When we were all locked down during the pandemic, confined to our homes and without the ability to buy rotisserie chicken, I received a WhatsApp from a close friend. My friend, who just happens to be a senior executive at South Africa’s largest energy and chemicals solutions company, wanted to know if he could visit. But he didn’t want to come past my house – his request was to visit my Animal Crossing island because I had an orchard of orange trees and he did not. Things may have been bleak in the real

world, but the 38 million people who bought a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons were spending their days planting flowers, digging up fossils, discovering sea creatures and watching in-game sunsets with their Nintendo Switch friends.