Nookazon: How One Animal Crossing Fan Created the Ultimate Fan Trading Site

Though it’s hard to see past the cute graphics and characters, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is all about capitalism. You’ve got to find the right resources to build the island and objects of your dreams. Eventually, you’re forced to trade with other players and strike online deals to get what you need.

However, Nintendo doesn’t always make communicating with other players easy. And in a game built on social trading, that can be a major problem. However, it’s a problem that one man solved by creating the ultimate Animal Crossing fan trading site!

Who is this man, and what makes this site so great? We’ve got the full details below.

Who created Nookazon?

Daniel Luu is only 25 years old, but he achieved gaming greatness when he created Nookazon. This is his Amazon-like website whose name pays tribute to Animal Crossing icon Tom Nook.

It didn’t take long for the site to gain major popularity, and it now receives 270,000 daily users. The goal? To make it easier for players to find other people who have the resources they need and organize in-game meetings.

It’s not uncommon for software engineers to have their own projects on the side. For Luu, however, this site has practically transformed his life since it launched in April 2020. And just as he has changed his own life, his creation has changed how thousands of people play Animal Crossing.

The spreadsheet community

Nookazon didn’t have to reinvent the wheel when it came to linking up players. Instead, Luu was able to build on what had come before. Specifically, he was able to build on the spreadsheet community.

That’s the name of a Discord server designed to help players understand what you could build in Animal Crossing and what it would take to build it. After that, the next step was easy to imagine but difficult to execute: finding a way for players to meet up and get exactly what they needed to bring their island dreams to life.