Forums > Submission Feedback > jerec's Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp review

I've updated this review slightly due to recent updates to the game.

I can avoid death by not having a life.

WOW. I wasn't interested in this game before, but I'm even less interested now. I've begun avoiding most "freemium" games and loot boxes and all that (but you'll still have to pry Pokemon GO from my cold, dead hands). What utter garbage.

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

It seems worse that this is coming from Nintendo, a company that generally has a good reputation, at least on the console. This also happened with the mobile Mario Kart game - just a shallow game designed to make you spend more money. Nintendo should be using its position of influence to say "just because a game is on mobile, doesn't mean it has to have lootboxes and overpriced subscriptions."

I can avoid death by not having a life.

Nintendo tried the other route with Super Mario Run, and consumers at large responded with so much anger that they finally had to go the same freemium route everyone else is following, and that consumers genuinely seem to want (for reasons that elude me).

I look at any freemium games as a chance to see just how far I can get without spending money on them, because anything else feels like using a cheat code. Besides, I'd generally rather spend actual money on, you know, actual games. But that puts me in the minority, judging by how many were begging Nintendo to do what they've now done in the likes of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and the new Mario Kart.

I'm not sure criticizing Nintendo and its development partners for doing what consumers overwhelmingly indicated they want makes a whole lot of sense, but I do think their approach with console games is still the better one. As long as the freemium approach doesn't spill too generously into their console output, I'll live. ;-)

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

True. I'd have happily paid for a mobile Animal Crossing game, but it is built around grinding for materials, waiting for things to be built, and when Nintendo wants to charge a monthly price to "speed up the game" or even play it for you, you know the base game wasn't worth much to begin with. I felt my original review just didn't reflect what the game has become (and hasn't for a while, frankly).

It does feel like games like these are designed to draw people in over time, then they slowly edit the mechanics behind the scenes and introduce more things you need to pay for, and for many people who have put so much time into the game already, the sunk cost fallacy hits them hard and they continue to pay for a game that isn't fun. You'll never collect everything and finish, because they'll just keep adding more. It becomes a struggle to keep up, and people will either play for hours every day, or they'll pay, because they don't want to miss out. That's why I had to stop, because I realised how much time I was spending on this game, and scheduling my life around it. I did drop a bit of money on leaf tickets early on just to show my support.

With Mario Kart Tour, they were at least upfront about how much the game was intending to cost you. And from what I've seen of that, it's not a very good game.

Nintendo are better than this.

I can avoid death by not having a life.