Read Write Play: Stardew Valley

After playing Stardew Valley and reading “Playing in the global ‘village’: a comparative analysis of capitalist ideologies in Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons” by Kei Yan Kiana Ng, it was really interesting to think about the extent to which Stardew Valley promotes capitalist values and the extent to which it criticizes capitalism. On the one hand, as Ng mentions in their paper, Stardew Valley has very explicitly critiques of capitalism built into the game’s narrative. The player arrives at Stardew Valley in the beginning of the game because they are burned out at their Joja Corporation office job, and they want to make a new life for themselves by working on a farm. Throughout the game, while players are given the option to take the “JojaMart route” by buying the JojaMart membership, it is made pretty obvious that this is the “wrong” route to take. JojaMart is painted as evil by many of the NPC characters in town, so it is made pretty clear that the player should actually work towards completing the community center. 

On the other hand, outside of the minimal narrative aspects of the game and the interaction with NPCs, all of the mechanics of the game reinforce capitalist values. The player’s main goal is to expand their farm, automate processes, and make as much money as possible. Even the way that the game tracks the player’s “friendship level” with the NPCs feels like it is just providing another commodity that the player must strive to achieve rather than instilling a legitimate desire to get to know the NPCs and care about them. 

In Ian Bogost’s paper, “The Rhetoric of Video Games,” which was our paired reading for the game Undertale, Bogost writes about how Animal Crossing models capitalist systems. One mechanic in the game is paying off your house mortgage. Bogost explains that each time you upgrade your house and pay off your mortgage, it makes you want to buy more things to fill up the new space you have, which then makes you want to take out another mortgage to upgrade your house to make space for your new things, starting a vicious cycle. All the while, Tom Nook, the shopkeeper who upgrades your house, becomes wealthier and wealthier. The NPCs, however, display much less materialistic behavior and live modest lifestyles. 

Just like in Animal Crossing, there is a constant feeling that your farm is not big enough and not bringing in enough money and that there is more that you can do to upgrade your farm. No matter how much wealth you accumulate and how much you add to your farm, there is always more work that can be done. The NPCs also still continue to live modest lives. Even as the player becomes hungrier and hungrier for more wealth and expands their farm empire, the NPCs continue to live the same lives, and nothing about their living situation is upgraded. At least in Animal Crossing, the player can kind of understand some of the negative consequences of debt and capitalism when they see Tom Nook become wealthier with each mortgage they choose to take out. In Stardew Valley, there is no critique of the player’s actions, and expanding the farm is only ever viewed positively. As you progress through the game, you are given more and more opportunities to automate your farm and generate more wealth. This can be done through tools like the “auto-grabber,” which automatically harvests products like milk and eggs from barn animals, and the “auto-petter,” which automatically pets your barn animals for you so you don’t have to. These types of tools seem to be in complete opposition to the small, intimate farm life experience that the game claims to be about. Even with the introduction of these types of tools, there is no critique of the player or mention of the parallels to things like factory farming and pollution. To me, it seems very hypocritical that the game would explicitly present itself as being anti-capitalist through its narrative, but be nothing but extremely capitalist in all of its mechanics.