Arab News Japan

With Nintendo’s ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ becoming the most popular game during a period of self-isolation amid COVID-19, a Japanese company decided to use the game as a method to keep in contact with employees.

While most companies are holding meetings over video calling apps like zoom, this company is holding its meetings through the famous Nintendo Switch game.

The trial was conducted with three employees got together to test the virtual meeting location. One coworker volunteered their in-game island as the meeting spot, and the other two flew over virtually to get to work together.

The creative employees set up their very own conference table, and even used the game’s chat features to discuss work matters.

The coworkers also engaged in some fun activities together like fishing.

Industry Analyst Daniel Ahmad conducted the experiment in a Livedoor News article, explained the advantages and disadvantages of meeting virtually on Animal Crossing.

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/1244461885728215040?s=20

He explained that the benefits included the fact that they were able change around the furniture and surroundings in their meeting. He added that the fact that they could use the chat features provided a more flexible online conference.

However, Ahmad said the main disadvantage was that they could not send external files or images through the game. They also could not chat to each other privately.

He concluded it was fun to try, but extremely distracting as they could not get much work done.