When the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons debuted in 2020, it seemed like the timing was perfect: lots of people were stuck at home and the game itself seemed to have a calming effect, with cute and at least digitally cuddly animals as the main characters.
But for Ryan Binkley, who got his master's degree from Northern Arizona University this past spring, the game is actually much more than a way to pass the time.
Binkley wrote his thesis was based on the game. It’s called "Cute and Cuddly Criminals: Colonialism, Consumerism and the Mass Ornament in Animal Crossing: New Horizons" — and as you may have guessed from the title, it takes a critical view of the game.
Binkley joined The Show to discuss his research, starting with what initially piqued his interest in the topic.
Full conversation
RYAN BINKLEY: So I started playing the game as soon as it came out, like everybody else on the planet, when COVID-19 really started to hit everybody in lockdown in March. That’s when the game came out, was in March 2020, and my sister had a copy. And so we were just kind of playing it back and forth.
And the more that I was playing it, I kind of thought to myself, “This is a little a little weird, a little off if you kind of look at it from the lens of like an environmental perspective of like how you’re going into this ‘deserted island,’ and the entire premise of the game is to turn it into a profitable tourist attraction.”
And I’m like, “That’s a little weird.” And so I had that idea for a while. I originally was going into it from an environmental ideology perspective, but then the more that I started playing the game and researching more, I landed on a colonialist lens.
MARK BRODIE: In the sense that you are going to this place in basically taking it over.
BINKLEY: Yes, exactly.
BRODIE: I wonder if at any point you were thinking, “I’m reading too much into a video game.” Like, this is not like a novel. This is not a movie. This is a video game that’s aimed at kids. Was there any thought in your mind about that?
BINKLEY: Yes. And that’s exactly why I think it’s important to take a look into these things. So specifically, I think that uncritically engaging with media that sort of cultivates justification and consent for practices is like going into places and taking it over in the name of profit guarantees their persistence.
BRODIE: I wonder if in some ways, the fact that it is kind of a calm video game — it’s certainly not like a real shoot-’em-up kind of thing — like the fact that it’s directed at kids. It’s kind of a pastoral setting with animals, and it seems kind of friendly.
In your mind, does that make it — I don’t want to say problematic — but maybe more interesting that some of these themes are involved?
BINKLEY: Yes. Absolutely. So there’s an entire section of my thesis that goes over pastoralism in its entirety and like that as a massive component of the game. So it’s particularly in what, Leo Marx in the ’60s — very important: Leo Marx, not Karl. But Leo Marx talked about it as this concept of sentimental pastoralism, which is this very American idea of what he referred to is the outdoors wilderness cult. We have this almost fetishization of camping and natural reefs and national parks and things like that, while at the same time having this rapacious appetite for consumerist products that can only exist with the exploitation of those resources.

BRODIE: I wonder if you heard anything from Nintendo about this. Like, did you have a chance to ask them any of these questions about whether or not this was an intentional thing or not?
BINKLEY: No. I did not have a chance to sit down with any developers or anything. I think a lot of that is also a language barrier. It’s it’s a Japanese development game.
But I also want to make it very clear that a lot of these things, by their very nature, are going to be unintentional. And I think that’s really what’s interesting about it is the idea of video games as a vehicle for trafficking ideology.
BRODIE: How good are video games at getting these ideologies across? How good of a vehicle are they?
BINKLEY: I think they are probably, at least in my view, the most salient form of getting those ideologies across because of their interactive nature. In the game, you are the one building the settler spaces, the institutions and the narratives, and you are enjoying it. It’s training you to think like a colonialist and a capitalist in order to access its pleasures.
BRODIE: So I might be the only person on the planet who hasn’t played Animal Crossing. But I have to say that when I was reading about it and looking at it, it struck me very much as as a little bit like SimCity, a game that I have played, and even even a game maybe like Minecraft, where your job in some settings is to build buildings and collect materials and animals and things like that. But very much like taking control of the land. It sounds like — at least in the case of SimCity — you see some parallels here.
BINKLEY: Oh, yes. Absolutely. Those social simulation games absolutely have aspects of that colonial mindset of going in and taking over a land. I think especially when it comes to something like Minecraft. One of the things that I talk about a lot is the idea of terra nullius. So essentially, when it comes to colonialism, the idea is that land and nature have value only for human desires. And as such, land should be conquered and utilized by those who “know best.”
So when historically encountering indigenous people whose land use doesn’t reflect this very Judeo-Christian utilitarian doctrine, colonizers historically have gone in and “civilized” them. So the idea is that even something like Minecraft, when you’re going in and you come across villages. And they’re not really doing a great job of “cultivating the land” and building things.
So one of the most common things to do in a survival world in Minecraft is to find a village and just ransack everything and take all their stuff, because you’re the one who knows how to actually use it better than they do. And I think over time, this anthropocentrism has really entered the realm of common sense.
It’s all well and good to say, like in theoretical terms, “Yeah, sure. This is what video games are doing, but who cares?” Like, this is why we need to care. So like those subtle, undetected dissemination of colonial ideology is essential for the preservation of global capitalism hegemony, upon which the prosperity of more “developed nations” depends, and the wealth that comes at the direct cost of ongoing ecological devastation and worker exploitation around the world.
For example, the Nintendo Switch is a contemporary consumer product that depends upon a rechargeable lithium ion battery. And those are all manufactured using cobalt. And most of the world’s cobalt supply is sourced from workers laboring in slave-like conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
So whenever someone’s playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, whenever they engage in simulated acts of subjugation, exploitation and consumption, they’re doing so on a machine whose existence is dependent upon an industry that has ravaged the landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo. And I think uncritically engaging with media that cultivates justification and consent for those practices only guarantees their persistence.
BRODIE: That is Ryan Binkley, got his master's from NAU this past May.