#article is from 2021 i guess but idc

[predoom]

xx 💘

[ixellent]

So in case you’re not on twitter a bunch of artists recently announced they were working with an “eco friendly” NFT company and the reactions were mixed but I wanted to put a few simple notes without even talking about the environmental impact of NFTs as a whole, like let’s just skip the whole discussion of that part for a second. It’s not that I don’t think it’s important, but it’s a little bit of a distraction on this issue because people can split hairs and pull statistics over the cost of NFT vs carbon offsetting vs how much electricity we waste vs big corporations all day. This is probably not going to be how we finally pass legislation to stop pollution and save the planet, so let’s just put a pin in that aspect and talk about ethically what’s going on.

1) Money Laundering A lot of artists were interested in NFT because they saw how much money people were allegedly making, right? We want that money, we feel that art is underpriced, undercut, underappreciated, it sucks out there! But! Why does NFT go for so much? Because it’s certified authentic ownership of digital art or whatever? We have been able to do this with digital files for a long time, quickly and easily, it’s called DRM. "Authenticity” and “owning an original” was never the reason. This has been happening in the fine art community for decades. (Rich) People use art to launder money because they can buy it for some amount of money*, insure it for even more money, have it valued at more money, and sell it to other people for obscene money and that’s a lot easier to explain than randomly paying someone thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing you a favor. It also effectively “hides” money the same way real estate can. It doesn’t mean it’s easy but it’s a loophole to avoid taxes and the IRS and makes your money look more “legitimate” on paper because less of your assets are liquid, they can still “appreciate” because the object of value the money is tied to can be subjectively desirable as to make it “worth” whatever you want. * Art CAN be somewhat objectively valued by experts and historians, kind of like how comics or Magic cards can be valued, but it is a unique good in that people can decide its value based on literally whatever they want, which is to say, nothing at all. And you can be like “Well what about LEGITIMATE art sales!” I don’t know how to explain to you that most art isn’t going to suddenly be worth thousands of more dollars overnight legitimately. Like aren’t people suspicious of the fact that people would suddenly be paying a lot of money for wafer-thin ownership of an image they made? You can be like “idc where the money comes from” I guess, but then you’re probably not concerned about the issue of unregulated markets in the first place lol. Here’s some articles: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/art-and-money-laundering  - This one does a great job explaining how private art sales and real estate manage this and what they’ve been trying to do to stymie it, as well as making it obvious how NFT sales are exactly the same as the warehouses people keep art in lol https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works-art-world - this talks a bit about the big famous warehouse https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-laundering-sanctions-senate/index.html - I know it’s CNN but it talks a little about the red tape that allegedly exists and where it doesn’t https://news.artnet.com/market/think-artists-are-getting-rich-off-nfts-think-again-1962752 - your art isn’t worth thousands overnight lol

2) Artificial Scarcity So this is one of those things that people can come down a few different ways on. In the last few decades of The Internet, you’ll have some people who believe in a free and open internet and exchange of ideas and media, while other people want to keep ownership of the things they create and protect that ownership, and if you ask me, neither of them are wrong exactly! But that doesn’t matter because when we “mint NFTs” for art, it is artificial scarcity, because with a digital copy of work, you can redistribute, copy, paste, screenshot it as much as you want for personal use. It’s not illegal until you try to sell copies of things you DIDN’T create (and as we’ve seen with some vehement NFT benefiters, the lines for fair use, parody, and ownership are being ground into dust in order to make a buck), and it’s certainly frowned upon to repost or share it without permission. But NFTs create limited “certified original copies” or “ownership” of an image for no reason other than to give people a reason to inflate its value (see money laundering above).  As a digital artist, I’m not saying I think my art is less valuable because it’s digital, but I can create infinite copies of it - the file itself is worth virtually nothing but the demand for the labor it took to create it. A limited physical run of prints of digital art has ACTUAL scarcity because it may not be printed again, or might not be printed in that way, so the price can be set by demand/by the market! There are physical costs of materials, shipping etc. The physical cost of digital goods is measurable but not as easily because of the myriad of ways it is produced. My digital commissioners actually pay for the service of art rather than a physical good, and my freelance clients pay for the RIGHT to use an image as well as my labor, because there is no scarcity of digital materials themselves. This is not to say digital art does not need preservation at some point, or that it is a zero-cost-to-produce situation, but I hope you can see why limiting certificates of ownership of a digital file in this way to do art sales is suspicious and kind of weird. We have had secure methods of demonstrating creation and ownership of a digital file for a long time if we really wanted it to be about “ownership” but it wouldn’t stop people just screenshotting all the same. That’s why so many artists will offer the option to pay for ACCESS to the files and we still depend largely on the honor system! As they’ve been saying with piracy all these years, anyone who was going to pay for it would have, and all we can do is give people convenient, accessible ways to get the content they want to try and prevent them from stealing it, and some people always will because they think it should all be free. (And I’m not here to pass judgement on that! I’ve been on the internet a long time lol.) I just wanted to get this out because people got so up in arms about the ecological impact of NFTs (and rightly in a lot of ways! Sure!) and missed the part where the fine art business is MONEY LAUNDERING. Also idk but the fact that all the NFT stuff can literally just shut down and be gone forever isn’t really secure finances. You can tell me that it’s spread out on a bunch of computers so it doesn’t just disappear when one goes down, but it doesn’t appear to be so seamless in practice, and like all currency, we have to agree collectively that it’s worth something for it to be worth anything. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-digital-art-nft-servers-shut-down-2021-3

[roodllle]

Year in Review - Animal Crossing New Horizons

I started writing this review/criticism in May of 2020 but decided to update it as the year went along and post it on the anniversary of NH’s release. I would like to preface that this is mostly going to be full of questions of criticisms, I love this game. I have not been able to put it down since I got it on March 20th. My first AC game was NL and then I played HHD. I was ecstatic when they announced NH at E3 2019 and kept trying to find other games to fit in my AC shaped hole in my heart but I wasn’t able to fill it till this game came out. I feel like the pace of the game is great with how you build up to unlocking terraforming and 5 stars, and I feel like the updates are well timed especially with how crazy 2020 was for everybody. That being said there were some things that irked me. 

Some of the points I will bring up came from other people/commenters I have seen on here, Discord, Reddit, and Twitter that I also agree with. Some other points are from Youtubers such as ShayMay and ChuyPlays. And others are from me. 

With that out of the way, let’s get on with the review. Warning, I guess, don’t expect this to be an essay, this is just a patchwork quilt made up of thoughts.

Terraforming

I wish cliffs/tiers had a smaller level? Like how we’re able to make stepping stones for our rivers if we don’t want to put a bridge down/use our vaulting pole. I just wish there was a cliff alternative. 

Another cliff alternative would be if we could put bridges between cliffs. I think we’ve all been there where we see this picture 

          thought ‘we can do that!!” then realized it was photoshopped

When we go into terraforming, I wish a grid showed up on our island. It would make it much easier to avoid hitting the wrong square when I’m trying to change a river. 

Having us be able to “close” a waterfall from a lower level but not create a new on at the same spot. 

Also the fact we can add a 4th tier but can’t put anything on it is just strange to me. I know we have to have a limit to how high we can go, but at least let me put nature stuff, such as trees/flowers/bushes, on top of it instead of just a flat piece of land. 

Houses

Why no ceiling items? Find it odd they added a bunch of stuff in HHD and didn’t add that to the new mainline game

There’s no reason I can think of to why we can’t access our storage when we’re crafting inside our house. 

Buildings

Dodo Airlines

The Dodo Islands right now are very boring and barely use them. I have enough money and materials to not go farming and save up all my NMTs for when I go villager hunting, which has also become a rarity. I think it would be a good idea to make some islands seasoned themed. Have them be all rare, but have an island where it’s fall and has maple leaves falling, a cherry blossom one, one with snowflakes. I wouldn’t recommend they make Holiday themed ones, but having seasonal ones would be nice.

When I mess up a dodo code or accidentally hit ‘make a bridge’ instead of incline, etc. why do I have to restart the ENTIRE conversation instead of the characters just being “oh? did you mean “x” or “would you like to retype it?” like is it that hard??  

Resident Services

As much as I love Isabelle this game has made me very indifferent towards her. I think they gave her a role that didn’t need to exist. They could have either let us roam around without any warnings to who was roaming around our island, in the campsite, or any weather updates. Just have us rely on our villagers, the TV, and our eyeballs. OR they could have given us a social media like app and/or a weather app. Instead, they gave us Isabelle that only announces something once a month.

Nook’s Cranny

This might just be me but can they add a little DIY area in the store? Maybe just make to where you can only customize things?? This is more out of convenience than an actual problem  

Speaking of customization, since you can make medicine but also buy can we do the same for the custom kits and bait. Like make it where we can buy bait and also make our own custom kits? I just think it’s weird that they give us either/or for medicine but not for the other 2 that I honestly use way more than medicine.

Why do the Able Sisters get to have all of the colors of an item in their shop but Nook’s Cranny can’t? And why can’t we just be able to customize all items that have multiple looks/colors? Example, why can’t I just be able to change the wood type for the antique set instead of having to buy each one? I get that the furniture catalog is already small, but that’s not my fault. They’ve decided to not add past furniture sets into NH. 

Able Sisters

Let us multi select clothes instead of it just being how much we can wear. idc if it’ll just put those clothes in our personal storage and then we’ll have to run home and put it in that storage, I just hate having to walk back in and out every time I want a dress in multi colors. ALSO tell us if we already bought it, like a little storage icon or something

Why can’t we hang any article of clothing on the back wall, why do we have to either make it or have the OG qr designer come to our island? 

Why can’t we have the transparent option when designing clothes? I think it would make many designer’s lives easier instead of having to make 8 versions of the same outfit.

NPCs

I have played this game almost every day since it came out, minus 2 days. I have also been able to make friends on discord that help with trading/cataloging/etc. I have all of Saharah’s, Kicks’, Label’s, and Redd’s items. I have all of the fish/bug models I want and have no desire to “catch them all”. I haven’t talked to Wisp in months because I have most of the items and his idea of “expensive” is 10k bells. The only NPC I actively look forward to is Celeste because even though I now have all of her DIYs, she still gives out star fragments, regular large or horoscope, when I talk to her. 

What I’m wondering is if they’re planning on doing anything else with these characters. Before I speak further I’m going to weed out characters that I am actually fine with. CJ and Flick will always be there if I want a bug/fish model, I understand that Saharah/Kicks/Redd have a ton of stuff to get and w/o the help of my discord friends, I probably wouldn’t have gotten everything till late 2021. 

So that leaves Label and Wisp. I understand Wisp is there for beginners, but now that I’m at a point where I am a bell millionaire and have most of the Nook’s items cataloged, there is no reason for me to talk to him. I wish Nintendo had put in a system where depending on the person who Wisp is talking to, it determines how much money you have in your bank account/looks at your catalog, Wisp’s item’s worth goes up.

As for Label...I never saw her as viable. I also thought the tickets were dumb and you don’t even have to talk to her to have her items show up in the shop the next day. I think it would be great if when you bought all of her items, she decided to join the Able’s sisters in their shop like in NL and then have Gracie show up in her place for the weekly NPC. 

Where is Blanca? Or Brewster? Or Shrunk, Katrina, Gracie, or Kapp’n and his family? I understand we will probably never see characters like Harriet or Pete because they have been replaced by a new system, but what is the excuse for these other characters? I’m hoping they show up in year 2 of NH but...we’ll see.

Villagers

I think having your first villagers living in basic homes is a good idea but one that quickly gets annoying. I found Sherb while villager hunting for the 1st time and have had him ever since, but his house is stuck at basic lazy setup. Instead of me going back and forth on whether or not i should trust somebody enough to hold Sherb, get somebody else out, then get him to move back to my island, You can have it to where you let them leave, then just wait till he comes to the campsite to visit and reinvite him. You get his actual house and he still remembers you. This could also go for you accidentally letting somebody go or letting somebody go then regretting it. Also it’d be fun to see some old villagers again.

I was curious and looked back on past games to see how many new villagers were released each game and NH has been the least amount. NL released 112 new villagers in total while NH has released 8. I’m hoping they might release more down the line but, hella disappointing imo. Along with the Sanrio update and adding those characters to the game, I am more hopeful that they’ll be adding new characters!

Having an “event” of sorts where you visit a villager’s house and they’re looking inside their closet. They look at you in surprise when you walk in and sheepishly explain that they were going through their clothes/items. They then decide to ask you for help since they can’t decide what to get rid of/what to keep and think you have a good eye for that sort of thing. Basically, a way to get rid of any clothes/items your villager somehow received bc I guess Isabelle scolding them isn’t enough.

A big problem I feel like everybody has is the villager dialogue. Yes they added sub personality types for each personality but they are not perfectly cut in half, ex. are the Sisterly types where there are 4 B types and 20 A types, like?? How I have “fixed” this problem is by having one of each personality type on my island so I always have different conversations with my villagers, but I understand not a lot of people do that. Some people just want normal/peppy types on their island bc they’re cute as hell, I get it. I know it would be...difficult to come up with unique dialogue for all 399 villagers, including Sanrio, but....you could at least for the “gimmicky” villagers. Some examples of these villagers are Ribbot and Sprocket, Lucky and Ankha, the super hero squad, and Kabuki. 

Quality Life stuff

Why cant we sit AND wish on stars? And I don’t mean the sit emote; why can’t I sit on a bench and wish on stars?

It sucks when I’m about to hit my rocks or just do a lot of dig work and then my shovel breaks in the middle of it. To show the tool is about to break, cracks should start to form on the handle and get deeper/longer as you keep using it, starting when you have 5 uses left. You can also add an auditory element by making the tool sound like its struggling when you are using it. Net/Shovel/Axe/Fishing Pole can have cracks show up on the handle, Slingshot can have crack show up at the bottom of the 2 spokes while having 1 at the top of the handle. And the watering can have cracks at the base of the can.

If our inventory is full when I dig up a flower, why can’t I replace it with another flower to bury? And if I can dig up an item at an diagonal item, I should be able to bury it again at the same angle.

Other

Having more...liveliness?? on the island, idk how else to say it. Example is whenever you travel by plane there's a chemtrail in the sky afterwards, maybe just seeing other planes go by throughout the day. Maybe you can get a hint Redd or Gulliver will be visiting you tomorrow if you see their boats beyond the horizon, Redd’s just crusin’ and the Gulls’ boats looking messed up. On a week where you don't have a new camper, maybe have an old villager visit. That leads me too

I wish villager’s doors could count as “exterior decorating” and we can just put any ornamental on there instead having to hope that your villager will put the wreath on their own door. 

Conclusion

If you read this whole thing holy shit, thanks!! Go treat yourself on my part lol If you disagreed with me or whatever feel free to chat with me about it!