I found a mod on YouTube called “Ghost Town” that depicts Pelican Town as a “ghost town” where community members have died and are depicted as ghosts (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_qLZx8ce7E), and this mod has received over 103,543 views and nearly 2.5 million views on YouTube in total. In the YouTube video that depicts the mod, the creator of the mod travels throughout Pelican Town to discover which community members have died and where their bodies and ghosts are located in the town. The “ghost” characters have a gray face devoid of color, and they roam around Pelican Town as if they were still alive. However, some of the dead characters can be identified through their scattered bones and bodies throughout the town, such as the character Haley, whose body was found floating in the large fountain in the center of Pelican Town. Related to our discussions in class about whether some mods function as an addition or a critique of the original game, I found that this mod serves as an addition to the game that derives from creative ideas from fans that are similar to fanfiction and has significant aesthetic value and places particular emphasis on social interactions and understanding differences in the Stardew Valley characters before and after their deaths; however, there were unanswered questions that I had about the mod that if answered could potentially have further contributed to the fanfiction appeal of the game.
While there is not necessarily a focus in the “Ghost Town” mod on farming, there is a particular emphasis on social interactions and how they have changed since the characters turned to ghosts and died. Some characters behaved differently after their deaths, such as not being able to talk and only being represented as a dead corpse, while others conducted themselves in the same way as they did in the original version of the game, such as when “ghost Evelyn,” who is married to “ghost George,” remarked that “I’ve been putting raisins in George’s oatmeal… but he hasn’t said a word. I wonder if he even notices these things?” Some characters thus did not seem aware that they were ghosts, so Stardew Valley did not seem very different despite the aesthetic modifications. According to posts on Nexusmods.com from users playing this mod, many relied on each other to help find certain characters and community members who had died in the mod, such as when a user named “HannaVictoria” asked other people in the discussion “Where is Penny?…I couldn’t find her either.” Thus, this mod still incorporates the same communal elements seen in the traditional version of Stardew Valley, where players can ask for support from one another, such as through the Stardew Valley Wiki page and other online blogs.
When I mentioned this mod in class the other day, we discussed the potential connection of this particular “Ghost Town” mod to the idea of fanfiction, and I believe that this particular mod has a fanfiction feel to it. Fanfiction functions as a fictional extension of a character or story in a video game, book, TV series, movie, etc., and it essentially serves as an alternate universe. I believe that this mod is an extension of an alternate universe through Stardew Valley by imagining Pelican Town and community members as dead and ghosts. Stardew Valley is generally a happy game that does not focus on many contemporary social issues or inequalities, and perhaps the “Ghost Town” mod allows avid Stardew Valley players to break with this characterization of the game and take creative license as exhibited in fanfiction by putting a morbid spin on it. While our society is not necessarily a “Ghost Town” with ghosts wandering all of the spaces and dead bodies everywhere, death is an issue that many communities and people grapple with every day, and this mod addresses this topic in a fun and unconventional way. Also, many people enjoy horror films and the horror genre more generally, and this mod is an exciting way to combine horror with the game. However, I feel that this mod essentially has more of an aesthetic purpose instead of representing something more meaningful and substantive than is seen in other mods. I found that this mod does not have greater social importance connected to a systemic inequity compared to some mods that we have discussed in this class, such as the queer mods that we read about in providing a community through a video game for people who do not feel that their identities are represented in the game. Thus, this mod just serves as a creative extension of the original game.
I also had questions about this particular mod regarding how these characters and Pelican Town community members ultimately died, and I noticed that many of the YouTube comments and Nexusmods.com users also had similar questions. The creator of the mod does not seem to have answers as to how all of the community members died. It was interesting to see how among the YouTube comments and posts on Nexusmods.com, there were differing theories about how the community members died and thus led to some creative responses. For example, on YouTube, user “voidcritter” stated that “Kent was in the military, it’s possible he died in the war.” Thus, there is an enticing “murder mystery” component to this mod that allows users to take creative license and initiative, and it creates further engagement and collaboration with the game and reinforces the idea of video games being inherently social in nature. However, I wonder if this mod could be even more exciting and representative of fanfiction if it embodied a “murder mystery” theme and allowed players of the mod to solve and discover how the players died and if other community members were ultimately responsible for their deaths.
