While sales figures for China aren’t available, tens of thousands of Animal Crossing: New Horizons game cartridges have been sold on e-commerce platform Taobao, and many more have undoubtedly been purchased from the Nintendo Game Store and downloaded directly onto Switch consoles.
On Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, an Animal Crossing: New Horizons
hashtag has been viewed over 820 million times*, with many young people lamenting that they feel like the last ones on Earth who haven’t bought the game.
“Everyone was playing it, so I wanted to see how good it is,” says Li Yachao, a 34-year-old Beijing-based office clerk who purchased the game three days ago. Li tells Sixth Tone that many of her friends bought a Nintendo Switch just to play Animal Crossing.
A unique feature of the game is the ability to import user-generated digital graphics into one’s personalized island. Within days, some gamers in China had painted their islands a figurative
shade of red, adding portraits of communist icons like Karl Marx and Chairman Mao, as well as loud propaganda posters. Consistent with the current zeitgeist, some players have added disease control checkpoints and decontamination areas, or signs in Chinese instructing characters to “please wash your hands.”
Screenshots from Animal Crossing: New Horizons. From Weibo
Players have outfitted their virtual residences with traditional Chinese decor and furniture, and dressed their in-game characters with
hanfu and fancy outfits from China’s most popular period dramas. Widely shared screenshots show one island with huge QR codes printed across them for sending the player money via Alipay or WeChat [both being ubiqoutous money-sending mobile apps], while another island featured realistic-looking fruit business advertisements.