[tablethnuser]

There's many different kinds of players with an equally rich spectrum of player motivations. Animal Crossing is a phenomenon for some players because games like it are released pretty rarely. For others, it's "not even a game".

Reviews of Animal Crossing are more a reflection of the author than Animal Crossing itself. The game, like any topic viral enough to drive the engagement economy, is just some bobbet to anchor an opinion around.

For example, in the article I can tell that Bogost uses games to live out his fantasy as a humanities professor. And Lantz enjoys playing the contrarian.

Nothing wrong with that, they are playing the game in their own way, perhaps without even needing to _play_ it.