Raymond, a bespeckled cat with heterochromia, has become far and away the most popular villager in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. People spend real life money to have him in their town, he essentially drives the entire Animal Crossing economy, and while researching this article I found art of someone's original character licking Raymond's butthole. But with every surge of excitement and hype comes a backlash, and Raymond haters have found a poetic way to end his existence: sending him to the void.
The whole meta marketplace around this game leaves a bad taste in my mouth, kind of the same way I feel about skin trading on CS:GO, except filled with people ready to either court or attack peopleâs tastes.
Itâs on one end a wholesome time with cute animal folk and a fun expression of ones fashion and design sense, and on the other end harbours this weirdly aggressive and highly capitalistic community ready to exploit their villagers like priced livestock.
Anyway I enjoyed the Raymond butthole anecdote, thereâs certainly a market for that.
To be honest, I think Nintendo should patch out the ability to request a move-in from another playerâs villager. An in-game economy of people is so ghoulishly idiosyncratic with the series that Iâd get rid of it in an instant, regardless of any outcry about losing the feature.
The Raymond backlash has frankly turned me off ACNH a bit. I like him because he reminds me of a character in a podcast I enjoy so Iâve been trying to get him just by spending tickets when a villager has moved out. But as people compare Raymond selling to slavery and making him into a meme, it makes me feel bad for wanting a cute cat with glasses and neat eyes. It frankly sucks.
Everytime I see one of these articles talking about the obnoxious or toxic parts of the AC community it makes me glad I barely interact with social media, as I have no clue any of this stuff is going on until one of these articles happens to cross my path.
It also just reaffirms my view that social media is not worth participating in beyond the barest minimum.
I have Raymond on my island, and heâs cute and all, but Iâm not really understanding the fuss over perfect islands or having Ideal Neighbors. I just wanna live in a nice house and have talking animals for neighbors because itâs very cute and fun to run around on an island and make friends.
You think this is bad? You should see the Fire Emblem fandom. Itâs mellowed out a bit due to Three Houses managing not to be disgusting and therefore not attracting too much outside criticism, but they were rabid before Fates was even out in the west. One of my friends shared impressions from Japanese gamers on that now infamous drugging the lesbian scene and she still gets shit for that to this day.
But the AC fandom imploding like this has been interesting because itâs not for the usual tribalism reasons fandoms grow toxic, but because theyâre taking mechanics for this new game meant for one thing and abusing it for another, creating a new way to interact with other players thatâs basically capitalism and therefore horrifying.
I almost was won over to play Animal Crossing until I heard about all this slave trading. (The weird fetish shit with the cat is fine, thirsties gonna thirst, but slave trading is not fine.) I donât think artificial scarcity should be a thing at all, at least Nintendo isnât adding microtransations. Somebody would spent $15,000 to get themselves a Raymond, Iâm sure.
But what really grosses me out is people beating and abusing their villagers to make them move. Or just generally being awful to them because theyâre unpopular. The whole thing is sleazy and awful in a way Nintendo games - or any game really - should not be. All the villagers seem to want to do is live a life and sing chiptunes.
Imagine Pokemon but you keep beating Rattata because you want a Gardevoir.
The really fucked up part is that according to the IGN page on getting rid of neighbors it says that beating on them with a net or whatever doesnât actually speed up their desire to leave since youâre still showing them some kind of attention. As Iâve been watching how the quarantine and stay at homes have amplified this once niche series Iâm becoming more and more disgusted at the discourse around it and everything else. As someone who has sunk an ungodly amount of hours into CK2 Iâm worried that the same thing is going to happen when 3 comes out later this year.
Yeah, all these AC stories almost manage to make the Crusader Kings fandom look normal and well-adjusted. Like, yeah, the Deus Vult crowd is definitely worse, but given the theme of the game you expect them to show up. The way that AC fans have taken something thematically wholesome and brought the slave trading and purging of âundesirablesâ into it is just deeply fucked up.
I understand why these make for good stories (and I like them too) - learning about players creating new economies that the devs didnât intend holds a similar appeal to me as something like speedrunning. I do worry sometimes though that some people are getting the wrong idea about what the average player is doing playing Animal Crossing.
Itâs like if⌠90% of the coverage of Breath of the Wild was about people getting into shipping arguments about Mipha vs Zelda. Yep, that certainly is a sub-community and Iâve seen them around before, but I wouldnât call it a major commonality between Breath of the Wildâs playerbase, or something youâd need to take into account if you were interested in picking up the game.
