We are gathered here today: Sites of mourning and bereavement in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Résumé fourni par la source

In January 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak imposed restrictions on public forms of in-person mourning throughout the United States. Mortuaries live-streamed funerals, and players of games such Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) even adapted their virtual spaces for in-game funerals. Through close-reading analysis, this paper examines examples of memorials, shrines, and other bereavement rituals created by players of ACNH to argue that such sites provide players and community members with a critical outlet for grief and a space for ritualizing mourning practices. Contrary to expectations that ACNH and related cosy games offer an escapist reprieve from loss, the findings of this paper demonstrate that players often invite signifiers of death and mourning into otherwise ideal virtual realms. In sharing images of their in-game creations in online forums, players also encourage a broader participatory and trans-spatial form of mourning within the gamer community. This paper concludes that the gaming industry should continue to be attentive to such player needs by preserving elements of creative control while employing recommendations for thanatasensitive design advanced by scholars such as Massimi and Charise.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.