Animal Crossing Tragedy: File Under "The Emotional Power of Video Games"

[mouser]

I really think we are only beginning to see the emotional power of video games starting to be explored.  In the last decade some really interesting and deep books are being written on computer game design.. Things are going to get really interesting in the near future.

This particular slideshow is a true (somewhat sad) story about a dying mother playing a video game.

http://animalcrossingtragedy.ytmnd.com/

from http://www.neatorama.com/ via http://www.metafilter.com/

[tinyvillager]

This jumped up on digg quickly.Simple and touching.

[Deozaan]

The music from Final Fantasy X (a game) also helps the emotional impact.

It is quite interesting in a game like that, where time passes in the game much like in the real world. Seasons change, people (animals) move in and out of the village. And they remember your interactions with them.

If you don't play for a while, weeds sprout all over town, the animals wonder where you went or if you forgot about them, cockroaches infest your house, etc.

The interesting thing about this story is that it isn't really the game that affected the emotion. The game was just the vessel by which the mother showed love to her children, and the means by which the child realized that love in such a profound way.

[Deozaan]

When I saw the link was to YTMND I was sure it was a joke, since most things there are rotten. But it was really good. However, it couldn't last:

From joystiq.com:

the YTMND link had been "altered" to shy people away from the link, and the subsequent imagery was NSFW (try going to the site via Digg and you'll get an idea of what we're talking about). If you're sending this to family members or just don't want to risk seeing such things, we recommend either typing the URL in a separate window or just taking a look at the full-sized comic that we're hosting at the moment.

In other words, the image was changed (temporarily?) to gay porn because it was so popular that it was eating too much bandwidth. So follow the original link at your own risk.

Here's the story in comic form, sans gay porn and (sadly) music.

[Lashiec]

Very moving. This shows, that despite all advances in technology and changes in the videogame industry, Nintendo still makes some of the best games, just by focusing on small details and exploring new fields, even when they're seen as a company that makes games for kids.

[Darwin]

The link still opens fine for me and takes me straight to the, ahem, unadulterated video and music. This is a moving story -I viewed the video yesterday immediately before going in to teach a class and was feeling a bit choked up when I entered the room. I snapped out of it pretty quickly when I realized the danger I was in - you don't want to show any "fear" in front of a room full of 18 and 19 year olds!

As an aside, is the Korean text (Wa ru-ru or "in a hurry") indicative of this being a Korean game or is the author Korean?! Enquiring minds want to know!

[Darwin]

Once again, google is my friend - the story was written by a Korean and was originally published with Korean text and with different music. Link: http://www.krunk4eve...al-crossing-tragedy/

EDIT: to clarify - link directs you to a blog that discusses this, the link to the original story is here: http://dathvader.egloos.com/1158792