I Played The New Animal Crossing With The People Who Made It

I’m a lucky gamer. I get to play games with the people who make them. I know it’s the job and that it’s usually tied to selling something, to puffing up a preview or what have you, but, hey, it’s also fun. It’s odd, too.

You’re in this virtual world with the people who made it.

You’re in the building with its architect.

I’ve played a competitive Super Mario game against Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. I first played Assassin’s Creed with the man who created that series. Recently, I got to go hang out with the woman who directed the next Animal Crossing in her Animal Crossing town.

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How do these creators play their own games? Well, Miyamoto liked to grief the other players.

Kyogoku directed me to some objects outside the train station. They were at my feet. “I left you some gifts,” she said. There were baskets of fruit. There was a present wrapped in special wrapping paper. She encouraged me to open the gift. It contained carp streamers, a gift that only Japanese gamers were slated to receive from the game on Children’s Day in early May. I’d never have unlocked it in my American copy of the game. We’d found ourselves a good bullet point: she suggested that players could benefit from connecting to gamers in other countries to get items offered only in those regions.

This wasn’t a mere tour, obviously, it was a friendly sales pitch—with gifts.

We all casually walked past a flag that just happened to have a Kotaku logo on it. Flattery! Later, they sent me a QR code to generate it.

You can use that when you get the game, readers.

Back to the tour.

Kyogoku and Eguchi walked me over to a fountain. They were talking up New Leaf’s new option to let you build bridges, fountains and other public works in the game’s towns. You have to pay for those in in-game money (bells), of course.

Perfect segue…

We walked over to an area under development. “If you have enough bells you might be able to contribute to this public works project, too,” Kyogoku said. “Hint. Hint.”

I didn’t know there was going to be a cost to the interview, too. Oh, sure. I donated 300 Bells.

We walked along a brick road that Kyogoku said she designed using in-game editing tools.

She then showed me one of the homes she’d had one of her characters build in the game. She was trying to develop a hospital-themed house, Kyogoku told me, but hadn’t found all the right items for it yet.

You guys made the game, I said. You can’t you punch in a code and have it show up?

She laughed. She could do that on a pre-production version, she said. “This is a production version.” I think that meant there are no cheats, but, wow, really? An Animal Crossing developer has to wait like the rest of us? Hmmm.

We wound our way through the town. I kept snapping screenshots with my 3DS. We headed over to Kyogoku’s primary home. She went inside. Eguchi stood by the mailbox.

Just… go in?

Yes, they told me. This was weird, maybe because I’m a mere Animal Crossing dabbler, maybe because this felt weirdly intimate. It felt different than hanging out outside in the virtual rain. Yes, we were playing a game. They were clearly trying to hype its features and generate a positive story. But I suddenly felt like I was imposing. Homes are private places. Walking into another person’s—particularly that of a person who made the game—felt like a big step. Of course this wasn’t really a home. I was just buying into the metaphor more strongly than I’d expected.

“This is her own house,” the woman serving as the translator for the interview said, I think for Mr. Eguchi. “It really reflects her own personality.”

I went in. The main room of her house was impressive.

She had a laundry room, bathroom and storage room connected to the main room of her house. There was a basement downstairs.

I asked if it was ok for me to check out the other rooms.

“Yes,” Mr. Eguchi said, teasing. “You’re visiting a girl living by herself.”

“I’m a married man,” I said, laughing and, well, that was a little weird.

“Mr Eguchi is suggesting that you two should go to the second floor, which is her bedroom and take an evidence picture or something,” the translator said. We all chuckled.

“OK, only because he said so,” I replied. I actually was poking around in the storage area. She was storing a lot of food there.

And then…our 3DS connection dropped.

Mr. Resetti, the in-game scold for any possible player-instigated technical errors, showed up. Connection lost.

The Japanese developers and I were still connected via video conference, but our tour was done. We chatted more about the game. Kyogoku kept talking up new features. There’s a “best friend” system, she said, which lets players get notifications on their 3DS systems when the other is playing the game. This allows them to chat without being in each other’s towns.

I’d read that Kyogoku was the person on the team responsible for giving players the new option to change the hours of the game’s stores. If you set your ordinance for stores to be open at night, maybe you can ask your friend to set his to early bird, she said, so that you can connect and shop at each other’s stores for an even longer part of the day.

We talked about Tom Nook and what a misunderstood guy he is.

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Twice, as we talked, the lights went out in the meeting room in New York. It was late, close to 11pm. Nintendo shuts those lights down automatically, I guess.

This preview is based on a hands-on demo of about 10 minutes of the game. To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo