The New Digital Currency in Town: Animal Crossing’s Bells?
How the in-game currency is crossing digital borders.
Intro
This years’ Nintendo’s highest bet so far is more than your regular simulation videogame. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is taking the Nintendo Switch community by storm. And it couldn’t have come more timely. Millions of users are turning their heads towards life in Animal Crossing to escape from lockdown-reality.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons starts with creating an avatar that moves into a paradisiacal, deserted tropical island. Then, the avatar is welcomed by Nook, a funny looking raccoon that will soon start charging you for the mortgage of your new home. You’ll need Bells to pay, which is the in-game currency that moves the economy. Earning Bells is pretty simple: you accomplish jobs such as gathering fruits from trees, collecting seashells, and making furniture that you can sell at Nook’s Cranny, the island’s store that is run by Nook’s crew.
Playing Around
The objective of the game is pretty simple: create the island of your dreams for you and your anthropomorphic villagers to just lay around all day fishing and slacking. However, you must work hard in this dystopian isle to keep the socioeconomic status from collapsing. You start by pulling weeds, chopping some wood, and catching bugs in exchange for Bells and Nook Miles, which is equivalent to airlines’ mileage programs but you can literally buy a pool with them that is shipped to your mailbox!
Additionally, you can visit other islands by visiting the airport that is somehow financially viable with only a dozen citizens. You can either trade your Nook Miles to visit another deserted island and break the ecological balance by cutting off all the trees, tearing down all the rocks, and catching all the fish and bugs — basically, destroying the island’s ecosystem. All for a few more resources that you can then sell at Nook’s Cranny.
Also, you can visit friends’ islands where you’ll be greeted by other anthropomorphic beings saying amazing things about your island, even though they haven’t ever been there — such hypocrites! It’s always great to buy stuff at your friends’ clothing and general stores that otherwise you would never find on your island. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess…
Outside of Animal Crossing
What’s interesting is that there is also an economy outside of Animal Crossing: New Horizons that is also moved by Bells. For instance, the website Nookazon is a marketplace where players sell clothing, recipes, fruits, furniture, and other materials in exchange for Bells. You can even trade villagers, which is borderline weird as you can actually buy yourself a new neighbor for an average price of 1,000,000 Bells! To give you context, a cute birdhouse is worth 100,000 Bells, so you can practically buy someone for the same amount of 10 birdhouses.
Anyways, in less than a couple of months, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has gathered a large fanbase that is now socializing through the game. Even I’m part of a Whatsapp group where messages such as “the turnips in my shop are worth 450 Bells today” and sharing Animal Crossing themed memes have become the new norm. Also, I hosted an “Animal Crossing party.” I invited some friends over to my island with brand new paths across the village, and we all connected to Zoom while drinking some wine. It was actually amusing.
Bells as Currency
Not gonna lie, calling Bells a “digital currency” sounded pretty dumb to me in the first place. But then, after giving it a thought, they kind of share some characteristics. Digital currencies are only available in digital or electronic form, and can only be transferred through computers or electronic devices connected to the internet. These can be used for buying and selling products or services (like a villager, anyone?)
Remember that we still need access to the ol’ internet (like the Dodo at the airport’s counter would say every time you’re trying to connect online.) And you get paid in Bells at Nook’s Cranny! As silly as it sounds, you can earn thousands of Bells by selling bugs. That is the currency of Animal Crossing’s world. And I’m not saying only the in-game world, but also the outside world. However, watch out for the — not surprising — black market communities.
Back to Nookazon, people have created a marketplace in real-life to buy stuff online that only their avatars can wear or interact with. Also, designer brands such as Valentino and Marc Jacobs have noticed Animal Crossing’s potential as a social network and released a collection for your avatars to wear. I mean, now they can even wear Valentino or Marc Jacobs!
Beyond Currencies
Okay, last but not least, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been banned in China for inciting democracy messages in Hong Kong. Not the game by itself, but the players! For example, an activist called Joshua Wong had a banner in his island reading “Free Hong Kong, revolution now.” These actions resulted in the videogame being removed from sales websites in China. Now, that is only part of the potential of social games.
Another example of how videogames are changing the rules of the game and leveraging on the coronavirus lockdown is when organizing large events such as concerts–and no, I’m not talking about K.K. Slider in Animal Crossing. Reportedly, Travis Scott put on a fascinating show using Fortnite’s platform. You can watch it here. Trust me; it couldn’t get any better:
What’s more exciting about all this is that this is only the beginning! New social interactions. New social platforms. New economies. New opportunities. The new internet and a new way to socialize. Videogames such as Animal Crossing and Fortnite, for example, have the ability to gather people in unexpected ways we have yet to see. But, in the meantime, check out how this guy created a faux Bitcoin mining farm in his Animal Crossing house!
