that he had never had psychiatric problems in the past and then suddenly his family is just a bunch of barnyard animals. Talk about it, don't take drug lessons, pretty boys. It's safe to say that our villager isn't going out to any late-night raves, but he recently went through major life events and a number of stressful situations. Moving, living alone, being in debt, those are extremely stressful life events and if our character is a young adult. which can probably be assumed, based on his appearance and the letters they receive from his mother at home, that they are at high risk for the onset of mental disorders.

A study of 12 known cases of lycanthropy from McLean Hospital put the average age of onset at 25, with the youngest cases occurring at age 16 and the oldest at age 38, with the majority occurring in the late 20s. which is exactly where our Animal Crossing character would be, so we have our character at a vulnerable age in addition to extreme stressors. plus the general lack of any kind of support group because let's face it, you're spending a lot more time in this game supporting all the other residents than they are supporting you and bam, you sure have a recipe for a mental breakdown. 99.99% of us survive into adulthood without wanting to fix our neighbors' manes or pluck out our postal workers' feathers, but lycanthropy may be rare, certainly, super, super rare, one of the diagnoses The details we're seeing in this game world also line up well with the other symptoms, as the cases are few and far between.

There is no concrete list of how a doctor might diagnose this condition, but other than seeing people as animals, yes. common symptoms and first-hand accounts that we can use to guide our diagnosis, for example, disorganized speech, in cases of clinical lycanthropy with symptoms of disorganized speech, the patient often has trouble understanding words or hears animal sounds they believe that "We're dealing with this and, if you don't know, we see both traits exactly in the way other characters around us communicate, even though the animals speak English or whatever. They listen to games in native languages. Ducks have quacks or catchphrases.

Relevant animal phrases are mixed in with everything we hear them say and that's not all. Remember I said that patients with this condition sometimes have trouble understanding the words and although the subtitles in the game for conversations are there. In English, the words that come out of the animals' mouths. What we are really hearing is almost impossible to understand. It is almost as if it were a different language. It is disorganized speech. In several of these cases, patients supposedly perceived changes in their own appearance. physics some thought their mouths and teeth had changed shape or that their breasts had become more broadly speaking, some experience their body shrinking if you simply walk up to a mirror in Animal Crossing, you can change virtually everything about the appearance of your character in a matter of seconds, hair color, skin color, eyes, clothes, it takes no time and the fact that the other creatures in the city you only change clothes makes it obvious that you are the only person in the city that can change your entire physical appearance in the blink of an eye even stranger is the fact that no one comments on your new appearance I don't know if that's true, actually, uh, I don't know, so if anyone can disagree with me on that, I guess if you make your eyes a different color or change someone to say, hey, what do you have? different color there is also some interesting cultural examination to be made given the way the resident personalities seem to align with the animals that are the season villagers as foam the owl is why he has knowledge just as we see AlPortrayed in popular culture reads the fox is cunning and conspires with the raccoons, they are clever and stingy animals at play, they often have personalities that align with traditional human notions of what those animals should be like, not what they actually are.

For those animals, this type of cultural association is believed to be the reason they suffer from clinical lycanthropy. They are able to define so specifically what animals they are transforming into or what animals they imagine their owner or favorite neighbor could become; It's less about becoming a real animal and more about becoming what we humans perceive those animals like a lion are supposed to be. They are not really noble or majestic in real life, we humans just assign those traits to them, that is why the stubborn mother appears like a donkey or the angry and aggressive father becomes a jerk and that is exactly what happens in Animal Crossing , normal owls are just that.

Birds, owls fly around, but the human we perceive as an owl turns out to be the wise know-it-all of the city who works in a museum. The psychology of our characters is assigning the animals to the people who best suit them in the world. world around us, lastly remember that man who developed clinical lycanthropy after taking drugs, not only did he believe that his family had turned into animals, but he also said that his soul sometimes left his body and went to various places with these animals and discovered what others do in their homes. Does that sound familiar in the game?

We can walk to other villagers' houses and observe what they do, whether we interact with them or not. we can lie in their beds we can look in their closets we can observe them without repercussions seems like something they would probably want to mention if they knew we were actually there doing any of those things, this same man said that there was a quote from an angel that protected him and that he could listening to some people talk to him about their daily activities every morning. An animal

crossing

begins with a statement of the day's activities from Isabel and talking to almost any villager in the game means that they are going to comment on you and how you choose to spend the day in terms of having an angel protecting them, hell, what?

What do you call us the player, the person who literally controls that individual's life, making sure they are guided down the right path or sometimes even down the right path? incorrectly or, you know, just ignoring everything else in the world and fishing for 200 total hours of gameplay, simply put, we are complicit in this, we are feeding this character's psychosis when we are asked about the role he played Mental illness in the game Hell-blade Sinha. The founder of Ninja Theories was sacrificed said that this quote was, first and foremost, about creating a compelling adult fantasy game, but the deeper we delve into development, the more we've seen that there's also an opportunity to raise awareness about psychosis , for me.

I have learned that people can experience hallucinations and delusional beliefs without it being a problem. Illness comes when those experiences cause suffering. Recovery is often not about healing from hallucinations but about finding ways to live with them. That was a revelation to me. me end of video quote Games have long been at the forefront of pushing the traditional boundaries of storytelling and exploring new adventures and challenges of all kinds. Depictions of mental disorders, especially rare ones, are another way to do exactly that. Do I think that was the intention of Animal Crossing? No, certainly. No, I think it's strange that you can catch and sell frogs in the wild to larger humanoid frogs and I think the "I caught a frog or it's a new neighbor and I have to apologize" quote is further proof of the theory showing how Our character struggles with the differences between what is and what is not an animal, but whatever it is, I think it's just for fun.

In its most simplistic form, video games are a means of escape, they allow us to stop side our daily activities. worrying about an hour, two, five or 200 hours of fishing and throwing ourselves into a world where we can simply release tension, have a little fun and worry about things that don't really matter, is catharsis in action and is part of the reason why Me love video games, but they are also incredible learning tools to see the world through a new pair of eyes by playing a game where the main character is nothing like us, so learn about different experiences than our own narrative. interactive can and should be.

Used as a way to better appreciate and understand the world around us, it's a way to inject a little more empathy into all of our lives and couldn't we all use a little more of that these days? But hey, that's just a theory. game theory thanks for watching