Players' Stories and Secrets in Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Exploring Design Factors for Positive Emotions and Social Interactions in a Multiplayer Online Game

Animal Crossing is an online multiplayer game that supports social communication and collaboration. Its recent version, New Horizons, is immensely popular having sold over 32 million copies worldwide, with many players attracted to the opportunities it provides to remotely socialize during the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand players' increased positive emotions and social interactions, we surveyed 119 of them betweenMay and December 2020 and conducted remote interviews with 25 respondents. We identified the social dynamics among players and with non-player characters (NPCs), and analyzed how positive social interactions were facilitated under player-generated narratives and game-determined narratives. Based on our empirical analyses, we have extended our understanding of how to create positive, safe, and friendly interactions: (1)the design of mood-improving game worlds with flexible game tasks, (2) implementation of game-determined activities with social implications, (3) provision of player rewards to reinforce their social interactions, and (4)creation of opportunities to integrate NPCs' game-determined narratives into player-generated narratives.