I don’t identify as disabled; I didn’t even realize I could until I was eighteen years old and filling out a form in which I qualified as disabled three separate ways, four if you got technical. But even so my relationship to the word has been fraught, complicated by a desire not to be coddled or pitied and understanding that I benefit from presenting as able bodied most of the time, thus skirting the treatment many other disabled people live through. Which is to say when I was approaching this blog post, I considered using a theory that touched on an identity I do use on a regular basis, but couldn’t really decide, so I logged onto the game with the hope that playing for a little while would inspire me. In a way, it did. Two minutes in, something triggered a flare-up and the joints in my hand were so painful that holding it to the burning radiator in my room might have been more comfortable than continuing. Which, somewhat predictably, got me thinking about disabilities and video games.
Critical disability theory, also known as disability studies, is a theory that looks at “the social norms that define particular attributes as impairments” (Schalk 2017), not the impairments themselves, and always with the goal of working towards justice for people with these impairments instead of just as some intellectual experiment. At its core, really, like most critical theory, it comes down to a question of power, who holds it and what they can do with it. And in video games, as in so many other places in society, the power is skewed away from people with disabilities.
Stardew valley’s control system on a PC, not necessarily easily accessible for someone with physical disabilities
There’s a common perception that video games create an accessible fantasy world for people who were otherwise unlikely or unable to have certain experiences. Madden and FIFA make the world of professional sports available to anybody with $10 and a Ps4, and from the comfort of your couch, you can fight zombies or design a city or drive a villainous turtle around in a go-kart. Because none of these activities are tangible, or to use a charged word, “real,” there’s a perception that video games are for lazy people or wastes of time. The activity involved, waving around a Wii remote or pressing buttons on a Switch, is seen as the bare minimum a person can do, a laughably small amount of activity. But for a disabled person, this isn’t the case. Societal expectations are that everyone has the basic capacity to do the steps, and getting good is just a matter of skill or practice. And measuring with this metric, disabled people consistently fall behind, whether it’s because they have trouble physically using the controls or have an impaired sense that means they can’t access the full gameplay experience. As a sciences major, I can’t help but think of this as one of those experiments where we set an artificial zero to make the calculations easier. Societal standards similarly skew the data in a light that favors the able-bodied, and leaving those with impairments in this perceived negative zone –considered lower than the minimum of a person. They can’t even equally participate in this activity that’s meant to be fun, lighthearted, an escape; like most things, it’s just not designed with them in mind.
The idea of an escape gets even more complicated when viewed through critical disability studies. In games like Stardew Valley, the player designs an avatar to represent themselves, then gets to live a life that, in all likelihood, doesn’t resemble their own. (When’s the last time you went foraging for wild onions?) Relationships to an avatar and emoting is a topic for a whole other post, but for these purposes, it can be assumed that when given the option to create a person from scratch and simulate their life, you do so with some form of relatability or emotional connection in mind. But for a disabled person, as for members of other marginalized groups, it gets a lot more complex a lot quicker. To use my example again, if I’m having a flare up, I can’t really move my legs much, forget walk, but this character I’m supposed to be identifying with can dash across the page with the press of a button. Someone who’s hard of hearing or deaf has a character who spends a good chunk of their time listening to villagers talk. Someone with an artificial limb or limbs has an avatar in possession of all four of theirs. How do you relate? There’s a traditional view, steeped in years of old school ableism, that says that this avatar is the fantasy the disabled person wishes they could be. But that argument perpetuates the harmful idea that all disabled people are broken and can only hope to be fixed or normal. And so with its lack of representation, Stardew Valley, supposed to be this idyllic rural fantasy, sends a clear message – disabled people are not a part of our little utopia. Of course, there’s an argument that says a town where so many people have issues to work through isn’t supposed to be a utopia. But that’s contrary to the framing of the game, which literally shows your character escaping corporate oppression in their path towards natural enlightenment. Which then leaves a disabled person with this character that is supposed to represent them but doesn’t, which is supposed to be a fantasy but isn’t, or with the option of relating to George the homophobic grumpy old man who makes walking sounds as he approaches even though he’s wheelchair-bound. With critical disability theory, then, we can begin to see the way that Stardew Valley is guilty of perpetuating the same lack of justice and power for disabled people that has persisted in society.
George, the disabled character at the center of a critique of ableism in a Stardew Valley plot
References
Hall, Melinda C. “Critical Disability Theory.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2019, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/disability-critical/.
