Companies and schools all over the world have abandoned physical meetings in the wake of COVID-19, instead favoring remote work and meeting digitally. While most faced with such an issue have generally turned to classic workplace services like Zoom, at least one company in Japan wanted to try a slightly different medium, Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The news comes from industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, who explained that, while an office vacation to Animal Crossing: New Horizons sounds like fun, the company’s status report, embedded below in Ahmad’s tweet, was less promising.
A Japanese company tried work from home using Animal Crossing.
Advantages:
– Is fun to use.Disadvantages
– Can't send files/images.
– Can't chat privately.
– Usernames are hard to remember.
– Can't get any work done because the game is too distracting.https://t.co/6iePvujTn8 pic.twitter.com/Bt2LbFZm9v— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 30, 2020
So, about what you’d expect. Animal Crossing: New Horizons certainly is a fun meeting place – that’s the only listed advantage, after all – but as far as office environments go, it’s a little underequipped and a bit distracting. Aside from just being an absurdly fun game, typical Nintendo online deficiencies come into play here as well. If it were a functioning system, it could alleviate some of the workplace stress that comes with being unable to talk to coworkers privately or even conveniently.
Okay, maybe office buildings do not work so well, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been pretty awesome during the COVID-19 crisis in a few other ways. When the virus came in and canceled weddings and birthday parties, Animal Crossing was there to save both. In times like these, isn’t that just a bit more important?
