Tom Nook or Mayor Lewis — who’s the most ruthless leader?

polygon.com:

If you ask people about their go-to comfort games, you’ll hear two mentioned pretty often: Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley. I downloaded Stardew Valley onto my elderly MacBook Pro in 2020, and I jumped on the New Horizons bandwagon in 2021. Both are considered low-stress games and both fictional towns have a lot in common. This includes their own leaders: in New Horizons, capitalist overlord Tom Nook makes sure your island getaway has strings attached, and in Stardew Valley, Pelican Town’s Mayor Lewis runs the show. These parallels led me to a hypothetical gauntlet-throwing; my mind went to the criticisms of these two men/animals (vertebrates?). Both have drawn ire from fans, so I’ve decided to determine who is the most ruthless.

Of course, this question is subjective. What is ruthlessness, in a farming or lifestyle game, and what kind of ruthlessness is “worse” than the other? I associate it with a lack of empathy for others: Someone who uses their resources to get to their end goal, by any means necessary. Even if that means forsaking the responsibilities and people that should be important to them. I also like to think there’s tactics to true ruthlessness. Are they conniving, or simply neglectful? Let’s dive in.

This tanuki businessman’s company Nook Inc. is a one-stop shop for all your needs. But seeing as his company is the only place you can get most items — and it includes an online service in New Horizons to order goods — it’s a little too reminiscent of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Are Nook’s employees, Timmy and Tommy, paid living wages? Benefits? Can they unionize? Beyond potential labor violations, no other businesses besides the Able Sisters and occasional vendors seem to offer any competition to