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What Would This Look Like?
🕑 Added 2020-10-21 02:27:02 +0000 UTCI'm a mess of conflicting motivations these days, fellow workers. I have so many creative projects all floating in a state of limbo, and of course I have been dreaming of another.
I was wondering last night while trying to fall asleep, what would a game called Syndical Crossing be like? What gameplay would be fun and also run in line with syndicalist theory?
This, of course, was inspired by some of the kids in my life playing hundreds of hours of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The game is very cute and well designed, but I find so much of it unnerving.
Isabelle never gets to leave the office, and often can be spotted staring longingly out the window. Blathers too is confined completely to his museum, never daring to leave his post. The two raccoon children never have a day off. Whenever a building is constructed or altered, where is the labor that does the work? Where are the workers who build the additions to your little house? The labor is completely obscured and alienated.
Everything is a transaction in the game, with nothing given nor received for the joy or kindness of it. Gift anything to an islander and they feel compelled to give you something in return. There is no such thing as an actual present in Animal Crossing. As in our world, everything is commodified.
Of course, the game hides these cruelties with money that grows on trees, an endless supply of fruit, and myriad baubles--none of which the player may actually use. Buy a bicycle, and it sits where you put it, useless. Nearly every commodity in Animal Crossing has only an exchange value and no use value whatsoever. Some few things play a tiny animation when interacted with, but that is the extent of their usefulness.
All of these observations make me wonder, what would Syndical Crossing be? Maybe players work together on a shared Canton, tending to the land and operating in freely organized syndicates. Would there need to be a voting mechanism? It would surely need to be an online multiplayer game of some sort.
What do you think?
