Day 8 - Museum

The museum in the game serves the purpose of archiving fossils, bugs, fish and paintings. Each of these different objects are only available during certain seasons, weather conditions and perhaps even only at specific times at specific days. This makes filling the museum full of objects very difficult, as it will take you probably at least a year (without time traveling/cheating) to get every item. But why even have a museum? This is a video game, not real life where things will actually become extinct.

This reminds me of Umberto Eco's concept of the hyperreal. It seems that AC tries so hard at creating an environment that feels like the real world that it even must have a simulated past. Much like how such a young country like America feels the need to perserve something in order to make it look older than it actually is, you town in Animal Crossing is trying to establish a history or archive of its contents. While the musuem is not exteme simulations of Disneyland or the enchanted castles Eco writes about, it is a museum in a simulated world. It archives in order to make this world more real. When one has a place to go to see the fish he/she caught 3 months ago, it recreates the sense of time one has spent playing the game. By even digging up fossils or catching a living one (the coelanceath) a longer history is written in the game, making us believe that this virtual landscape has lasted millions of years, when in all actuality it doesn't exist at all.

This lends to the immersiveness of the game. But I suppose that's something for another post. I think we have a nice start to a paper that connects all these ideas if we start with the museum/the elements that attempt to creat a real world.