Ways Animal Crossing is Becoming More Inclusive

by Emil Tinkler

As the years have passed, video games have slowly worked to become more and more inclusive to displaying the different types of people that exist within the world. Animal Crossing New Horizons has several steps in the right direction.

In most video games, we are usually asked to pick between a male and a female gendered character which has set clothes styles and hairstyles and other things restricted to that gender. In New Horizons, you choose between two styles. One of which is more masculine, and one is more feminine. But there are no labels designating either of these styles as being strictly male or strictly female. You also have access to the same hairstyles and face options for both styles.

Regardless of whatever style you chose at the beginning. It doesn’t not matter what style you have chose for your character you are free to access and wear all the clothing options within the game. Just like in real life, there is nothing holding you back from wearing whatever clothing you want and using it to express yourself!

If you have the villager Merry on your island than it is possible to get a piece of dialogue from this character that references a relationship between two princesses from the characters favorite romantic comedy. Again, this is only a small nod but it a start towards more LGBT inclusion.

In previous Animal Crossing games, the ability to change the skin tone of your character was minimal to nonexistent. In New Horizons 8 different skin tones were added which is a step in the right direction. However, this isn’t as big a step as all of the skin tones added are still very light and still do not help represent the massive amounts of different people who will play this game, but it is still a step.

Like the last entry there are both good and bad aspects to this inclusion. Adding a wheelchair is great for those who use them everyday so that they can see themselves represented. Unfortunately, this however is purely cosmetic as the chair does not roll or provide any sort of mobility for the player. It’s another small step in the right direction but we can still do better.

Animal Crossing is doing a lot to be more representative of the population in its most recent title. An while it does do well in some areas in falls a little shorter in others. This is why we need to keep pushing for more representation in all media platforms for more representation. It shouldn’t be taboo to mention queer relationships, there should be more skin tone options as a standard, and there should be working mobility aids for use in games as well. It’s not hard to represent the real living people who will play and interact with the media.

Emil Tinkler is a 21 year old college student living in Central Florida. They are a gay agender person. Emil is a psychology major and a humanities minor. They want to be a therapist one day and help trans kids access medical care, and they love Harry Potter, Bad Suns, and LGBTQ activism. Emil was Vice President of the LGBTQ group on their campus for a year, and will continue to keep activism close to their heart in everything they do.

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