As someone who doesn’t really play many video games, I was not really familiar with the concept of mods itself. So, before trying out anything, I searched ‘Stardew Valley Mods’ on google to learn how they work. And as I wander around random articles ranking the best Stardew Valley Texture & Visual Mods, One thing caught my eyes: the ‘Korean Retro’ mod. It was a mod that retextures almost everything in Pelican town into a Korean countryside style. It made the houses look like Korean country houses and the Saloon look like a Korean beerhouse from the 90’s. It even made the magician’s tower to look like a typical Korean shaman shop and all other shops are textualized likewise. I was pleasantly surprised to see how detailed the re-textualization was: not only the buildings but also artisan goods changed as pickles become kimchi, truffle oil bottle becomes a typical blue Korean oil bottle with red plastic cap, and even the horse becomes a scooter that Korean farmers ride. Everything looked as if they came straight from my grandparent’s village. As someone who spent my childhood in Korean countryside, I loved the experience of looking around the new Pelican village and discovering different ‘Korean Retro’ things. And I couldn’t help but to notice how much the re-texturization changed my Stardew Valley playing experience. With this ‘Korean Retro’ mod, I could feel the nostalgia.
I wrote for my previous blog post that I wasn’t really able to get myself attached to the game partly because I wasn’t able to identify my avatar as an East Asian. Not only that I was not allowed to change the face of the avatar (simply changing the skin color was not enough to make it look ‘Asian’ to me) but also none of the NPCs were Asians with only two characters being a person of color. This feeling of subtle detachment was completely turned over after I used ‘Korean Retro’ mod. It really felt like my avatar was strolling around Korean countryside. Stardew Valley became a whole new game for me. The mod certainly made my game-playing experience much more interesting and helped me to engage with the game in a deeper level.
This made me wonder: what are the motivations for people who create the mods? where does this desire to change and re-create the already existing game come from? One additional thing I learned from searching different Stardew Valley mods up on Google is that mods have become a very integral part of the game. Mods community is really big, and hundreds of people were adding something of their own to the game, creating new dynamics. Why did so many people feel the need to modify something in the game? Anna Anthropy points out in her Rise of the Videogame Zinesters that “modifications are made to subvert or comment on the original author’s intentions, or to simply correct what the modder feels is an oversight on the author’s part” (89). And I think ‘Korean Retro’ mod works as a perfect example for this understanding of the mod culture. Korean comic artist Sunwoo Hoon, the creator of ‘Korean Retro’ mod, said that he often talked with his friends how fun Stardew Valley would be if the Pelican town looked like a countryside that they can relate to. And this worked as a motivation for him to create the mod so that he could properly situate his nostalgia within the Stardew Valley. He found something, as I did, that the original creator of the game missed – so he added something on his own end. And I think this shows how the video games – the good games at least – are never one-dimensional. Video games always carry the multiplicity of meanings so that different people engage with it differently. And as the players engage with games in their own respective, unique ways, they get to make the games their own. Moreover, the way players engage with the game is fundamentally physical and active. Thus, the games always drive their players to be more than just passive receiver of material. Games always nudge us to ‘create’.
