Overthinking Things: Animal Crossing - It involves more work than one thinks...

While watching the latest video from PBS Idea Channel (No, seriously, check it out! It brings up very interesting topics.) about if BMO from Adventure Time is an expression of third-wave feminism, during the comment response section from the latest Animal Crossing game and 'Otaku Citizenship'; someone, called rainbowdew, commented that "I think part of the charm of animal crossing is that it's not real, and everything is a lot simpler and that there is no real 'work' everything is fun and fictional. I don't think it translates to the real world."...


While yes, in meatspace, the only things you're doing in the most typical sense is just pushing buttons and moving a joystick/pad; there are other skills that are needed to do several of the activities in this game series. And even the simplest activity/exploit I can think of (selling stuff from the dump and/or the police stations lost & found) at least involves an investment of time and energy.

Fishing

• Attention to Detail: For finding the shadows indicating a nearby fish, especially in New Leaf during the evening.
• A decent sense of hearing: For noticing when the fish bites the hook, especially when catching any of the difficult fish. Which helps with...
• Good Hand-Eye Coordination/Reaction Time: For hitting the relevant button right when the fish bites the hook. Hitting it too soon scares it off, while hitting it too late turns it into "the one that got away".

Bug Hunting

• Decent Memory: For knowing which bugs you've caught before or not, also which ones are worth enough bells for catching.
• Patience: Mostly for tree-hugging beetles, but also works for most ground-bound insects but these are the types that can be (sometimes easily) scared away. So at times it's best to sit and wait. Like if said tree-hugging beetles are squirming in New Leaf, it's best to stay still (even if you're sneaking) 'till they calm down before moving closer. Related to this is it's best to walk slowly even if it takes you longer to do a trip around the islands in New Leaf, so as to not scare off these flighty bugs before you even know they're there.
• Attention to Detail: This time, it's for certain hints as to target range. For me, there's (if you're approaching a tree-hugging bug straight on) getting closer 'till you and your net obscure the target and for other situations, if the distance trees shadow and your own are about half a centimeter long (and of course you're facing toward the target) swing away, your net is in range!
• Hand-Eye Coordination: For one circumstance...bees/hornets!

Fossil Hunting

• Attention to Detail: Yet again, this time it's for noticing the marks on the ground indicating something is buried there. I know this sounds obvious, but sometimes they can be hard to notice if you're in a hurry.
• Decent Memory: For remembering where you've looked before that day. Doing this enough days in a row can cause the days to kind of blend together, so setting up a routine for this sort of thing helps.

Rock Hunting (Both the Money Rock and the Fake/Exploding Ore Rock from New Leaf)

• Attention to Detail: For noticing when the bells pop out of the rock. Also along with the next item...
• Decent Memory: ...for knowing which rocks are normally in your town therefore, by process of elimination, which one is the Fake Rock. See Fossil Hunting on how this helps with finding the Money Rock.
• Hand-Eye Coordination: ...Or more like button mashing to hit the rock as much as possible to get the most amount of bells out of it each day. There is this trick involving (oddly enough) digging two holes to hold you in place to get that max bell-age, but a simple Internet search could give you more precise instructions.

Villager Requests

• Decent Memory: This time for remembering the approximate location of whoever you're delivering an item to.
• Luck/Pattern Recognition: The former at unskilled levels and the latter at extreme (maybe only possible in works of fiction) levels, for when the villagers give you a challenge of some kind.

Deep-Sea Diving (So far specific to New Leaf)

•  Attention to detail & Decent Hearing: For reasons similar to fishing, but with one difference...
• Herding: Because not only can some creatures move, but they can swim under the buoy barrier while you can't which is Deep-Sea Diving's version of "the one that got away". Aside from of course...
• Reaction time: Cause those bubbling points will escape/fade away if you don't catch them first.

Hybrid Flower Breeding

• Decent Memory: Not just which flowers you've watered but if you've watered a particular flower at all that day.
• Trial and Error/Note Taking: On which flower combinations are likely to result in what kind of flower (even if you look for this sort of info online).

There, in fact 'is' work involved in the Animal Crossing series, it's just that the earlier games won't involved everything on this list. But, because all this sort of stuff is just optional, I could just be...Overthinking Things.

TL;DR: There is some kind of work involved. Just not of the type that will make you entirely exhausted.