Nookazon (/ˈnʊkəzɒn/) is a fan-made website that allows players of the 2020 video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons to trade and sell items in-game using their services.
The website was developed to be an alternative to the unorganised trading system of the original Animal Crossing: New Horizons Discord server.
The website was created and is run by Daniel Luu, a 25-year old software developer also known by the username squishguin on internet platforms.
He joined the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Discord server, and found a trading message thread there, but was overwhelmed with the quantity of traders and the unorganized nature of the platform.
I’m a software engineer by trade, and I really wanted to put my developer skills to the test and build a marketplace.
I wanted to just organize everything and make it easier for players to connect with each other and trade items.One of the challenges Luu faced when creating Nookazon involved categorizing the many items of furniture and clothing within Animal Crossing.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons contains thousands of individual items, all of which had to be catalogued with various colours in order to be listed on the website.
To solve this problem, Luu used a "spreadsheet community" in order to create a comprehensive catalogue for all the game's items.
[8] The website grew beyond the scope of the Animal Crossing Discord, and eventually became an important part of the community, facilitating many trades per day.
Daniel Luu stated, about the surge in popularity and the difficulties he faced with it,[7] that: I’ve built plenty of apps before—apps and websites—but nothing like this.
The Nookazon Discord, which now has around 600,000 members, thirty volunteer moderators and is managed by Daniel Luu's friend Brandon.
He stated that "I’ve cut out a lot of hobbies, like watching YouTube, and spend most of my free time on the site.
The most popular items on the site are Nook Miles Tickets, followed by the cutting board, ironwood dresser, crescent-moon chair and fish bait.
[17] After the trade, buyers and sellers can leave reviews from one to five stars with a comment to inform other users about the trader.
[18][19][4] One example of this is the introduction of paying with Nook Miles Tickets, highly valued Animal Crossing items.
Whereas the value of Bells has gradually decreased over time, the price of Nook Miles Tickets has stayed consistent.
Following the George Floyd protests which began in May 2020, users of Nookazon criticized the website's leaders and moderators for banning Discord members who posted in support of Black Lives Matter.
[16] In addition, a "Safe Trading Guide" is available to all users that outlines various method in which scammers attempt to cheat on buyers and sellers and how to prevent them.
[32][33][34] Seasonal materials are also susceptible to large fluctuations in price, with an auction for 100 cherry blossom petals selling at a total of 2.8 million bells.
I think the Animal Crossing community has been so great to us, our entire team, and it's such a fun project to work on, so I think even after the quarantine, even after a while, we will continue to support Nookazon.