Visit WWE star Xavier Woods's Animal Crossing: New Horizons island
Stars — they’re just like us! Stuck at home, and playing way too much Animal Crossing, that is.
With the Nintendo Switch hit’s release coincidentally lining up perfectly with our collective quarantines, the folks that keep us entertained with their musical, comedic and/or athletic abilities are pouring hours into escapism on their new islands. They’ve been fishing, picking fruit, interior decorating, and paying off loans to Tom Nook just like the rest of us. So with real-life travel essentially nonexistent at the moment, we decided to tour a few celebrity islands to see where the magic happens.
Xavier Woods
Day Job: Professional wrestler in World Wrestling Entertainment (six-time tag team champion) | Host of the popular YouTube gaming channel UpUpDownDown, and co-podcast host of The New Day: Feel the Power
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Current Happenings: Donated funds to his best friend and cosplay pal Mikal Mosley to make masks for health care workers, Twitch streaming and rehabbing from a torn Achilles.
Animal Crossing Island: GullaGulla (Visited April 11)
People often forget that the core component of pro wrestling, the undercurrent of all the flashy slams and trash-talking promos, is storytelling. When it comes to in-game Animal Crossing storytelling, Xavier Woods is elite.
Woods has transformed his house on GullaGulla into a full-fledged pro wrestling academy for his Animal Crossing-based promotion, Ring and the River (RnR). The entrance to the home serves as a merch area for RnR, complete with a cotton candy machine, various wrestling paraphernalia and a security camera to catch would-be thieves. “You can buy masks, you can buy glasses to go with your charismatic, fun gimmick,” says Woods.
The journey for RnR trainees — perhaps literal Young Lions — begins upstairs in the dorm era. “When the trainees come, they’re going to live here,” Woods says of the space with a small desert pond on the floor, a couple of basic beds, and not a ton else. “They’re going to learn to live with a little bit of water and lacking the resources on the outskirts.”
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He continues, “When the bell rings in the morning — at 7 a.m. — everybody runs downstairs to the main room and takes a left. And what we’ve got here … ” Woods laughs as he catches himself showing off an in-progress locker room area (which at present just has a shower, toilet and tissues). “This is so dumb, this is all so dumb.”
In his narrative, the wrestlers would rinse off, grab their bags, and head to the gym in the backroom, which features a couple heavy bags, an exercise bike and a sauna heater.
“Get all warmed up in here; get your muscles loose. And then you go into the room on the right over here. This is the no punches, no kicks wrestling. This Greco-Roman wrestling room to get you extra warmed up.” The room in question is completely empty with just a sumo mat for the grapplers.
“The main event is downstairs in the basement,” says Woods. “After fulfilling all those things [in the prior rooms], then — and only then — can you come talk to me and see if you’re a part of the show for … Ring and the River!”
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The basement in question serves as the TV studio for his wrestling show, one where he’s filling the role of Vince McMahon. Appropriately, it features a full wrestling ring with a river flowing underneath it. (“That’s why they learn to live with a little bit of water upstairs, because they’re going to have to deal with a lot of water once they’re on the show for real”).
He also has a guitar in there (“We’re going to have a live band playing the entrance themes for everybody that comes in”) and plans to set up chairs and other equipment to make things seem more broadcast-ready. “Outside of my house I’ve got a big satellite dish so I can project all of the television stuff out to our major networks,” Woods says.
There’s also a ring outdoors for a little backyard (well, technically front yard) wrestling. Since in-game, the ring simply functions like a bed — you can basically only just lie on it and roll over — Woods is trying to get creative with ways to battle in the squared circle.
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“We’re trying to figure out ways to have matches,” he says. “So if two people start in the ring, whoever can plant 10 flowers fastest and get back in the ring [wins] — stuff like that.”
Woods has been playing Animal Crossing since he was a kid. His childhood is reflected in his isle’s name — a character-limit-friendly nod to the Nickelodeon program Gullah Gullah Island. But that initial foray was hardly the typical experience, involving long drives and pre-daybreak hours.
“I remember wanting to play [the original GameCube Animal Crossing] so bad, but there were no Blockbusters that had it anywhere near me. My dad had told me I could rent it, but since we couldn’t find it … he just took me to a Blockbuster like an hour away. He was so p---ed.”
Woods then organized his day around the game.
“I’m not a morning person by any means. I can’t stand being up early,” says Woods. “But for Animal Crossing, I would wake up at like four in the morning to catch whatever specific bugs you had to catch before the sun came up. So I was on this weird schedule in high school where I would get up early, play Animal Crossing, go back to sleep for an hour and a half, wake back up and go to school. I realized, ‘I’m just living actual life. I have an actual job. I can’t do this anymore.’ So I just stopped. But that revelation didn’t come to me until like 10 months in.”
By that point, Woods’s father had given in and paid the extra money to buy the game. “It’s a horrible rental game!” says Woods.
Outdoors there are more spots for Woods’s unique narrative spirit to shine. When I visit, GullaGulla’s flag depicts Macaulay Culkin’s character from the movie My Girl, Thomas J.
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Woods quickly leads me to a cliffside memorial he’s built for Thomas J., featuring plenty of the wasp nets and bees (spoiler alert for the 28-year-old movie: Thomas J. dies from an allergic reaction to a bee sting). This odd pop culture homage has led Woods to strive for a new in-game goal.
“A few nights ago on stream, we were talking about My Girl, so I decided to make a Thomas J. memorial,” he says. “I imagine [Macaulay] plays Animal Crossing, so I want to get him to come and say a few words. If I can do that, then I’m going to make one of Rufio [from Hook] and try to get Dante Basco to come through and say a few words. It’s gonna be essentially an island of all my favorite passed on movie characters.”
Being a popular gaming presence has had its boons for Woods. A friend of a friend, gave him “like 8 million bells” on his third day of playing the game (Woods doesn’t time skip to cheat the game’s real-time aspects, though he assumes his benefactor must have done so). But all those bells couldn’t help him get K. K. Slider to visit before I had arrived, nor had it unlocked the terraforming elements needed for him to fully realize his vision for GullaGulla.
Part of the problem was that his island was downgraded by Isabelle for having way, way, way too many trees.
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“My count was 33 orange trees, 43 pear trees … and those were two of the lowest ones,” Woods says. He’s since pared way down, and now has hand-designed signs to designate each of his orchards. He’s happy that the influx of cash hasn’t drastically changed his Animal Crossing experience, because there’s inherently no right way to play.
“There’s a million ways to play the game and not a single one of them is wrong,” he says. “From tiny kids, like my 2-year-old son who’s like, ‘Daddy, hit the tree!’ to an 80-year-old grandma, there’s something for everyone."
Woods capped his description by recalling a recent conversation.
“Somebody asked me, ‘Why should I play Animal Crossing?’ And I was like, ‘Well it’s just a fun game.’ ‘Well what is it about it that makes it good?’ ‘Honestly? All you’re doing is running around collecting things, crafting things, selling things, buying things. There’s not a real objective to the game other than having fun.’ ‘Well why would I play if there’s no objective?’ ‘You like living life, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well think about how life is crazy and difficult right now. Animal Crossing is literally all the most fun and best things about life without any of the negative in a simulated handheld experience. So like, why would you not play that?’ ”
Coming next week: Australian DJ Alison Wonderland
Seth Sommerfeld is a Seattle-based culture writer and the Resident Representative of Ahch-To. Follow him on Twitter @sethsommerfeld.
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