Abstract
Within the Animal Crossing series, players have always had the ability to collect insects and then donate them to a museum where they can then be permanently exhibited. This paper makes the argument that this collecting and exhibiting of game objects works to reflect many of the ways that videogames have begun to take up an increasingly prominent place within real world institutional exhibitions, archives, and collections. Through a conjoined lens that is equally informed by games preservation, etymology, and art history this essay works to unpack the intricacies of how the museum and collecting function with the Animal Crossing series. This examination of Animal Crossing will then be applied more broadly to two museums (the MoMA and the V&A) exhibition case studies, making the comparative argument that overtly taxonomic methods of display and archiving can work to deaden videogames’ inherently mutable vitality. By speculatively thinking of videogames as things akin to the bugs of Animal Crossing, to be kept alive throughout the archival process rather than dead objects to be preserved, a new, more productive lens of videogame curation can be gleaned.
Highlights
Hoo! Is it... even possible? Can the insect collection truly be complete?! I must say, I do not know whether to be elated or absolutely disgusted
The tangled relationship between amateur and professional archiving that Kawahara describes as being a common aspect of Japanese bug collecting (p. 167-169) strongly parallels the web of institutional and fan gaming historians Guins describes in his definition of videogames’ collection era. Looking at these various comparison points more broadly, how can the parallels between insect collecting within the Animal Crossing series and real-world Japan be utilized as a productive lens to examine similar parallels that might exist between insect and videogame archives at both the amateur and institutional scale? What is the potential benefit of metaphorically conceptualizing a videogame as a kind of living collectable in the same way a Japanese bug collector might perceive an especially charismatic beetle or butterfly?
Instead by exhibiting videogames in a manner that emphasizes elements beyond their finished forms Foulston is allowing for them to be dynamically defined as complex objects with consistently shifting life cycles and afterlives. Stating that she looked to architecture and theatre for inspiration in her co-authored curatorial statement for the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Foulston’s treatment of her selected works can be compared with the conversation and display methods that would be required to display a collection of live insects such as that done by Blathers in each of the Animal Crossing games
Summary
Within the Animal Crossing series, players have always had the ability to collect insects and donate them to a museum where they can be permanently exhibited. Through a conjoined lens that is informed by games preservation, etymology, and art history this essay works to unpack the intricacies of how the museum and collecting function with the Animal Crossing series. This examination of Animal Crossing will be applied more broadly to two museums (the MoMA and the V&A) exhibition case studies, making the comparative argument that overtly taxonomic methods of display and archiving can work to deaden videogames’ inherently mutable vitality. The Museum and the Killing Jar: How Animal Crossing’s Insects Reveal Videogames’
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