This feeling of persistence creates an incentive to come back daily (along with other core game loops like bonuses for accessing the store, and the stalk market). They specifically hack the persistence + social dynamic by isolating each world into an “island”, something that allows for individual instancing of these expression mechanisms. In addition the island boasts an asynchronous social experience that results in your real and digital world friends and family leaving you various notes and gifts while you’re away.
#THE PERSISTENCE GAME UPDATE#
What Animal Crossing does have however is a feeling of a form of persistence, an illusion created by being greeted by Tom Nook giving his daily update each time you return, as well as game mechanics that require you to pass time in order to allow work to be done on your island. Although Animal Crossing does have very strong social dynamics in the game today, it has poor social infrastructure, in that the execution of social play is quite cumbersome due to technology choices. With Animal Crossing, we see a continually monotonous core game mechanic of building out your island that puts the idea of self-expression (and the importance of sharing this expression with your friends) within a video game on steroids. With Fortnite, the social dynamic is encouraged in ~20 minute sprints (or more if in the UGC-driven Creative mode) that often is filled with fairly monotonous activity (traversing the island) and broken up by spurts of action (battles). This dynamic has only further been amplified now that our synchronicity and schedules are all effectively the same while sheltering in place. The core thesis though of captive, synchronous experience has bled into many of these game-turned-social products over the years, as well as more traditional social products such as Houseparty (now part of Epic Games) and more recently Clubhouse. Each of these games have served a slightly different user base, with varying levels of social mechanics baked into the product that enabled weak to strong communication and expression across the platform. Over the past two years the games that have brought social + gaming thinking to the mainstream have been a combination of Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and most recently, Animal Crossing. If the next wave of social is built around gaming, then the lessons we pull from these formerly more distinct categories will likely lead to a game dynamic which pushes forward the tensions of social networks, with the expressiveness of digital worlds.
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