Animal Crossing: New Horizons meets “Maslow's pyramid”

Abstract

After its release in 2020, the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) has recorded high sales figures and attracted a large number of game players. In order to analyze this success, we rely on Maslow's needs‐based theory of motivation and analyze the role of the video game ACNH in satisfying needs. By using an interdisciplinary framework involving both psychology and gaming, we investigate ACNH's role in satisfying real‐world needs from the players' perspective and virtual‐world needs from avatars' and villagers' perspective. We find that deficiency‐motivated needs, with the exception of players' physical needs in the real world, are satisfied in both the real world and the virtual world. Moreover, while growth‐motivated needs are satisfied in the real world, such needs of solely virtual elements are partially satisfied. Generally, we highlight the role of the game in satisfying the needs of the real person and of virtual elements while also reflecting the interdependence between the real world and the virtual one.