Animal Crossing

I have to be honest, I have never played or even heard of Animal Crossing prior to the in-class introduction to and discussion of the game. I was confused on what to write for my rhetorical analysis assignment and wasn’t even that clear on what rhetoric even meant. Using Animal Crossing, I realized that rhetoric had nothing to do with a gamer’s critique but was about the ideas the game is trying to get across. Animal Crossing at first glance is a cutesy game filled with animal characters that focuses on players performing mundane tasks such as collecting apples, fishing, and furnishing their homes. Looking deeper into the game, we see that the game is actually making a statement on corporate America and showing how business “owns” you and how debt work using a raccoon named Tom Nook and the visual rhetoric of his shack growing into a superstore using the money he collects from your character. The game also makes a statement on gender in it’s beginning sequence using verbal rhetoric. A game establishes if you are a girl or a boy depending on how you answer a question using “cute” or “cool”. This shows the cultural values we place in genders in our society stating that we perceive guys to be strong and cool while we expect girls to be fragile and cute. The game also turns this into visual rhetoric because, depending on your response, your avatar is made into a male wearing a shirt with skulls on it or a female wearing a plaid skirt.