Today a super cool email popped into my inbox: the National Video Game Museum's online exhibition 'Animal Crossing Diaries' has launched and it features one of my videos!
Just in case you spent all of last year hiding under a rock (I mean, relatable), Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released into a world that had suddenly gone into lockdown. There were shortages of essential commodities like flour, pasta, toilet paper, portable games consoles and games about living on an island with a bunch of talking animals. It will be many years before people stop talking about COVID and a large part of how people experienced it has been through Tom Nook and his enterprises. The National Video Game Museum collected memories of what ACNH has meant to players over the past year and a half. Now they've collated the entries into themes and launched an adorable online exhibition!
After I made my video about Animal Crossing and virtual heritage, I decided to send it to the museum's open submission. I thought that since I had done relevant research and highlighted other players' creativity, the video might be something the museum curators found helpful. I wasn't expecting to see my entry featured in the online exhibition! The project attracted loads of submissions so I'm really grateful that they thought mine was interesting enough to include.
I loved reading other people's entries this evening. Here are a few that made me smile:
Isabelle gets you up to speed with everything Animal Crossing. She explains how the game works, tells you how to unlock everything and shares her daily routine.
When medieval lecturer Matt King couldn't take his usual trip around Europe to see all the historical sights, he decided to make his own castle, rural town and landscape garden. Medieval Animal Crossing? I'm here for it.
Nicole shows off her creativity (and her fancy master's degree in Costume for Animation and Games - how cool is that?!) in her Animal Crossing outfit designs. Her designs proved so popular that the brand Venus contacted her for a collaboration of body positive summer outfits and she has gone on to work with Netflix!
The National Video Game Museum's exhibition has loads of things to look through. There is a glossary of ACNH vocab, a timeline of big moments for the game, interviews with creators and links to further reading. It's really well put together and I would recommend checking it out (and not just because I'm in it)!
