It's out already! Sweet! I've been loving Animal Crossing since the GameCube!

Rick Astley jokes aside, the thought of having Animal Crossing in my pocket is pretty cool. The actual experience in the game, however, seems to be only a collection of "payoff moments" from the bigger games. It satisfies a quick fix, I suppose, but pales in comparison to a legitimate Animal Crossing experience. Maybe it's not meant to be "real" Animal Crossing, but I'm wondering why it couldn't be. Certainly not because of shortcomings on the platform. Mobile games can give, aside from screen compactness, every bit the breadth of play that console games can give. What I mean is that a console version of Animal Crossing could fit into a mobile presentation (the DS versions do this well enough). In Pocket Camp, you lose all nuance of what makes Animal Crossing great, and are instead presented with the payoff: Your campsite, on a base level, is fully furnished at the start of the game; Moving around between locations is relegated to a fast travel mechanism, and locations are very small area maps; You can sell items right from your inventory; There isn't any cultivation or maintenance of the environment, because everything is done for you, therefore pride of ownership is minimized; etc. I would like to see if they implement some kind of event system.

Pocket Camp feels like going into someone else's miniature Animal Crossing neighborhood, and and being able to loot everything so you can take it back to your campsite to decorate. It's a well-made thing, I guess, but it doesn't feel like Animal Crossing, which is unfortunate.

If you'd like help getting into Shovelstrike Quarry, or want those sweet, sweet Kudos, my code is: 7324 3897 834

mmm... Stardew Valley

Yeah, the servers are taking quite the beating.

Bummer, the game is not compatible with my iPhone 5c.

Maybe that's a sign that it's time to look into a new phone. :P

That was fast, lol.

That's kinda how I was with Pokemon Go. It was a neat distraction for a little while, but then it started to feel less like a fun thing to do and more like work.

My pitiful phone doesn't have much system memory. I bought an SD card, but instead of installing and updating directly to the SD card, I have to install and update to system memory and then move it to the SD card. This happens every time I have to update an app. Even if an app is on my SD card, it still has to update it by putting on to system memory. I was going to try this game, but I'm having trouble with space, so I deleted it, possibly for now. I need to do some more memory management and eventually get a phone with more system memory.

>Ok, I am now tired of the grind.

Pretty much. RIP, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, we barely knew you.

My friend code: 28135603545

Friend requests sent! It seems I need the help of 5 friends to unlock an area.

Sorry, Greg, I ended up uninstalling. There is no reprieve from the grind in that game. Even the area you mention, Shovelstrike Quarry, has to be repeatedly accessed via friend intervention or dolla’ bills, which is pretty horrible. They could have just kept the time cost barrier without the other currency costs of entry, but instead, more grind. It only adds to the exhaustion.

@scrypt That's ok, bro, I still sent you one, so if you ever get back on, you can accept. I didn't know much about this game beforehand, but thought a mobile Animal Crossing game would be cool. However, I was disappointed after reading your review. You clearly appreciate Animal Crossing, like I do, but this app doesn't seem to add up. I'll see how it goes.

I had phone storage space issues, but I think I resolved it by uninstalling stuff I don't use. I can't say how much I'll play, but I will when the opportunity arises. There is currently a game sucking my life away, which I need to write a review about.

Jon, the last one I played was for the 3DS, I bought the digital edition. Unfortunately, my 3DS is lost. However, I do recommend the game! I also have the Wii and GameCube versions.

The last one I played was City Folk for the Wii. I haven't spent any serious time in the handheld versions, so I can't really recommend those as much as the console versions. The original on the Gamecube and City Folk are both great games, though, and I think serve the franchise better. The DS/3DS versions look good, but a game like that deserves the screen real estate of a monitor. I'm sure (well, I hope) they will bring the series to the Switch at some point, but until then try the console games, if you can.

@scrypt a Switch version would be sweet!

Adam, it's the difference between smelling cigarette smoke, and smoking a fine cigar.

In the era of the GameCube, my friends and I had Animal Crossing. We also learned that the game pretty much requires a full memory card, so we'd buy a few of those. We enjoyed visiting other players and just playing the game. I still have the guide for it and maybe another, too. I really love the game series. It's something to pick up once or more a day and play for a bit, put it down for a while, and come back to it later. The base game is based on the system clock, which can be changed to trigger holiday events, or just pass another day.

In the base game, you have a house and have to pay for it, which you do by collecting bells (the game's currency). You can do all kinds of things like fishing, catching bugs, finding fossils, giving furniture, etc and selling them. You basically work to pay off your loan and then upgrade your house for more space. So you continue to repeat this cycle. It's fun, although it may have some grind to it.

I definitely consider video games art.

There are probably a few retro games that could be considered art, but as a whole, and for games in general, I think it's slim pickings. Applying the term "art" to something should, I feel, be handled as carefully as using the words "I love you." The more you use it, the more situations to which you apply the term, the less meaning it has. If anything created with an implemented design is art, then my toothbrush is art (my toothbrush looks fancy, but it's not art). If everything is art, nothing is art.

There are a lot of other nuances within the conversation. Games vs. video games, art vs. entertainment, etc. What are we defining as art, for that matter? Maybe it's easier to define by exclusions? Artists can be involved in making games, but that doesn't make games art. Games can tell a story, but that wouldn't make them art, either, though good art often does tell a story. Design doesn't equal art, even though there is often design in art (The UPS logo is not art (sorry, Travis!). At best, I think you could call it an art asset or design asset, which may be part of a lot of the confusion around this whole debate). Something can be artistic (aesthetically pleasing), or even handled in an artful way (with creative skill), but not be art. Regarding the Sistine Chapel ceiling, I would agree that commissioned art isn't a disqualification, but I think you meant to defend it against commercial art (I don't know what consumer art is, but technically, a commission is exclusively made for a consumer. Michelangelo wasn't otherwise interested in painting the ceiling to begin with, according to that article).

The analogy to cave drawings is interesting, because I wonder if that was the intent of those creations. More likely, they were working with what they had as first forms of communication through symbolism (i.e. storytelling). Symbolism in art is an important study, but spending any significant time on analyzing cave drawings, merely as art studies (outside of, maybe, gesture, of which some are pretty brilliant, all things considered), would be a misplaced emphasis. Kinda maybe more how I feel about retro games as a whole, or as Jeff Buckley put it in the first 50 seconds of this clip (it's provocative, but poignantly relevant): https://youtu.be/2v22uEsmD4s. I'm not saying that playing retro games is a waste of time, just that I think there are more interesting things happening now.

(cont.) Really, though, while I think it's fun to talk about from time to time (kind of like the "What is Indie?" topic), ultimately it doesn't seem to matter. An appreciation for games, retro or otherwise, doesn't require them to be art. The most significant standard that I'm aware of for any game, typically speaking, is whether or not it's fun. Some retro games are fun, still to this day. I prefer playing video games that I haven't played, over ones that I have (unless it's a competitive thing), and there are some really cool experiences in games right now. When does a game stop being relevant? Usually, when it stops being fun. There are outliers, but most games are designed to be fun, not to be art. And if it is intended to be art, the first question I'd ask is "Is it a game?" (another rabbit hole ).

What would it mean, though, if they were not art?

I think “art,” in the way that we’re wanting to use it, has to be implied with a more nuanced definition than “something an artist made” .

See, I'd argue what that person made (Everything is going to be okay) is not a game. The creator calls it an "interactive zine," which sounds much more appropriate. This part of their thread is (mostly) spot on, but maybe not in the way they intended:

Traditional game design is an established ruleset to accomplish certain things.(I don't know what this vague sentence is supposed to mean, but it doesn't seem to ring true. What is "traditional game design"? What established ruleset are they referring to?) It's not an end-all. I'm aware of these rules, but I like rejecting them. They exist to create a specific thing (Game design is the process of making thing, and those specific things are games, by definition) and that's not for everyone. There are lots of other things to create too. (Sure. You can use tools, or even the process, that game makers use to make interactive experiences that are not games.)

I think what we have is an incongruous conflation of creative works. Some creatives make computer-based interactive experiences and insist on calling them games. Why? Some gamers want the games they play to be considered art. Why?

> I don't know, you'd have to ask them.

But don't you think it's weird that the term "game" is applied (or insisted on being applied) to those types of projects? If there is a book and a magazine sitting on a table, and someone asks you to hand them the magazine, you're not going to hand them the book thinking that's what they meant. Magazines and books are made out of almost the exact same materials, but it's the content and design that largely gives them unique identities. Don't you think it's odd that there are so many projects out there that aren't games, but get called games?

> I think because, generally speaking, most people consider things people create like music, poetry, paintings, etc to be art regardless of it's timeless or special nature.

That's unfortunate. I suppose that would put Sargent's El Jaleo right up next to concept art for Super Meat Boy or the recent commercial for Colgate toothpaste.

Okay, those are good points. I suppose I've always thought of art as a sub-category, not a prime category ("Food," in the analogy Travis presented, I would coincide with "creativity," rather than "art," and a canned hamburger is most certainly creative!). Maybe I've been thinking about it the wrong way, or at least, obviously, not in the popular way. When I'm considering a work of art, I'm considering how it makes me think, rather than just how it makes me feel. I do value feelings, but I value thought more. I don't know that I've ever considered a polarity of "good art" and "bad art." To my understanding, it's either art, or not art, and I don't mean that to be disparaging. If some painting, or piece of music, or whatever, was "meaningless, unimportant, and uninteresting," then I would be hesitant to call it art, in the same way that if a piece of software didn't have a set of rules, the capacity for making meaningful decisions (within the construct of the software's presented environment), and a final objective, then I would have a hard time calling it a game.

I would never begrudge someone that liked something simply because of the way it made them feel, but I would want to know why they would go so far as to call it art. If we're using emotional impact as the qualifier, then the category quickly loses meaning (literally everything in existence can provoke feelings). An emphasis that shifts from elevating thought to elevating feelings would leave little room for the transformative nature of art. Not that feelings can't, or ought not, be tangent to the experience (it would be an oddity, I think, if they weren't). In analogy to our recent discussion of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, this would be tantamount to a game full of satisfying payoffs, without the substance that made the original games so significant.

Another consideration, and then I'll step aside , is that I'm coming from this as someone trying to become an artist, with digital tools as my medium (Photoshop, Blender, etc.). Artist's work, the perception of what it takes to make artwork for a project, for example, is largely undervalued, both monetarily and in a general sense of respect for the craft. The more I learn, the more I'm introduced to the tremendous knowledge and anguish that goes into mastering the skills to produce an art-piece of lasting quality. Care in line weight, value, reactions of light, composition design, temperature of color... so many factors that can come into play, all of which require years and years to hone, and many more to master. What this process produces would be closer to what I would consider "fine art."

Maybe I need to think about it more, this generalization of art in modern society. I'd like to add this video from Nerdwriter, talking about the difference between Moments and Scenes in movies, as a kind of insight into why I think this is important, not just in our discussion here, but for our creative endeavors as a whole: https://youtu.be/38Cy_Qlh7VM

I've never played this, but I'm aware of it (only slightly). Thanks for the heads up! I'm definitely grabbing it.