September Roundtable: Festivals

Who doesn’t love a festival? (Festival haters need not comment.) While you’d be hard-pressed to find me at a real-life festival, due in no small part to my small town not having many of them, I love indulging in a little gaming frivolity. Maybe it’s all those bonus opportunities in The Sims or seeing familiar places in World of Warcraft decked out for the Darkmoon Faire, but there’s something special about an in-game festival. Why? Let’s find out.

Do you enjoy an in-game festival? Which is your favorite? What do you like about it?

Maddi Butler: In the time that we have had this roundtable open, there have been not one, but two festivals in my neighborhood. What I most enjoy about festivals is the opportunity to eat food I don’t usually get to eat and wander around while music plays in the background. I don’t love hot weather or being around loads of people, but I do love the idea of enjoying some revelry from the air-conditioned solitude of my living room, in a video game.

I had a great time playing the Assassin’s Festival in Final Fantasy XV when that was available, especially because it came with a cute little outfit. I think my favorite experience, though, was turning Animal Crossing: New Horizons into an island-wide festival after the game came out in 2020. Since I missed going to local food festivals and hanging out with friends, I set up an outdoor marketplace near my Town Hall, which felt extra festive any time the game got its seasonal decorations.

Melissa Brinks: Being able to eat new foods is such a big deal. The real drawback of video games is that no matter how much food I eat in them, I never actually get to taste it.

Anyway, every Halloween event is good. I love to put my character in a costume. I love to look at ghouls and goblins, et cetera. I love special game modes—even Junkenstein’s Revenge in Overwatch, because we finally got that promised PVE mode, however brief.

Cress: Ditto on the Halloween festivals, always my favorites for games.

I most associate a lot of sim-life types with festivals. I really enjoyed ones like the Harvest Festival in Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, where you had to submit your best crops in to win. It reminds me a lot of the Interior Provincial Exhibition growing up where there’d be towering sunflowers and large pumpkins. I’d like more games to have some variation in the crops like that as a contest!

On the flip side, do you hate an in-game festival? Why?

Maddi: In-game festival, they could never make me hate you. I could never be angry at seeing my favorite locations except for with little pumpkins out front.

Melissa: The truth, despite my very positive intro, is that I have mixed feelings on in-game festivals. I tend to associate them with MMOs, where participation feels mandatory—they tend to become less about enjoyment for me and more about doing them because I need a little item or an experience boost or something. That’s not ever my preferred way of engaging with a game, but I always end up doing it because I want whatever the reward is.

I don’t hate festivals, but I certainly appreciate them more when they’re more than just a means of getting me to log back in.

Maddi: It has occurred to me that my definition of festival is too literal, because as I read Melissa’s response I remembered losing entire evenings to trying to crush levels in Project Makeover in order to collect the tickets needed to complete the special and seasonal makeovers. I do sometimes think I am the worst version of myself when I am playing too much Project Makeover.

Cress: If the festival railroads me to do something, that can be frustrating. I don’t mind if I can walk into it and opt in, but if there’s an announcement that I have to appear somewhere as soon as I wake up and the game teleports me there, it messes up my day.

Melissa: Maybe I’m being too broad with my definition of festivals! But I stand by my point because of the copious hours I invested in World of Warcraft festivals for little items that didn’t do anything.

What do festivals bring to games? Think both video and tabletop games here.

Maddi: One of the other things I enjoy about real-life festivals is that they’re a joyful, communal, cultural experience. In a video game, they bring a little extra fun to something I am already doing for fun. I haven’t been playing tabletop games for very long, so the only festivities my Dungeons & Dragons group has experienced are the standard victory celebrations with the people of whatever town we’ve just helped out. Even so, I think they can add interest to a campaign by deepening the characters’ world. It gives the players the opportunity to better understand their environment and what is culturally important to the people around them, which enriches the world I’m playing in. On the other hand, it also gives me time to examine my character and my relationships with other player characters. What do these people do when they aren’t being called to adventure? How do they spend their free time? What does that say about them?

Melissa: I think in video games, as Maddi said, festivals bring a little extra spice to something we’re familiar with, which can be especially great when you’ve spent a long time with the game already, such as in MMOs or long-term games like Animal Crossing. Keeping game modes unique to festivals also makes them feel special, even if it is often a means of getting me to log back in and try to sell me in-game currency.

I love festivals and parties in tabletop games, though. I haven’t had the opportunity to play through one, but I ran the Faerie Fire adventure set at a party where the players have to solve a mystery in a time loop. It was so much fun to see the characters outside of the high-pressure fighting they’re used to. Despite all the flirting and dancing that didn’t directly contribute to solving the mystery, they still managed to find what they needed before the time loop started crashing down on them and causing problems. That meant that we got to see new sides of all of these characters, for better and for worse. The time to interact meant a bunch of new plot hooks and relationship developments, as well as a deepening of some character backstories. I can’t recommend having a party or festival in your TTRPG enough.

Cress: Besides nostalgia for myself, there’s the romantic or character driven ones that allow you to get to know your neighbors more. While I think there should be more options that aren’t just bachelor/bachelorette related, I do love getting to see my favorite character on a moonlit stroll. They offer a moment to cherish the seasons and have something to look forward to in game.