Joe Biden sets up campaign headquarters on custom 'Animal Crossing' island
Visitors can spot Biden walking around the island. Should they try to interact with him, the nominee responds with one of his campaign slogans, "no malarkey."
By AARON REICHDemocratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participates in the first 2020 presidential campaign debate with U.S. President Donald Trump.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has taken his video game campaigning to a new level, with his presence in the popular Nintendo Switch title Animal Crossing: New Horizons expanding from initially just having available merchandise to now having a fully designed island.Animal Crossing: New Horizon is a popular video game in which users can design their own island communities and visit the islands of other players, and Biden HQ is no exception. The island was explored Friday by Kind Funny's Greg Miller, who streamed it live over Twitch. And the island is exactly what one would expect a Biden HQ to be, filled with campaign signs, a field office, a polling place and a virtual avatar of the nominee himself.Visitors can spot Biden walking around the island. Should they try to interact with him, the nominee responds with one of his campaign slogans, "no malarkey," as reported in the gaming news site Gamespot.However, the island is surprisingly more detailed than a simple series of campaign ads, and contains more "in-jokes" about the nominee. One such example is the island's other inhabitants. Like all Animal Crossing islands, most of the villagers on the island are anthropomorphic animals. But while these usually vary between animals, this is not the case for Biden, with a large amount of them being dogs."A lot of the residents on the island are dogs, Joe Biden loves dogs," Miller explained in his stream.Another subtle detail can be seen in the field office, which has a basement full of trains, a reference to Biden's nickname of "Amtrak Joe" for often commuting by train, Gamespot reported.The creation of Biden's island in the game is a followup of the Biden-Harris campaign's previous foray into the Nintendo title, which became a major critical and commercial success upon its release in March, which is widely considered to have been due in part to the coronavirus pandemic leaving people feeling more isolated.In the beginning of September, the Biden-Harris campaign announced that several official campaign signs were made available for players to use on their virtual island homes.Four different signs were made available for the game. These include the official Biden-Harris logo, the "Joe" Pride logo, Team Joe and sunglasses in red, white and blue. Players will be able to download them by scanning the signs' QR codes using the Nintendo Switch Online app.“Animal Crossing is a dynamic, diverse, and powerful platform that brings communities together from across the world. It is an exciting new opportunity for our campaign to engage and connect Biden-Harris supporters as they build and decorate their islands,” Christian Tom, director of digital partnerships for the Biden campaign, said in a statement to The Verge at the time.Should players wish to visit Biden HQ, they need only use the Dream Suite with the code DA-7286-5710-7478. Unfortunately, it is impossible to take anything back from the island. However, texting "AC" to 30330 will earn players a special Biden campaign shirt for their villagers, Gamespot reported.
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