It is not hard to see the initial appeal of Stardew Valley: own your own farm, form relationships with the townspeople, and ultimately save the town from the influence of the Joja Corporation, which is undermining the town’s local business. Even the game’s description on Steam touts the idea of overthrowing capitalism:
“You’ve inherited your grandfather’s old farm plot in Stardew Valley. Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home? It won’t be easy. Ever since Joja Corporation came to town, the old ways of life have all but disappeared. The community center, once the town’s most vibrant hub of activity, now lies in shambles. But the valley seems full of opportunity. With a little dedication, you might just be the one to restore Stardew Valley to greatness!”
However, the narrative Stardew Valley creates is not one hopeful for an escape from capitalism. Although it may attract players with an appeal to escape from capitalism, this is not the reality of Stardew Valley. The player has more freedom to operate within capitalism and ultimately remake capitalism in their own image, but never to escape from it.
When the player arrives in Pelican Town it seems that they have escaped capitalism. They are freed from the shackles of the nine-to-five workday that was their corporate job at Joja and can spend their time as they please. There is no need for the player to worry about feeding their character as basic movement takes no energy, nor are there any costs to living on the farm as it is an inherited property with no taxes.
However, the facade of freedom quickly falls away as soon as the player enters town. The mayor provides the farmer with their initial seeds for free, but the player is also given an initial amount of money and encouraged to purchase more seeds from the local market. Further, there is the task of either repairing the community center or purchasing a Joja membership to improve various areas of the town and gain access to things such as the minecarts, which make it easier for the player to reach different areas of the map. While the game discourages one of these paths (opting for the Joja membership rather than gathering various crops and items to repair the community center) through its opening showing the player quitting their miserable corporate job and cutscenes showing the antagonistic treatment the JojaMart manager Morris gives to the local shop owner Pierre, the community center path is still requires the player to engage in capitalist practices to gather all the items necessary to repair the community center (some of which are direct bundles of money). The player has not escaped capitalism but is instead reinserted into it in a different context.
The idea behind repairing the community center is that everyone in town benefits from it. However, once the player enters the Pelican Town economy and becomes a capitalist it is easy to slip into the mindset that profit is the ultimate end rather than the means to the end of helping the community. The timing mechanic of the game furthers this, in addition to the screen at the end of each day that shows the player the profit they made from different aspects of the game that day. As a player, I am conscious of how the game activates my tendency to stress profit maximization and start every game intending to take it slowly, explore, and not stress over completing the community center as fast as possible. However, the seasonal changes of the game and the desire to unlock new areas of the map not available until certain tasks are completed cause me to fall into the same patterns as usual, looking for crops that have the highest rate of return, pausing the game to plan out each day, and restarting a day if I make a costly mistake. Soon, I forget my original goals. Befriending townspeople ceases to be simply because I like them but because their occasional gifts benefit me. Completing the community center becomes about acquiring the opportunity to make exponentially more money. In this process, it is easy to ignore everything that does not directly benefit me, such as the costly “Community Upgrade” that gives Penny and Pam a house but offers no other benefit in order to pursue greater personal gain. Under the guise of saving the town, I give into selfish capitalist impulses.
Analyzing the actions Stardew Valley encourages in its characters reveals the game as less of a challenge to capitalism than a resignation to its perpetuation in a different form. While the game suggests that any benefit to others comes only after the benefit to the individual capitalist, and any “saving” action the capitalist grants (pushing the Joja Corporation out of the town) is not in spite of capitalism but because of it, it does nothing to offer the player an alternative to becoming part of what they seek to destroy, as choosing to complete the community center saves the farmer from the Joja corporation but makes them complicit to capitalism as an independent capitalist. Underneath its soft graphics and small-town interactions, Stardew Valley portrays the farmer as a capitalist savior, whom the community embraces for completing the community center even though it was only for the farmer’s personal benefit, making the farmer no different from the corporation they overthrew. Stardew Valley may offer a critique of corporate capitalism, but it supports capitalism’s evolution to become more palatable through presenting itself in more morally digestible forms such as helping others. Ultimately, it teaches that capitalism perpetuates itself and is inescapable.
