Why Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is Poison

... for your brain. And similar free-to-play games in general.

So, I didn't make it a secret that I've been enjoying some of Nintendo's smartphone games in the past years as a guilty pleasure, up to a point where I actually thought that getting a Zelda title on smartphones could be pretty good. (Spoilers: that's a terrible idea.)

And to be fair, Super Mario Run was actually very solid. You pay for it once, where it's rather cheap and there are no micro-transactions. It plays nicely and the game doesn't really bother you much with daily rewards, events and all that crap. The only bad thing about is that there is some "gacha" mechanic to unlocking all the kingdom parts, but this only involves spending time, not money, and is also something you might find in normal Nintendo games, e.g. the ship parts in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

Then came Fire Emblem Heroes and to this day I mostly play this game to check out the beautiful ladies of the Fire Emblem universe, which is seemingly the best thing about this whole franchise, enabling it to become Nintendo's biggest gacha game. And this mobile title already has all the cancer of modern free-to-play games: gambling with an ingame currency to obtain playable units (the "gacha"), micro-transactions, daily rewards, constant events that keep you engaged and now also a "Battle Pass" (see here).

Still, it was a good way of having some fun on my way to work and out of all these bad things, the only one that really affected me were the events, mostly "Tempest Trials" and "Forging Bonds", because they lure you with some good rewards, but require extensive, repetitive grinding to get them. Of course it also sucked not getting the characters I've wanted, but at least I've never felt the urge to spend any real money here, thanks to the ridiculous prices of this game.

Now, 2020 came and I've been stuck in home office for four months now with no real reason to play Fire Emblem Heroes, other than staying up to date. And while I still play it, it's really a minimum amount of time per week.

But at the same time another of Nintendo's mobile games gained my attention, thanks to the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The game felt like the perfect, carefree answer to the pandemic and certainly was Nintendo's biggest hit this year, but since I don't have a Switch yet thanks to Nintendo's reluctance of making the Switch that I want to have, I've decided to check out the mobile outing of the Animal Crossing franchise again instead.

I've actually already tried the game in late 2017, but quickly dismissed it, because it seemed like a never-ending wave of pointless fetch quests. And I should have listened to this verdict from that time, instead giving this title another chance.

In general you need to find your feminine side for this title, because it's all about making friends with cute animals and decorating your camp site. That's all there is and there is a reason why Animal Crossing is mainly popular with female players. In fact over 90% of the players I've met were female or at least using a female avatar (which I even did myself).

Well, other than the fact that this induces the least amount of testosterone you will ever have while playing a game, this sounds rather harmless. But the real problem of this game is how it creates a vicious reward cycle from performing mundane tasks...

For the most part you're fulfilling camper requests from collecting things in the environment: fish, fruits, insects or flowers. So, you visit the five different main areas of this game, which includes your campsite, and you keep collecting whatever you find. Then you give it to the animal "campers", who then reward you with Bells and building materials, which you can use to create stuff for your campsite, your van and also your house (where I tend to ignore the last two). Plus, you also level up, which gives you additional rewards.

It even provides a simple "mail" interface to do all this, so that you don't even have to talk to the ingame characters in person to get the rewards. You just click / touch your way through the list of requests. It's an incredibly easy way to be rewarded and since there is no actual challenge provided in the tasks, literally the only thing you have to do is play the game. And this can quickly make it very addicting, because you're guaranteed to be rewarded again and again and again.

The camper requests regenerate every three hours, specifically on certain times on the day: 2PM, 5PM, 8PM and so on. So, this already creates an incentive to check the game out multiple times per day, maybe even every three hours. But since you technically wouldn't miss out on anything important for not doing so, Nintendo keeps doing three major events per month that are all connected with a reward chain and where you won't be able to get all exclusive rewards, unless you keep participating in all the events.

These events are growing flowers and catching insects on them, catching fish for a tournament and collecting "Gyroidiots" in the environment. And this seems to be the same for every month, just with different themes and rewards.

This is so strict that you actually need to play this game at least three times per day to get everything in the end. I've even started to optimize things here by planning my play sessions around the times where everything gets swapped, so I can do two reward waves at once. And once you start creating habits or even planning your day around a video game, you know you're in trouble... The game creates obligations for you and that's not something you'd want from a video game.

In comparison, if you want to get all the exclusive things from events in Fire Emblem Heroes, playing the game once per day still should be more than enough. It's even designed so that you can skip it for one or two days and potentially not miss out on anything. It's still bad and this still creates some obligations,  if you don't want to miss out, but it's by far not as bad as Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

Clearing the events is also much easier with enough friends, who can help you out, mostly with the flower growing thingy and getting Gyroidiots. And while I usually avoid adding "friends" that I do not know in any other game, I did have over 20 of them in this game, creating a small network where everyone was helping each other out with stuff, more or less successfully. And this kind of creates a social obligation to play this game. "It helps the others."

In addition there is also a second currency in the game, so called "Leaf Tickets". Those are much rarer to get for free, can be bought from real money and naturally are required for many of the exclusive items and changing your campsite environment. There is even a gacha system here in the form of fortune cookies, where you get random stuff. Again, I did not put any money into this, but if you get addicted to collecting all the things in this game, it might get really expensive for you.

And as if all of this wouldn't be already bad enough, everything in this game keeps craving for attention. There are red exclamation mark bubbles everywhere and they don't go away, until you finally take a look. "Go check it out, there are new announcements! Go check it out, there is something in your inbox! Go check it out, something happened on your friend list! Go check it out, there are some finished quests! Go check it out, there is something new to buy for your campsite! Go check it out, there is a new camper episode to watch, even though you can't watch it yet!" It's insane and your game is completely overloaded with this whenever you're booting it up.

Mobile Game Designer: "Where do we want to attract the player's attention?"

Mobile Game Director: "Yes."

Normally, I wouldn't even look at such games and even make fun of peopling playing such trash. But since this is Nintendo we're talking about, I was inclined to give their mobile offerings a try (they are free to play after all) and ultimately fall for the same nonsense that has been poisoning gamers for many years now, with all their cancerous methods of making money and keeping the players addicted.

In the end it's good news that according to Bloomberg.com Nintendo has realized that they should better focus on their home console experience instead on the mobile gaming market, because the former is more lucrative and relies on traditional monetization methods. Ideally, The Legend of Zelda will never be abused to create such a free-to-play titles...

And yes, big games like Breath of the Wild or Hyrule Warriors can be equally addicting and even more time consuming. But at least they do not create obligations, where you can just play them on your own pace. And even if you are as crazy as me and go for 100% completion, there is still an end to these games, all while at least providing some good gameplay and a fun experience.

So, stay healthy... and not just by avoiding some virus.