I know nothing about video games, but there’s something fishy about Animal Crossing and COVID-19

A guest post from Roland's partner.

With our lives suddenly controlled by social distancing and quarantine, my boyfriend and I are spending dramatically more time together. I thought this might be a wholesome bonding experience, however he’s dedicating almost his entire time to some game called Animal Crossing. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it? I hadn’t, but it’s popped up in my socials a bit and apparently it’s a bit of a big deal. So anyway, I thought I’d sit down and watch a bit, and after just 5 min I am 100% convinced this game is intricately connected, if not entirely responsible, for the covid19 pandemic. Let me explain:

There are some incredibly eerie parallels with the Animal Crossing world and our current global crisis. I will go into these in more detail in a moment, but let me just preface this with the context that, Animal Crossing was supposed to be released 3 months ago. Then, for some unknown reason, the release was delayed until the 20th of March. Right when the ‘rona began infiltrating our lives in earnest.

I had a bit of a laugh, when a new villager; Raddle, was introduced who happened to be wearing a face mask. Funny coincidence when these are becoming the world’s most popular facial accessory. Furthermore, and, I may be scraping the barrel with this one, “Raddle” sound awfully similar to “rattle”. Rattling lung sounds is a symptom of pneumonia, a serious complication of coronavirus infection. In fact, there is even a type of pneumonia that occurs in foals that is colloquially referred to rattles! Island vistor Akai agreed with me.

Things started to get really weird when my boyfriend announced that a fellow villager had come down with a cold and was locked in her house. No one was allowed to enter and she wasn’t allowed to leave… sounds like self isolation to me.

I thought there was no way I could be the only one who was suddenly suspicious about a connection between Animal Crossing and COVID-19. So I did a quick google… nothing! Amongst all the ‘rona conspiracies going around, there does not seem to be a single one about Animal Crossing. Conversely, the search hits were overwhelmingly dominated by positive articles about the benefits of Animal Crossing during this pandemic. Nintendo has pulled off an incredible conspiracy. Don’t be surprised when your islands go into lockdown, guys.