How My Depression Ruined ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’
When I save, quit, and reload, I’m in control.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing
I was using it to repeat events over . . . leaving myself stuck in time loops.
At the advent of the pandemic, I had already been depressed for six months. I was already ‘self-isolating,’ having not seen anyone regularly for half of a year except my long-distance partner because I didn’t have the energy or desire. I worked my office job, came home, immediately played video games along with dinner and didn’t stop until I went to bed. I told myself that I would find a way out of the hole, but months passed without any reprieve. Friends texted, unsure if I had moved away because they hadn’t heard from me.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing
Zelda
And even when nothing is moving forward in my life, I know that time still moves on. This world won’t wait for me, even if I need the time to pick myself up again.
When I save, quit, and reload, I’m in control. I won’t stop until I get what I want. Even if it takes a hundred hours, I know that I can accomplish my goals in a video game.
For me, the best part of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is being kind to friends and strangers. I leave surprise gifts for my friends on their islands. Visiting someone in Taiwan who was newer to the game than I was, I dropped thirty gold nuggets in front of their house, then ran away to hide a rare star-themed flooring behind a cliff for them to discover later.
Most of my friends don’t play the game in the same way that I do, and it’s fun to give good gifts to other people. I have more currency and rare resources than I’ll ever use, and it brings joy to offer freely out of that excess when I feel so stretched thin in other parts of my life.
Even though the way I play video games isn’t fun, I tend to turn to video games because they are among the few things that I still actually enjoy while depressed. Even when I spend hours on mind-numbing tasks and manipulating RNG, games are still games. When so little holds my interest, a game like Persona 5 meets me more than halfway with an engaging story that jolts my atrophied feelings. When it feels difficult to move, I can fly through the beautifully crafted world of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from my couch. But I’ve come to discover, especially when I’ve played Animal Crossing: Though games can start as an escape, I can’t fully run away.
I’m shocked at those who have built better habits this year. I look on with awe and jealousy at all the superheroes who have written daily, made professional breakthroughs, or won awards and fellowships. On my end, I’ve spent most of my first four months of the pandemic on my island, looking for friends.
But I couldn’t embrace the relaxing nature of Animal Crossing. Faced with a non-goal oriented game, I made goals and then accomplished them. I might be able to escape some of the events of the world in video games, but there’s no escape from myself or my neuroses because I’m still the one playing.
Video games can be a source of joy, but I can’t use them as a crutch to escape my depression, because when I lean on them, they break.