Animal Crossing: New Horizons Producer Explains Why The Game Doesn't Have Gender Restrictions

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has recently released on Switch, and many players are praising the game for its flexible position on gender identity--it never asks you to confirm a gender, and lets you use any hair, make-up, and clothing on any body, which was not the case with previous games in the series. Now, in a new interview with The Washington Post, the game's producer Aya Kyogoku has explained the game's relaxed stance on identifying and restricting gender.

Kyogoku says that the decision is "not just about gender," but a wider consideration for how people identify themselves. "Society is shifting to valuing a lot of people’s different identities," Kyogoku says. “We basically wanted to create a game where users didn’t really have to think about gender or if they wanted to think about gender, they’re also able to."

Elsewhere in the interview, Kyogoku notes that she does not consider changing the Switch's internal clock to skip time forward "cheating," although the developers advise against it.

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