Having never played Stardew Valley before I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I loaded in. A couple of my good friends who I used to play video games with all the time, had raved about their love of the game, but I had never taken the dive before as having read brief descriptions of it, it did not seem like the type of game I would enjoy. I have always been drawn to more action heavy games, first person shooters like Halo and Call of Duty, or games that focused on multiplayer competition like League of Legends or Hearthstone. For me the narrative has always been little more than an afterthought, partly because I have always been represented in my favorite games. Sitting down to play Stardew Valley, at first I did not really focus on the narrative, but rather tried to immediately get my farm up and running and start perfecting my combat in the mines. However, because I was trying to take a more critical view of the game, I forced myself to slow down and try and take in the narrative, to meet the townspeople, to complete the bulletin quests, and to finish the community center. Up to this point I was about a week in, in in-game time of course, and I had only met a few characters of the town, mainly those you were forced to interact with, like Pierre, the Blacksmith, Gunther, and the Adventurer’s Guild leader. I had also met the man who lived in a tent by the mine, as his aesthetic and departure from the quaint little village set up by the rest of the characters interested me.
Reflecting upon this introduction through critical feminist theory, it is quite strange that despite there being so many female characters in the town, the only one who you are introduced to directly in the opening stages of the game is Robin, who runs the carpenter shop. While all the characters are given their own unique personalities, and can be seen out and about in the town from time to time, the limited introduction makes the town feel male dominated, when in reality, in terms of numbers it is not. Perhaps not intentionally, yet it still serves to marginalize the role of women in the player’s experience. Likewise, within the town, at least the parts I have explored thus far, I have not unlocked the bus, the region north of the starting area, or the region east of the town, the stores and shops that the player interacts with are predominantly run by men. Marnie’s barn and Robin’s carpenter shop are the two notable exceptions.The explicit representation of the women with Stardew Valley does not fall into any of the historical tropes that plagued years and years of video games, such as the damsel in distress or having their personalities reduced to shallow reflections of people. Instead the issue that Stardew Valley faces is the accessibility of the female characters and how the game pushes male characters more so to the forefront in the narrative course of the story. The player has to make an effort to meet the female characters, despite the fact that they, like all the characters in Stardew Valley, are part of what makes the town what it is and gives it life.
Despite the fact that it is not a perfect reflection of what truly fair representation would look like for women in video games. Stardew Valley makes a strong step in the right direction and a departure from the archaic tropes of the past.
References:
- “Introduction: Reframing Hegemonic Conceptions of Women and Feminism in Gaming Culture (Kishonna L. Gray, Gerald Voorhees, and Emma Vossen)
