 When you think of Animal Crossing, the first word that comes to your mind probably isn't loneliness. These games are about making friends with colourful animals in a small, digital world. Community and companionship are built into their very design. This is for a very good reason. Series creator Katsuya Eguchi came up with the idea of Animal Crossing in response to a very difficult period of loneliness in his personal life. Later, visionary director Aya Kyogoku built upon this to make Animal Crossing New Leaf the perfect game for anyone who felt ignored or overlooked by the video gaming community. In doing so, she and Katsuya dramatically changed the office culture within Nintendo. This is the story of how two lonely people helped to shape Animal Crossing. The year was 1986. Katsuya Eguchi had just earned a degree in computer graphics from the Japan Electronics College in Tokyo, which was relatively close to his hometown of Chiba. Katsuya was looking for his first graduate job, but he was wary. Job security at the time was a double-edged sword. He'd probably end up staying at his first employer for life. So what kind of life did he want to live? Knowing Katsuya's quandary, a friend suggested Nintendo. Not being up to speed on the home video game console market, Katsuya responded, What? The company that makes playing cards? No, his friend explained. Nintendo had made something called the Famicom a few years earlier. Surely they'd be a fun and engaging place for a computer graphics graduate to work? After doing his research, Katsuya agreed. He was a big fan of computer games, even if he preferred to play in arcades rather than at home. So he packed his bags, hopped on a train, and moved his entire life to Kyoto and a life at Nintendo. Almost immediately, Katsuya discovered his folly. Kyoto was 300 miles away from Chiba. He found himself living in an unfamiliar city, painfully far away from all his family and friends. He was alone, and he was lonely. Over time, Katsuya built a life for himself. But this loneliness only shifted as he got older. He was good at his job, working on games like Super Mario 3 and Super Mario World, before eventually serving as the director of Star Fox. All of this work meant long hours in the office. He missed his family, and he wished he could spend more time with them. Said Katsuya, I'd always get home really late, and my family plays games and would sometimes be playing when I got home, and I thought to myself, they're playing games, and I'm playing games, but we're not really doing it together. It'd be nice to have a play experience where even though we're not playing at the same time, we're still sharing things together. So this was something that the kids could play after school, and I could play when I got home at night, and I could kind of be part of what they were doing when I wasn't around. When Katsuya spearheaded Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 64 disc drive, he hoped to create a game wherein players could share a world, even though they weren't always together when they were playing. Drawing on his own inspiration, he started the game with the player taking a long train journey to a brand new town, arriving all alone, and having to build up new friendships with local residents. Later, Katsuya got the chance to work with Aya Kigoku, and he heard her very different story of loneliness at Nintendo. Aya joined Nintendo in 2003, first working on a pair of Legend of Zelda games. At the time, the company's workforce was overwhelmingly male, and Aya rarely got the chance to work with any other women. Nevertheless, she persisted, and became the first female director of a Nintendo EAD game, planning for Animal Crossing New Leaf. She and Katsuya talked a lot about diversity, or the lack thereof, within Nintendo. As a result, they went out of their way to hire as many women as possible for the project. They felt that this would help the game to better speak to a part of the gaming community that was often overlooked. In the end, the New Leaf team was made up of approximately 50% men and 50% women, a real novelty at Nintendo at the time. Katsuya was very interested in hearing the unique perspective that many of these women brought to the project. He later said, My experience has been that when you bring people in with a variety of interests beyond just games, that opens you up for the possibility of discovering new ways of playing and new experiences to provide to our users. Possibilities for exploration beyond just I want to make games. I have felt like this really benefited the project as well. She said, In my years at Nintendo, I have come to discover that when there are women in a variety of roles on the project, you get a wider range of ideas. When Animal Crossing New Leaf was released, the higher-ups within Nintendo were astounded at its sales demographics. Satoru Iwata later revealed that while the 3DS player base was two-thirds men, over 50% of players who bought a 3DS for Animal Crossing were women. This was unheard of for a Nintendo console, and as a result of Aya and Katsuya's work, the company has made a more concerted effort ever since to be a more equal opportunities employer. Animal Crossing is a game about pushing back against loneliness, about making everyone feel included, and about helping to forge friendships, both artificial and genuine. Perhaps the moral of the story is that your trials, your loneliness, can be a force for good. Aya and Katsuya recognize loneliness in various forms around them, and work to help people feel more connected and more valued. Perhaps you can reach out and help someone who's feeling lonely too. You never know, you might make a lifelong friend.