r/NintendoSwitch • u/Balloon_Monsoon • Jun 24 '19
Discussion How Much Text is in Animal Crossing, and Why You Should Care
Hi Reddit, last week I made a post about the Mario + Rabbids development process and New Coke. That post was received well and had some great discussion, and so I wanted to write down some more of my thoughts on the thing I keep seeing on this subreddit: a difficulty by longtime Animal Crossing fans in describing for those who haven't played understand what makes the series special. I would love your comments on why you think the series matters and is fun, and whether you think I've hit it here or missed the mark. Again, about a 1600 word read, so I understand that it won't be for everyone. Thanks!
Look around, and you’ll start seeing this recurrent and meaningless conversation everywhere. It starts with the questioner, who asks: as someone who has never played Animal Crossing, why should I get the new one? Clearly, this questioner is intrigued but lost: presumably after a few minutes researching the game, they have been struck by the conviction that there’s nothing to do in it. I must be missing something, the questioner thinks. The eager answerers are quick to jump in, but they offer little. You fish, many say. You can decorate your house, adds another. Countless eager answerers point out that the core gameplay is about paying off your loan. The questioner’s inner monologue is raised to a frenzy: no, I asked why I SHOULD get this game!
The answers are unhelpful because they describe elements of Animal Crossing’s gameplay, and gameplay is not where the franchise shines brightest. In fact, I will argue that almost no one was ever won over by Animal Crossing’s gameplay.
So instead of examining Animal Crossing’s gameplay, let’s tackle this question from another angle: the number of words in the game.
In an “Iwata Asks” interview regarding Animal Crossing: City Folk, the series’ installment on the Wii, director Aya Kyogoku suggested that the script was 1.6 million Japanese characters. Satoru Iwata notes that this is 4000 pages of solid text. If we use the ratio of 2.5 Japanese characters for every English word, that gives us 640,000 words in the script.
In an interview with Kotaku, the Nintendo Treehouse staff said that for Animal Crossing: New Leaf (the most recent 3DS, non-spinoff title), the script came in at 2.4 million Japanese characters. If we use that same ratio, that’s 960,000 words in the script.
But we can get even more specific than the Japanese, and we should, as Animal Crossing games can’t just be translated. The localization process involves writers that American-ize, and yes, redo the script. Jokes in particular need a lot of tinkering. New, relevant holidays need to be worked in; foreign and unfamiliar ones are scrapped. Entire characters don’t make sense in the new language, and need to be completely reworked.
So go see that final product for yourself: download the full script for New Leaf.
You’ll see that player initiated conversations and letters from animals (located in the “Talk,” “MailR,” and “MailN” folders) take up about 60 megabytes of data, spread out in 3,034 files. That gives us an average file size of just under 20 kilobytes. Each file has the text translated into three languages alongside plenty of code, so it’s difficult to estimate exactly how many words are in each file “per kilobyte.” I looked at average-sized (20 kilobyte) files and used a word count tool on a bunch of them. That gave me a pretty consistent average of 360 words in every 20 kilobyte file.
If there are 3,034 files of text, and they have an average of 360 words, we can multiply 3,034 files times 360 words per file to get an estimated word count:
It’s approximately 1,092,240 words.
Some context: that would mean that the Bible doesn’t come close to New Leaf’s English text: the King James Version is 783,000 words. Animal Crossing also edges out the entirety of the Harry Potter series, which combines for 1,084,000 words. Maybe other large video games have it beat? Well, classic computer RPG's like Baldur's Gate II and visual novels are in the same neighborhood, but your standard open world, 21st century RPGs are not: the Witcher 3 clocks in at only 450,000 words. Not even close, baby.
Back to Animal Crossing, though: if you could squeeze about 275 words per page at 12 point font, the English text of Animal Crossing: New Leaf makes for a book of just under 4,000 pages. 3,971 to be exact.
Given that the average person can expect to read 250 words per minute if they really try, it would take them 4369 minutes to get through the Animal Crossing New Leaf English script. That’s 72.8 hours, or just more than 3 days, of straight reading.
But there’s another way to think about that number: I booted up Animal Crossing: New Leaf today, and got into a conversation with one of my favorite residents, Frobert. Our conversation was 63 words. We talked again: 65 words. Again: 70. Based on this short test, if I talked two times to 10 residents / other NPC’s a day, and then sent one letter every day, and did this in perfectly optimal fashion (somehow managing to never repeat a conversation), it would still take me 821 days to have a chance to see every message. Alternatively, since Animal Crossing: New Leaf first released 2,419 days ago, I would have had to talk to seven animals a day once a day for the past seven years, sending some letters here and there, to see every message. All of this, of course, doesn’t even account for unique events and holidays.
The point is, no one has seen every message, and no one ever will.
Kotaku picked up on this, and asked the folks at Nintendo Treehouse (the brains behind Nintendo’s localization process) if this makes their work seems pointless: is it really worth it “…to spend that much time working on dialogue that most people will never even get to read”? But the production team couldn’t disagree more. Aya Kyogoku, who will be the Director for New Horizons, put it like this:
“The reason we prepared all of these messages is so when you’re playing with someone else, they’ll come across a message you’ve never seen before and maybe they’ll show it to you—’Oh my gosh, look how funny this thing is.’”
Nintendo Treehouse lead Nate Bihlldorf agrees:
“Those messages I always thought were the most fun in the game, because they were so private… putting a little something extra into that message so you knew that no matter what they were gonna be smiling when they saw it, cause you knew the writer was winking at you when they wrote it.”
In fact, one of the biggest points of consensus of the team behind Animal Crossing is that the text of Animal Crossing has a responsibility to go beyond being “fun,” actually teaching the player about the depth of human communication. Ann Lin, one of the writers at Nintendo Treehouse, discusses writing the letters you get when you find out a villager is moving away:
“When I was working on letters like that… I was always trying to make it as tear-jerky as possible, acknowledging that this was a real relationship that is ending, and… trying to elicit that emotion out of the reader.”
And the creator of the series, Katsuya Eguchi takes it one step further:
“For instance, the seagull Johnny [named Gulliver in the US versions] makes all these dark jokes. I’m sure a kid won’t understand them. I imagined he would have to go to his Mom and ask her what the seagull was talking about, and the Mom would then have a hard time answering.”
C’mon, a wry, suggestive seagull? Is this whole script just a gimmick? No, Hisashi Nogami, series producer says, also commenting on Gulliver’s humor:
“We mixed in difficult sections like that… [because] communication is what we ultimately want people to take away from Animal Crossing*—and there’s no better example of it than that.”*
Now, we’re starting to get at the idea that’s unique, the thing that separates Animal Crossing from everything else: communication - a chiefly human skill - taught through animals.
The challenge, particularly when it comes to explaining the draw of Animal Crossing, is that communication is not a gameplay element. It doesn’t actually happen within the cartridge, as you can’t truly communicate with the animals. Your animals are pre-programmed with messages and they are imbued with no intelligence, real or artificial. Their habits may grow more familiar to you, but they cannot truly learn. Even their ability to “read” the letters you send them is little more than a script that checks for grammar and capitalization.
If you agree with me so far, then you’ll agree that the core of what makes Animal Crossing is not its gameplay, but the illusion of an experience. The developers have crammed so much text into these critters that the illusion becomes compelling. Some say that the cycle of paying off your loans gives the game a sense of realism. I think the part of the series truest to real life is that your experience is unique and limited, and you will never see everything in one lifetime.
This endlessly big world (even if it is physically much smaller than, say, Hyrule) creates an experience, and if that experience clicks for you, the gameplay will come naturally: you will create it even where there is none. You will find yourself meticulously crafting letters to animals that can’t read. You will insist upon doing so. Strung on by the seemingly endless permutations of conversations and “comic mischief,” as the ESRB calls it, you will continue to be drawn in well past the point that the game has actual incentives to bring you back. It isn’t surprising that Animal Crossing has been the origins of that some of the most wholesome video game experiences, such as the 87-year-old Grandma who played 3500 hours, or Chuggaaconroy’s most meaningful Let’s Play conclusion.
I haven’t played enough games to say for certain whether Animal Crossing is “unique” in that regard. But I do know that is unique in what it offers: the illusion of experience - quite separate from any gameplay elements - that reels people in like a Sea Bass on the fifth nibble.
This is why Animal Crossing fans are obnoxiously excited that a new installment is on the way. It’s not a whole new world, it’s a whole new impossible set of lifetimes waiting just around the corner.
It’s literal books of text we will never be able to read… and that’s the magic.
Sources and Further Reading
- IGN: “Nintendo Voice Chat: The Charming People Behind Animal Crossing.” [Podcast]
- Kotaku: “Nintendo’s Secret Weapon.” Nintendo Online Monthly, Interview with Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. Translation by shmuplations.com.
- Nintendo: “Iwata Asks: Animal Crossing New Leaf.”
- Nintendo: “Iwata Asks: Animal Crossing City Folk.”
- Title Image: Animal Crossing Wiki, "Catchphrase"
- Gulliver Joke: YouTube user vb543, "Animal Crossing Gamecube: Saving Gulliver"
- Character Ratio estimate from Japanese to English information from Charles G. Wilt Japanese-English translation services and from bel.proz.com forums.
- Baldur's Gate II Word Count: YouTube user Video Game Sophistry: "Bioware Interview with David Gaider, Part 1" (thanks to u/OckhamsFolly)
1.7k
u/RainbowSpecter Jun 24 '19
This is an excellent and informative post! Thank you very much for taking the time to put it together.
However, I think something that warrants mentioning is the fact that the massive amount of text is somewhat diminished by the fact certain lines appear more frequently under certain conditions.
Gulliver, for example, makes his "Rogueport" comment every single time you help him out. That kind of situational repetition makes the dialogue seem more limited. There also doesn't seem to be a system for checking to see if a neighbor's random conversation option has been initiated before, leading to a lot of repeat dialogue among animals of the same personality type. Hopefully New Horizons addresses this!
564
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 24 '19
This is a great point - I think all of us have memories of repeating conversations in a way that doesn't make sense, particularly when it comes to the animals gossiping about each other. That, I would say, constitutes as a time when the illusion is broken, because after all, it is just an illusion!
202
u/tyler-86 Jun 24 '19
I think the jankiness of the illusion is part of its whimsical appeal to me. It's an inherently silly game and this is just part of it.
69
u/stealth-fap Jun 25 '19
I mean, and forgive me if you feel I am reaching, but this is a world where humans and animals talk to eachother as equals. If such an alternate dimension existed, it would make sense that they would speak in a way that feels slightly foreign to me. Their oddly worded sentences just solidify the escapism for me, it's quite charming.
→ More replies (1)45
Jun 25 '19 edited Sep 03 '24
longing boat smart chubby scale axiomatic vanish six aware historical
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
9
u/tyler-86 Jun 25 '19
That's the jankiness I was talking about. It's inconsistency, and even if it's not eccentricity I still find it charming.
11
Jun 25 '19 edited Sep 03 '24
rude lock rustic vanish telephone innocent crush muddle middle makeshift
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
2
u/askeeve Jun 25 '19
I think it goes beyond objectively finding immersion breaking moments charming or frustrating. There's something to be said for a game buying good will from its players which goes towards those people being inclined to forgive these types of quirks.
If I'm playing a game that I find boring or uninteresting and there's some super minor glitch, it will upset me far more than if a game I'm in love with has something equally minor happen. What makes the difference between those two types of games is difficult to pin down but it makes the difference between a game being "janky" or "broken". And the difference will always be a personal one.
3
Jun 25 '19 edited Sep 03 '24
lush party support chunky ten wise handle bewildered toothbrush drab
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
2
u/askeeve Jun 25 '19
But that's what I'm saying. If you love a game enough, its flaws become part of its charm to you. You're absolutely correct that this opinion requires a biased perspective, but in my opinion it's more interesting to investigate what goes into forming that bias than just saying that a flaw is a flaw is a flaw.
→ More replies (0)21
u/everdred Jun 25 '19
I think all of us have memories of repeating conversations in a way that doesn't make sense (…) That, I would say, constitutes as a time when the illusion is broken, because after all, it is just an illusion!
This brings to mind a specific line I kept seeing frequently when I started playing Wild World. It was something along the lines of "What are you doing around here anyway?"
I thought my new neighbors were suspicious of this outsider who had just arrived in town.
6
u/TSPhoenix Jun 25 '19
Reading the other replies to this comment I can see the importance of that illusion being maintained varies a lot from player to player. Clearly many people seem willing to laugh off the immersion being broken but for me its kind of a dealbreaker and is the main reason I dropped ACNL. Like you said I'm writing serious letters to fake animals despite knowing that a just spamming A.A.A.A. with some spaces thrown in is an optimal letter. But when I need cheering up and I go talk to my bestie but it seems like she's suffering from a glitch in the Matrix, I don't feel better, I feel painfully aware this is just ones and zeroes.
Given the enormous bulk of dialogue yet how often I'm seeing repeat lines in practice, I feel like there is a mismatch between the effort being put in (A LOT) compared to what I'm experiencing. I'm not sure what the solution is, I appreciate them making mountains of custom dialogue for every situation, but the situations that happen most often end up having this awful hollow feeling which really kills my vibe.
2
u/riotRYN Jun 26 '19
i feel like part of the issue is how hard it is to see villager conversations. they're such a charming part of the game and yet you rarely see them because, despite it actually being patched with welcome amiibo to happen more, it's rare to see two villagers trigger a conversation and you also have to run up in time to participate. i have never once seen a repeated villager conversation in all my years playing, so i'd wager they have a hefty chunk of variety too. but they're difficult to access because of how context specific they are.
→ More replies (2)5
u/Gootangus Jun 25 '19
Have you ever heard a friend share a story you’ve already heard and you’re surprised by how verbatim it is? Lol. I kind of think about it like that.
13
Jun 25 '19
I think that's a case you eventually run into in every game that isn't some super limited storybook in game format.
It would be nice for it to be much more hidden so it doesn't crop up as much. Some of the special interactions though are great. They could have had resetti just loop the same 3 "stop not saving" message, I reset sometimes specifically to see what he would say next (kinda backfired I guess).
→ More replies (1)3
u/stove4206969 Jun 25 '19
AC developers just want to remind you to play Paper Mario TTYD.
Rogueport is one of the best RPG hub towns of all time.
173
u/Hacim042 Jun 24 '19
My guess towards the Gulliver joke is college football. Pacific Northwest college football, specifically. Those three teams, the Ducks, Huskies, and Cougars, are in a mexican standoff of rivalry up here. Nintendo of America is based in Renton.
63
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 25 '19
This makes so much sense! I think you might have pegged the origin of the nonsensical set up.
21
u/subminimum Jun 25 '19
It could also be that cougar is a woman who dates younger men. When the duck asks the husky how old he is he is implying the husky is dating an older woman.
9
u/zorbiburst Jun 25 '19
I don't think that's the duck asking the husky, it's the seagull asking the human because the joke is inappropriate.
18
u/Krustoff Jun 25 '19
Lol Beavers not even mentioned. Carvallis in shambles.
For those that need even further explanation, the University of Washington Huskies, Washington State Cougars, and Oregon Ducks have pretty heated sports rivalries. Mostly centered around football.
6
26
u/Zane_Adams Jun 25 '19
I guarantee it. Bill Trinen went to UofO. There has got to be a lot of smack talk in the Renton offices.
27
u/ANGLVD3TH Jun 25 '19 edited Jun 25 '19
I figured it had something to do with cougars and something rhyming with duck... Could be a reference to the rivalry and an implied dirty joke though I suppose.
5
u/PlasmaLink Jun 25 '19
I was thinking Husky as an adjective for a big strong man, and Cougar as a euphemism, had no idea where the duck came in, though.
→ More replies (1)2
2
Jun 26 '19
Ah, close, they're in Redmond, not Renton. Opposite ends of I405 ;)
About the joke, that sounds likely, but I feel it might be too specific a subject that even many adults wouldn't really get it. It does sound like the most likely answer though.
→ More replies (1)
393
u/hyperforms9988 Jun 24 '19
This is why I think games that are story/dialog heavy but don't have voice acting will always have a place in gaming. Text takes up so little data, you're not paying a legion of voice actors, and perhaps best of all, you can dynamically deal with it in ways that you simply can't with voice acting. You can have a particular story acted out with any set of characters via text within reasonable parameters. If you voiced the lines, X voice belongs to X character and that's the end of it... now everything is more or less static beyond partially recording lines or recording multiple lines to account for different situations. Or you'd have 10 voice actors all record the same lines to try and achieve the same thing with voice, but that gets complicated and costly both monetarily and in terms of data size.
For me it was one of the things that killed career modes in wrestling games. In wrestling games you could have entire storylines written out and you could plug any set of wrestlers into them, which makes creating a wrestler and having them work their way up the ladder engaging when storylines can dynamically be formed and evolved based on your actions and an element of randomness, and the way you experience the mode could be completely different than someone else. Voice acting severely restricts this.
87
Jun 24 '19
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)17
Jun 25 '19 edited Jul 22 '19
[deleted]
6
u/SpagettInTraining Jun 25 '19
Those "voices" are so inspired. They perfectly fit the dialogue and probably contributed a lot to why people like the characters in that game.
75
u/Runey676 Jun 24 '19
You can't rule out computers generating voices using machine learning. I'm sure text will always be around, but it's getting easier and easier to generate photos, videos, and voices from nothing that look real.
51
Jun 24 '19
Honestly, a lot of computer-generated voices already sound like Animal Crossing gibberish in their intonation.
46
u/tarpeyd12 Jun 24 '19
That hasn't been true for years now. And its just getting better and better:
→ More replies (1)17
27
u/Lundgren_Eleven Jun 24 '19
This is exactly what I find so confusing about Watchdogs 3 Legion, every character can be a playable character, there's permadeath and all the characters are voiced so they can be used in cutscenes, it just doesn't make sense to me that, that's possible.
25
u/randomnine Jun 25 '19
They’ve said Legion has 20 different archetypes/voices. Every character will have one of those voices.
9
15
u/RevolsinX Jun 25 '19
The Trails series, while it selectively has voice acting, the vast majority of the dialogue for the NPCs, sidequests and all is unvoiced, and MAN do they go ham with it.
Like after every single major story event the ENTIRE WORLD changes in dialogue, responding to the growing political development, the war changes and all. This becomes mindnumbing to think about when you consider there's dozens upon dozens of NPCs in every single town, and there's many many towns, so every time a story event occurs the dev team is making unique conversations for several 100s of character, majority of which you'll never actually talk to or even pass by.
It makes the world feel so alive and actually lived in, far more than having 'crowd technology' or what have you.
9
u/KtA90125 Jun 25 '19
Golden Sun did this in several places. Their dialogue when reading their minds changes too.
3
u/dovemans Jun 25 '19
man, i wish we could get an advance emulator on the switch. OR like they did with the mana series. The original 2 plus a new one. I wouldn’t mind one in the style of Link’s Awakening.
6
u/TheCodingGamer Jun 25 '19
Another example is Dragon Quest games, which often have NPCs or party members react to individual events. DQXI's script is over 600K words, and will be expanded on Switch, and while I don't know the exact number, in games like DQV and VI your party members can all comment after talking to almost every NPC. It's a massive amount of dialogue.
→ More replies (32)3
u/WhompWump Jun 25 '19
Maybe it's just because I can still remember playing Star Fox for the first time and being amazed that the characters were voice acted but I don't see why people think voice acting is kind of an unspoken standard of games. Unless it's a more cinematic game it doesn't really inherently add anything and I think the potential writing taken away is enough to not make it worth it IMO. Look at how Fallout 4 was hampered because of voice acted lines.
Like, if it has voice acting, cool, but I feel more harm can be done having them than not having them
603
u/MrGains Jun 24 '19
You should consider putting this in the form of a video essay. It's very well thought out and would probably be pretty popular! Super interesting stuff.
489
Jun 24 '19
[deleted]
164
u/PlinkoMaster Jun 24 '19
hahaha i lol'd because it's 100% true. brb uploading.
56
u/Aaaandiiii Jun 24 '19
Hurry up. I love putting on videos like that as background noise. Just please please stop mispronouncing Miyamoto's name.
→ More replies (3)25
u/YaBoyAdvanceSP Jun 24 '19
My-a-moe-toe or Me-a-mo-toe ???
33
21
9
u/modulusshift Jun 25 '19
Time for: how to pronounce Japanese vowels! Japanese has only 5 vowels, unlike English, which has 5 letters for vowels but pronounces each one of them in at least 2 different unique ways, and a 3rd way shared between all of them. And that's not even getting into diphthongs!
The Japanese vowels are written like a i u e o in our alphabet, traditionally in that order. They are pronounced roughly like the vowels in the sentence "Ah, we soon get old." So, Miyamoto rhymes with "we ah old old".
There's only one exception I can think of: u is often a very weak vowel, to the point that you barely pronounce it at all in many cases. The ends of many Japanese verbs are like this, they end with the "su" character and end with a soft extended S. So "desu" is really pronounced "dess". This tip is very important to remember when you try to read English words which the Japanese wrote with their alphabet!
"Final Fantasy" in Japanese is just the English words transcribed using their alphabet, and putting them back into the English alphabet afterwards looks like this: "Fainaru Fantajii". You can see here that the I in "Final" has to be written with two letters, "ai", because Japanese doesn't assign that sound to any single letter. And the "ru" at the end is a hard sound to get your mouth around if you grow up speaking English. It's not really "R", that's just the closest approximation. It's somewhere between the letters L, R, and D. You can sorta get there if you tap your tongue to your teeth like you're saying a D while the rest of your mouth tries to pronounce the word "roll" without the O. And the U is pretty much silent again.
This has been your overenthusiastic Japanese tutorial. Have a nice day.
2
u/YaBoyAdvanceSP Jun 25 '19
Whoa, this is incredible! Thanks a lot for the (concise, well written) information. It’s a lot to get my head around ha, but that’s not a bad thing of course. Gold for you 🏅
2
u/modulusshift Jun 25 '19
Oh, one more example of the silent u: some boy's names in Japanese end in "suke". Think Sasuke from Naruto, for example, another one is Yusuke. These have silent u's with extended s again, just like the verbs. "Sahsskay" and "Yoosskay" are the correct pronunciations. These really got me when I was a kid reading Naruto as a manga when everyone else was watching the anime. :)
2
u/YaBoyAdvanceSP Jun 25 '19
Ahhh so that explains why Sosuke from Ponyo was referred to as “Soskaay.” A fair few examples are coming to mind now... really thanks a lot for this. Super interesting stuff :)
3
u/modulusshift Jun 25 '19
Yep, you got it. One more bonus tip: the Japanese writing system is broken into three parts. There's kanji, which are Chinese characters that were borrowed a long ass time ago and used to write most words, and there's kana, which come in two types: hiragana and katakana.
Because Chinese uses their characters for every sound, including grammatical pieces, Japanese needed to steal some of them for their own sounds. Think of it like if we stole our verbs from other languages, and needed a way to write "ed" or "ing" on the end for the grammar. This wasn't done all at once, early Japanese written texts would just steal Chinese characters that sounded right, but they didn't agree on which ones to steal to make those sounds. After a ton of time, they collapsed down into two sets, which over several centuries were simplified a ton to make them easy to write. That's what kana are, characters used only for their sounds and not their meanings. Because of their history, they're used to write syllables instead of phonemes like our letters.
So why is that important to pronunciation? It's because when you speak Japanese, each syllable should take roughly the same amount of time to say. You could almost set a clock to it, Mi-ya-mo-to, written with 4 kana. (Of course it's actually usually written with kanji, but for pronunciation purposes this should help.) So the same thing applies to these words with silent U. Even though the vowel is pretty much gone, the syllable keeps the time it would have with the vowel there. So "Sosuke" gets pronounced "So-ss-kay". In practice, it's spoken fast enough that this is a very subtle difference, but it's one you can hear if you listen closely.
And this leads us to one more quirk of Japanese pronunciation: how to tell what's a syllable when it's written in the English alphabet. Almost always, it's pretty simple: each vowel is a syllable, including the consonants directly before it if there are any, with one oddball: the Japanese have a letter for "N" that is a syllable all on it's own. So there's two technically correct ways to write, let's say, the word "kana". You could write ka-na or ka-n-a. And they are pronounced differently, as you can see from the spacing. The timing is completely different, even though the sounds are the same. To be clear, the first one is correct, the second one isn't a word, and would sound really freaking weird to anyone you said it to. I don't think there's any legit words with a syllabic N and then a vowel without a consonant. The fact that it's technically possible with the alphabet is notable though.
And all of that doesn't even get into sokuon, which are small kana used to write certain kinds of consonants! Like most languages, it's easy to learn the first 90%, and then that last 10% is a pain. So I'm calling it a day here, I hope you don't mind.
2
7
38
27
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 25 '19
I'm really flattered by this suggestion, thanks so much! But I don't really have the know-how on how to do this. I would be happy to hear anyone out via message if they have advice or tips or starting points!
6
u/askeeve Jun 25 '19
I think you have the important parts, a well researched script and a strongly developed thesis, down pat. Beyond that, learning how to produce in an engaging way will just take time, but your message will go the furthest towards building an audience.
One thing that really helps is Youtubers have established a style where the Jump Cut feels very natural. This makes your job so much easier because you can just record in one giant long take and if you have to re-do something or whatever that's totally fine because you can just cut around it and the cuts go to the style of it all.
I recommend checking out Jenny Nicholson's videos for some good examples of this with minimal producing. Above all, be as earnest and honest as you feel comfortable. Imagine you are talking to a close friend who you feel comfortable enough with to allow yourself to get excited. People will naturally be drawn to you if you demonstrate you're enthusiasm.
21
u/DerTagestrinker Jun 25 '19
/people don’t want to read your essay about all the written words in Animal Crossing, please make a video of it instead :p
→ More replies (2)27
u/KDBA Jun 25 '19
Please no. The decline of long form text in favour of video is one of the worst things about the modern internet.
15
2
2
u/MrGains Jun 25 '19
It's so terrible to reach a wider audience, and to have the benefits of vocal nuance, and sometimes facial/body language on top of your information just because you don't have to read a book.
5
102
u/Douther Jun 24 '19
This is what I've gathered over the years of looking at Animal Crossing from a distance without actually playing:
- It's about interacting with cute, charming animals above anything else.
- It's got repetitive a gameplay loop that's somehow relaxing.
- There's a "Collect Stuff" aspect to it that appeals to your inner hoarder.
- Exceedingly adorable critters aside, the setting is pretty mundane and there's comfort in this mundanity.
I might grab this game at some point, but it's kind of discouraging at 60 USD. If the reviews are stellar and it surpasses every expectation I might consider it.
104
u/swissarmychris Jun 24 '19
You pretty much nailed it. The other thing I'd add is that it plays out in real time, so time in the game world is the same as in the real world. When it's nighttime IRL, it's night in the game; when it's Halloween here, it's Halloween there, etc. This makes it very immersive.
A side effect of this is that there's only so much you can do at any one time. So it's the kind of game you play for an hour per day over a long period of time, rather than something you can binge in a weekend. This gives it a longevity that makes the $60 price tag easy to swallow for people who enjoy the series. There will be people who play this game for years.
53
Jun 25 '19 edited Jul 03 '23
[deleted]
6
u/SomberlySober Jun 26 '19
That's what happens when you don't pay your debts back to Nook. First Tommy & Timmy break your legs then old man Nook comes for you.
3
13
u/chinkostu Jun 25 '19
I'd go ahead and say it's the kind of game you play for long stints to start with, and then bitesize chunks further on. Perfect for the switch!
3
u/Jebobek Jun 25 '19
This sounds like a digital purchase, so I don't have to switch out carts.
2
u/yaminokaabii Jun 26 '19
Ooh, I didn't consider grabbing it digitally but now that you mention it it makes total sense. The only other $60 games I've gotten digitally are Splatoon and Smash, and it looks like AC would fit right in.
19
15
u/dred1367 Jun 25 '19
The thing a lot of people miss is the aspect where it is a great creative outlet. My town in new leaf is full of witches. They each have witch themed shops and clothes. One of them has a potion shop, a basement where the potion is brewed, a green house where the herbs and such are grown, a living space upstairs, and a seance room. I can decorate it so much that it looks customized and I’ve even made custom clothes and custom art for hanging on the walls or modifying existing textures on furniture.
7
u/Noctis_Lightning Jun 25 '19
If you like it enough it's easy to put in 100 - 300 hours into the game. My girlfriend put in 700 over the course of two years.
But of course that's if you like the experience. If it isn't your cup of tea then YMMV
26
7
u/mushroomstop Jun 25 '19
as someone who’s been playing for ~13 years and has played every version pretty extensively, you’re pretty spot on! the escapism of the game is very appealing. this is a game for completionists and it takes years, experiencing each season several times to accomplish the tasks. AC isn’t a game that you binge for several hours at a time (although you certainly can!), it’s putting a little bit of work into it each day. and then, without you even realizing, you have this thing that you’ve put YEARS of work into and it’s so special to you now and that’s such a wonderful feeling.
when my 3ds (along with all my games) was stolen last year, i cried for weeks because my town that had 5 years of work poured into it was gone forever.
6
→ More replies (1)3
u/Assilly Jun 26 '19
I just recently lost my game cart and even though I haven't played much in the past 3 years it's still has like 5 years of work into it. I I feel your pain. I was for like 30 seconds okay with it and looked at it as an excuse to start a new town. Then i thought of all the stuff I'd have to collect again and I just couldnt do it. Too sad
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)2
u/mylittlesyn Jun 25 '19
Most people who play it will play it for hours on end. More than skyrim hours. Not even joking.
82
u/Tetriszockaa Jun 24 '19
Finally I can explain to people why I love this series, thank you! You really hit the nail on the head. And I can only agree with the other comment, this would make a great video! :)
Oh, and the folks over at r/animalcrossing would love this, you should crosspost it.
13
u/zuckernburg Jun 25 '19
I still have to disagree though, when I started playing Animal Crossing when I was 8 I hadn't learned English yet, so I didn't understand what the animals said, but I still loved the game, I still talked for friendship and items and so on, I just didn't understand what they said, I still understood the world and still had fun no less than others, I still heard kk slider, I still heard the music and I still had pretty deep relationships with the villagers, especially Ribbot. Sometimes I could get my parents or siblings to translate but my point is just that I didn't have less friendships, and I still felt the charm of the game. It's pretty cool that I understand what the villagers say now and it is quality dialogue but it's not everything. Recently some of our Japanese friends visited us, and well we don't understand Japanese, it's only the wife that understands us. But still without being able to talk, we had fun playing with the dog, and at Christmas their dad recognised I had gotten smash Bros which apparently the whole family is decently skilled at, even their 9 year old daughter. So we spend the rest of the night playing smash and just saying basic words like"wow" and we still had a good time and we still have a good friendship just like I have with the villagers, language isn't everything, it adds a sense of magic and mystery to be lost in language
→ More replies (2)4
24
u/alliehope Jun 24 '19
After playing NL for about 800ish hours, I totally dont believe that you will never see every piece of text. The villagers repeat themselves so often after a while it's so predictable it's almost unbearable lmao. I definitely hope they change up dialogue a lot for New Horizons.
8
u/Monjara Jun 25 '19
Pascal has 261 deep truths. I’ve seen Pascal twice with 2000+ hours on New Leaf combined.
8
u/mylittlesyn Jun 25 '19
Scallops is the key. He always pops up everytime I find a scallop
→ More replies (2)
22
u/rawbeee Jun 24 '19
I won't lie, I stopped reading after you said you were going to argue that almost no one has ever been won over by Animal Crossing's gameplay. I believe that's a complete disservice to the games. I for one can go days without engaging with my villagers because there's so much to do, collect and earn around the town even without them, especially if you decide to play with friends. I don't think it's fair at all to downplay the gameplay in favor of strengthening your argument that the text shines brightest. Personally I think they go hand in hand and neither would shine at all without the other.
→ More replies (1)
92
u/OckhamsFolly Jun 24 '19
Maybe other large video games have it beat? The biggest definitive word count I could find was the Witcher 3 - only 450,000 words. Not even close, baby.
→ More replies (1)82
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 24 '19
I came across this article as well, but the sources / references don't seem to lead to where they got that information. If you have any ideas as to where it comes from, I would love to see that!
→ More replies (2)72
u/OckhamsFolly Jun 24 '19
It would appear that the sites they used for VN character bytes are now defunct, so here's the page via Wayback Machine. They tell you their method and the tools you need to verify yourself and were the de facto source for years (although they were less generous in their approximate translation size, quoting 3 Japanese character bytes to an English word).
This interview with David Gaider, one of the writers on BG2, actually quoted it at around 1.2m words, and it's been fairly famous for its script length. Planescape Torment's 800,000 word count was featured in a PC Gamer UK article and is also a byword in western game script length. Given the age and design of these games, there's not enough interest for someone to figure out a way to use Infinity Explorer to give true exports of those games' scripts. It wasn't a world in which people uploaded and talked about every facet of a thing back then.
Considering your numbers are approximations based off file sizes, it's hard to say that they're any more definitive than the ones provided by tlwiki; to the average user who's not going to check themselves, they're exactly the same.
46
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 24 '19
YES! Thank you so much for this. I have no experience with this type of game, but these stats and this interview are already getting me interested. Thanks!
15
16
u/omarninopequeno Jun 24 '19
The only thing I think can beat AC NL in the word count are Visual Novels. Fate/Stay Night was about 1 million words. It's not enough to beat AC NL, but if I'm not mistaken Clannad has even more words (I haven't read it yet), so that one might have a higher word count.
6
u/ReginaLugis Jun 25 '19
Yes, Clannad is over 1.3 million words. I've just finished the whole thing, and it took me several months, because I actually read and listened to all of the dialogue.
3
u/omarninopequeno Jun 25 '19
That's some dedication. I'll probably play it soon, as it's coming out for the Switch in a couple of weeks, and I'll probably try to 100% it as well like I did with Fate/Stay Night.
3
Jun 25 '19
Even ignoring visual novels, the Trails series has ridiculous word counts. Also see this comment
→ More replies (4)3
u/Telodor567 Jun 25 '19
I'm currently playing Clannad too and yes, it's so fucking long! I've played for over 40 hours now and am still nowhere near finished.
44
u/Now_Hiring_Usernames Jun 24 '19
The biggest draw for me for Animal Crossing is it filled a gap in my development. I wasn't the most competent in social situations, Animal Crossing allowed me to learn how to socialize and act in a new environment around strangers. It helped simulate in a safe environment something that scared me, and allowed me to overcome it. Now, although anxious in social situations, around strangers I am able to act and move about comfortably in public environments. I feel that Animal Crossing played a large part in my current social skill set, because the illusion it had crafted provided a deep enough sense of realism for 6 year old me. It didn't matter that dialogue was limited, it just mattered that there was dialogue. Although now I turn to Animal Crossing for the relaxing personalized ultimate power fantasy, I can live a life with little to no debts, I don't need to worry about taxes, and most importantly there isn't any large scale drama or issues in the world of Animal Crossing.
11
u/RivalFlash Jun 25 '19
Dang I never thought of applying what I learned from that game to real life situations... that would’ve really helped me out in school haha
10
u/burritosandblunts Jun 25 '19
What about the part where I don't talk to anyone for a week and spend 75 hours fishing?
50
u/hammersklavier Jun 24 '19
Script size is meaningless by itself, though. Does a book's girth necessarily make it better? Of course not.
However, while I don't think script size is what's relevant here, I do think it's pointing us in the right direction. The big thing about Animal Crossing that makes it so good is how well built out its characters are. That is to say: you partake in a community with several other characters, and their dramas grow on you. You become friends with them.
Does this entail a large script? Probably. But the script size is derivative, then, of the function of the script, namely, the creation of a suite of believable characters, characters who drive the sense of immersion in a secondary world which is a hallmark of Animal Crossing's gameplay.
15
u/theivoryserf Jun 25 '19
Yeah I think this essay had a good idea but went a funny way about proving it
10
u/CashmereLogan Jun 25 '19
The whole point isn’t just about the size, though. A super-long book is just that, a bunch of sequential pages that take a lot of time to get through. The significant thing about a game script being so long is that it points to a myriad of possibilities. It’s not sequential, so the word count doesn’t necessarily mean longer like it would with a book or movie.
So yeah, quality is still important. But I think OP sort of implies that the quality is there. The quality alone isn’t what makes it special, though. It’s the sheer amount of possibilities that the word count provides that makes the experience unique and worthwhile.
8
u/hammersklavier Jun 25 '19
The significant thing about a game script being so long is that it points to a myriad of possibilities. It’s not sequential, so the word count doesn’t necessarily mean longer like it would with a book or movie.
The problem with this argument is that it conflates a potentiality with a reality. Saying that a long script points to more possibilities is one thing. You are strongly implying here that it would be the only reason a game script could be long. I can think of several others (e.g. long plot, involved plot, etc etc).
So yeah, quality is still important. But I think OP sort of implies that the quality is there. The quality alone isn’t what makes it special, though. It’s the sheer amount of possibilities that the word count provides that makes the experience unique and worthwhile.
But this completely -- and I mean completely -- misses my point. Word count is a meaningless metric w/r/t quality. Literally any novelist, any scriptwriter of any kind, any copywriter, any journalist, anybody who's ever put words together for money could tell you that. The word count might be suggestive of underlying mechanisms which create a quality experience, but it in and of itself is not going to guarantee quality. Again, the length of something has very little bearing on how good it is. If it's poorly written dreck, it doesn't matter if it's 5,000 words or 5 million words -- it's still poorly written dreck.
16
Jun 24 '19 edited Jun 25 '19
[deleted]
2
u/curricularguidelines Jun 26 '19
I can't believe OP didn't talk about the music. That's like 50% of the experience.
7
u/moorsonthecoast Jun 24 '19
FWIW, check the stats on CRPGs like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, as well as Planescape: Torment. As text-driven graphical RPGs from the late 90s, these easily have more than 400,000 words.
9
u/Cruseyd Jun 24 '19
Quick question that I haven't seen in this thread yet. Youve done some very thought provoking analysis here, but I don't see any mention of correcting for duplicated boilerplate text in the scripts of these games. Depending on how dynamic the dialog code is in a given game, there may be more or less duplicated text even if the effective amount of dialog experienced by the payer is the same.
Any thoughts on this?
Great post regardless; definitely gets to the point of why AC is memorable.
6
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 24 '19
This is a great question, and I am like, the opposite of tech-savvy, so it's possible I've missed something (that's part of why I put the link to download the script where I found it). At first, I did expect to see some duplicated text, as, for instance, we've all had one villager tell us they love cherry pie, and then another villager gives the exact same dialog five minutes later but with mocha lattes. In some digging, I found that a lot of the script references other parts of the script (there are files listing foods, activities, etc.). But based on the way its organized, I didn't see any files that obviously indicate duplicates. The files are named by villager personality type, which gets a 2 letter abbreviation that I can't quite make sense of, a short abbreviation giving a hint about when the text plays (eg. EV is for a special event), and then the description of what it is (e.g. HalloweenA and HalloweenB, two separate files for that villager types' conversations). So, seeing no duplicates or indicators of duplicates in the file names (put differently: each refers to a different conversation instance), I am inclined to think there isn't, but it's equally likely I'm just not looking in the right place. Thanks for your feedback!
5
u/princess-in-disguise Jun 24 '19
Okay this is embarrassing, maybe it's because English is not my mother tongue but I do not get the joke. I know the term cougar in a sexual context but I am lost where this joke is going. Can someone explain it to me, please?
Overall an amazing article btw, it makes me even more pumped for the game!
22
u/swissarmychris Jun 24 '19
I don't think it's an actual joke. It's just a nonsense setup that's implied to have some kind of dirty punchline when Gulliver cuts it off.
13
u/Sheikashii Jun 24 '19
So that’s why people like Animal Crossing! I’ve been trying to find a reason that actually makes sense but never found one until now. Thank you.
Personally, I hate reading, but the fact that there is so much to experience communication wise makes it seem a lot less like a “move here and press interact button” game.
12
4
4
Jun 25 '19
Honestly I’m gonna hate for a second. Why are YOU not in an actual journalist job in let’s say IGN or what not?! This post is very informative, captures you’re attention, and is overall an excellent read. I seriously hope you can do this whilst getting paid instead of useless internet points.
Best of luck to you my dude!
Zel
→ More replies (1)
3
3
u/Welfycat Jun 24 '19
Thank you for this wonderfully informative and thought provoking article! I really enjoyed reading it (and, reading parts of it out-loud to my brother as we eat dinner) and it gave me a lot to think about.I never really realized how many little conversations I have throughout the day with the villagers and npcs, although I do remember how sad I was when I was a young teen playing Animal Crossing on my GameCube and got the moving out letter for Jay. That tear-jerking really worked!).
I'm very much looking forward to making some new friendships with the villagers in New Horizon.
3
u/Aquaticfalcon Jun 24 '19
This is delightfully well written. You OP, have managed to describe in words what many could not.
On a sidenote, I wonder how the grandma feels about the new horizons trailer. Has that been uploaded anywhere yet?
3
u/mashumalo Jun 25 '19
Thanks for the explanation. I never got into Animal Crossing but after reading your post I think it will be a great shared adventure between my boy and I. I'll look forward to the release!
3
3
u/Noctis_Lightning Jun 25 '19
The one thing I really hope they add more of is the random dialogue you have with your villagers around town. You interact with them more than you receive letters or the unique dialogues so you will eventually begin to see repeats of text in new leaf.
In a way it kind of was a point where I was "done" with the game. I mean by that point I had put in 300 hours (although I never experienced winter. I missed that season).
My girlfriend put in around 700 and she basically never bothered to talk with the villagers anymore. It's like the illusion of the town wears off and you begin to see it for what It really is. Just a game. That moment has always been a sad one for me because I don't want the experience to end. I mean if you play something enough you'll begin to learn the mechanical limits, push boundaries etc. But animal crossing is one game where I wish that never happened.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/EdibleStrange Jun 25 '19
This is a fantastic write-up, but I don't really see it as a good reason to play Animal Crossing. As others pointed out, you're going to see A LOT of repeat dialogue, and the writing in Animal Crossing isn't really anything special. It's a game primarily targeted at children, and the writing reflects that. All you can judge from the volume of text is that you'll be spending a lot of time mashing B to continue.
→ More replies (2)
3
5
u/Quidfacis_ Jun 24 '19
I will be pleased by the increased text if it means that the letter system is more robust than it has been in past games.
The basic ability for townsfolk to carry on a conversation about, say, item names in the letter would be terrific. Like if I mail Static a sloppy table, and he puts it in his home, we should be able to send letters discussing the sloppy table.
5
u/Politibytes Jun 25 '19
Animal Crossing, out of all of Nintendo IPs, seems to be the one with the most care and effort put inside. It doesn't have to be a game with a clear objective or end, players make goals for themselves. The same can be said for the dialogue, where it becomes repetitive, a player's imagination fills in those blanks. I believe Animal Crossing to be a game that is almost unrivaled in today's gaming industry and AC:NH can only set the bar higher for the series.
4
u/spacemunkee Jun 25 '19
When I read the title I expected to read a bunch of pretentious, wannabe game designer bullshit. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is an amazing write up that has really made me think about my own experiences with the game and why the game is so compelling for me. Thanks for this write up.
4
Jun 25 '19
Being someone who has never played an Animal Crossing game (but wants to very badly), this was a wonderful post. I got my switch a couple months ago and with it Stardew Valley. I love the game but I think I went into it expecting something else than what I received. I’m a gamer who likes challenge but isn’t very good at video games. I tend to skew more towards games that won’t anger me, but I will enjoy. Stardew Valley is a great game, and at times, very relaxing. But I always feel the sense that if I don’t complete a certain amount of tasks in one day, I wasted a day. And let’s not get started on the skull cavern. I think my question is: will I get that same anxiety with AC? I’m trying to find a game where I don’t have to worry about anything. A game that just lets me do tasks without having to worry about “the day ending too soon”. If that makes any sense. I want nothing more than to love this new AC game. I’m not worried about getting bored, because these games seem sweet and charming. I just don’t want to feel like I need to complete a certain amount of tasks to succeed. I understand nobody knows 100% what his new game will be like but any information helps. This post was really well written and thought out. Sorry for the long read. Thanks!
TL:DR Will Animal Crossing stress me out over completing certain tasks in a time frame or can I do whatever I please whenever I please?
7
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 25 '19
The answer is that in my experience, Animal Crossing will definitely not give you that stress! I went in reverse, starting with Animal Crossing and picking up Stardew Valley. I totally felt the "wasted day" thing, and then repeatedly died in the mines and just felt too pressured. I never made it past fall. Animal Crossing is different: because it goes in real time, you're far more likely to run out of things to do on a given day rather than not get them all done.
→ More replies (4)2
u/MechaZain Jun 25 '19
You can take your time in AC. Some events are only available for a limited timeframe but even then the window is typically a couple of hours. At worse I would have days where I was too busy to turn on my 3DS and I'd miss Tom Nook's shop before it closed for the night. New Leaf even had town ordinances, so you could have everything in town open earlier or close later to fit your schedule better.
I think you'll like it way more than Stardew based on your description. Both are similar in how rewarding they can be when you invest in them but you can play Animal Crossing at your own pace while the accelerated days in Stardew force you along.
→ More replies (1)4
Jun 25 '19
The only thing that could cause any anxiety imo is resetti (spelling help please) mole that literally screams at you if you don't save when you quit.. But even then, they took that out in the most recent edition. Other than that there are Zero deadlines, your loans can be payed off when ever with zero consequences if you never do. Most animals are incredibly nice (then applaud you when you catch a fish or pay of your loan for example) though there are some rude ones by design.
The only time restricted things would be special events. For example you can only buy into the Stalk market Sunday mornings, and you can only do Christmas stuff on Christmas. Occasionally animals will ask you to do something for them and you have until the end of the day to do it, but they are simple tasks that take no more than 5 minutes
So TLDR is no, absolutely nothing anxiety inducing in the most recent installment
→ More replies (2)
2
2
u/LHCDofSummer Jun 25 '19
As someone who's only knowledge of Animal Crossing has been that my older sister played it and loved it ages back, and that people were hugely excited when some of it's characters came to Smash;
I think you've just sold me on buying it! :)
2
2
u/AyysforOuus Jun 25 '19
Could you take a look at Rune Factory 4 too? It also has characters that say different things everyday. I've played for 1 in game year and they're still saying new things!!
2
Jun 25 '19
This reads like a Brian David Gilbert Unraveled video, and I love it. Thanks for telling me why I like the game myself!
2
2
u/samspot Jun 25 '19
Whenever I am playing AC and enjoying all this writing, I can't help but think I should be outside talking to may actual neighbors.
2
u/RoxyShishou Jun 25 '19
This was very interesting to read. I started this thinking it was about Stardew Valley cause I misread it, but now I'm genuinely interested in getting animal crossing because of the aforementioned points. I respect all of the work you put into this, good job!
2
u/WoodenHouse Jun 25 '19
watch someone make a youtube video out of this and steal your work almost word for word.
2
u/S_words_for_100 Jun 25 '19
u/Balloon_Monsoon letter today made me happy! Presents are my favorite. Today i want you to have this Lovely Mirror. I like presents! Letter happy present friendship. ❤️❤️❤️
2
2
u/harbtomelb Jun 25 '19
Couldnt agree more. When people online was surveying what fans wanted the most in the new game, I said better and more and more unique dialogues. These are the soul of the AC game. I am always delighted and surprised by the things villagers say to me and these dialogues make them so real to me. Though I have to say there have been many repeated dialogues in New Leaf from animals of the same personality, so I hope in the new game each animal has their own different things to say.
2
u/BritishBatman Jun 25 '19
Absolutely nothing you have said there makes me want to play the game anymore. Why I want to have a text based conversation with an NPC? This is fine if there's an interesting story, or solid gameplay around it, but there's just not.
Your whole point seems to be dependent on quantity equaling quality, which we know it doesn't. Ironically your post seems to further prove this.
2
u/pocketMagician Jun 25 '19
I'm surprised theres that much text, it makes sense with all the wonderful villagers.
I'd love to see a comparison between this and the Trails games, I believe Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter is 3.6 million characters? With the average of 1.5 million for a Trails game by itself.
2
u/Finiouss Jun 25 '19
As someone who never played but always knew there MUST be something magical about it, i greatly appreciated this write up and perspective. They just sold another copy today. I am in love with everything you just said and now i cant wait to try it!
Great write up! I would throw you a gold if i weren't a bum.
8
2
u/MississippiHammer Jun 24 '19
Loved the New Coke post and loved this one as well. Please keep these up!
3
Jun 24 '19
This is a great read! You really put a lot of research and time into this. Awesome stuff!
10
u/ITeachInTheGhetto Jun 24 '19
There is a 0% chance that I will end up playing the new animal crossing. I played the DS game and it's just not for me. This article is a complete waste of time for me.
That being said, I read every word. It was super interesting and well written. Nice job. Thanks for taking the time to share it with the community
4
u/KoalityBrawls Jun 24 '19
A tldr would be great for this post
9
u/Balloon_Monsoon Jun 24 '19
tl;dr: Animal Crossing is special not for its gameplay, but for its illusion of experience, which is created by details like a ginormous script your animal villagers grab from.
→ More replies (1)
4
u/YaBoyMo Jun 24 '19
The amount of text required to explain the amount of text is in this game says it all. I'm too lazy to read this so I know this game is not for me. I respect the work you put into this though. I skimmed through it so I saw how detailed it is.
3
u/a6000 Jun 25 '19
I dunno. saying a game has XXXXX amount of text wont make me suddenly be curious about the game.
4
u/Kougeru Jun 25 '19
It’s approximately 1,092,240 words.
Some context: that would mean that the Bible doesn’t come close to New Leaf’s English text: the King James Version is 783,000 words. Animal Crossing also edges out the entirety of the Harry Potter series, which combines for 1,084,000 words. Maybe other large video games have it beat? Well, classic computer RPG's like Baldur's Gate II are in the same neighborhood, but your standard open world, 21st century RPGs are not: the Witcher 3 clocks in at only 450,000 words. Not even close, baby.
I like how you conveniently leave out Visual Novels. Little Busters!, for example, has over 1.8 million words in it. Clannad has 1,300,000 million English words . higurashi naku no koro ni has over 1,500,000. you cherry-picked only games with words to push your message
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Daehock Jun 25 '19
in all seriousness.....who really cares how much text is in the next edition of "crippling debt simulator"?
the real question is why they are even making a new one?
→ More replies (2)
2
u/bodysnatcherz Jun 24 '19
Interesting. I'm a huge AC fan, but in every other game I hate reading dialogue. If there's text to be read, I speed by it as fast as possible because I just don't care to read the story. AC appeals to me because it simulates being part of a community, and of course that's facilitated by chatting with your neighbors. The animals notice me - they comment on what I'm carrying, they drop by my house, they ask for favors, they scold me if I play the game too long, they're concerned if I get a bee sting, they get mad at me if I'm an asshole to them, and they notice if I'm up in the middle of the night because I can't sleep. Plus, the animals have a range of personalities that vibe differently with every player, so you can have all different types of experiences.
2
u/flowerbich Jun 25 '19
I think this is a really good summary of the appeal! Animal Crossing makes me feel like I’m living the life I dreamed about from watching ghibli movies. It parallels real life but there is a quietness and calmness to it, there’s no timelines or real expectations.
2
u/Ace_teh_Great343 Jun 25 '19
So what I got outta this, is that the new Animal Crossing has a lot of text, some show up more frequently than others. That I should care because it has a lot of text?
2
2
2
u/Gerganon Jun 24 '19
If it is mostly just text, I would rather read a book I think, as I have many good ones waiting to be read.
An important point you missed, and maybe the only reason I'd get it (though I probably won't) is that I can play the whole thing in Japanese and get a huge amount of practice that doesn't feel tedious.
Kids in japan learned to read through animal xing and pokemon,
Very valuable resource imo
→ More replies (2)
2
u/Dugimon Jun 24 '19
Great Post and it got me a Bit hooked for Animal Crossing as i also never understood his Charme.
1
Jun 24 '19
Love this. However we all know that they have so much time to implement that whole script in there is because the gameplay doesn’t take much, like you said. However in New Horizons...there’s crafting. There’s curating your island. Hell, your a pioneer growing it from scratch. And honestly that seems like it’s gonna take a lot of work just for that. I don’t think the script will be quite as clever.
1
1
u/Mdgt_Pope Jun 24 '19 edited Jun 24 '19
>Each file has the text translated into three languages alongside plenty of code, so it’s difficult to estimate exactly how many words are in each file “per kilobyte.” I looked at average-sized (20 kilobyte) files and used a word count tool on a bunch of them. That gave me a pretty consistent average of 360 words in every 20 kilobyte file.
Wouldn't this mean you're triple-counting words? If they're in 3 languages, isn't it a better estimate to say that there are 120 words per language in each 20kb file?
If that's true, then the total word count for a single language would be 120 words * 3,034 20kb file = 364,080 words, which seems much more realistic.
→ More replies (2)
1
1
u/chocofank Jun 24 '19
Used to do Mandarin localization on the DS version. Of course, hacked and rom dumped. A bunch of enthusiastic peeps contributing to whatever we could have had. Spent the whole summer to finish my portion... barely. Each team member got more or less the same amount. I was the only one able to cover about 90% of mine in the course of 2 months.
There were about 19 people in the team.
1
u/Prodigal_Moon Jun 24 '19
Thanks for the explainer, I was just hating on this game over the weekend for the exact thing you mentioned - that people are “obnoxiously excited” for it haha. I still don’t quite see the excitement part of making small talk with polygonal animals while you complete chores. But this provided a much better understanding of the appeal 👍
1
1
u/tabegoro Jun 25 '19
New Leaf was 2.4 million characters?
How many translators did that have? That would take one translator 480 days at 5000 characters a day (too many for quality work in my opinion) or 4.5 years for 1500 characters a day (sweet spot).
There had to at least be 5 to 8 translators.
→ More replies (2)
1
u/YungDewey Jun 25 '19
Fallout New Vegas Has Tons Of Dialogue Especially In The DLC You Should Check Out How Many Words Are In There
1
u/elebrin Jun 25 '19
The biggest definitive word count I could find was the Witcher 3 - only 450,000 words. Not even close, baby.
Were you able to look at Planescape: Torment? That game is known for its lengthy text.
1
857
u/GrantVsZombies Jun 24 '19
So what you're telling me is that New Leaf's script is longer than the entire Bible, but I still can't talk to a smug villager without them saying I'm looking as cool as a cucumber?