2020’s most popular games were my most reliable social spaces
Animal Crossing: New Horizons. | Image; Nintendo This year, video games provided escapism for a lot of people. But for many, myself included, the games I remember most fondly in 2020 were the ones that became social spaces. The pandemic didn't make me want to escape; it made me miss my friends and family.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out amid the shutdowns, and it quickly became my virtual island paradise, even when I wasn't playing. I couldn't log in to Facebook or Twitter without seeing almost everyone on my feeds talking about Animal Crossing. People were sharing memes, asking for Dodo codes to visit their friends' islands, and begging for specific fruit that they wanted to grow.
Some turned to Nookazon, a third-party trading platform, to buy outfits they had a hard time...