Let me tell you, during our first class discussion of playing Stardew Valley as a relaxing experience, I had some real concerns that I somehow accidentally downloaded the wrong game. My first experience of playing Stardew for the first time was not what I would describe as cozy… I, rather, was in a lengthy state of distress.
I, sadly, am no gamer. I used to be extremely into the classic kids computer games that I’d play on my browser – Webkinz, Club Penguin, Poptropica, the like (shoutout to anyone who played Pixie Hollow, which was one of my all time favorites) … That being said, I think the last time I played a video game in any real capacity was almost a decade ago. So, when I was instructed to spend four hours playing Stardew Valley for the first time, I was rather intimidated. I found getting used to the mechanics of the game to be extremely frustrating. Hot take, I know, but I found it to be super difficult to figure out what I was supposed to do.
After watching the introductory video setting the scene for the world I was entering and being dropped into my dilapidated farm – which I attempted to name “Coconut Mall,” but reached the character maximum and ended up with “Coconut M Farm” – I just found myself asking, “Now what?” I am so much of a gaming rookie that I didn’t even THINK to look up a Stardew wiki to at least guide me along these beginning moments in Pelican Town, until someone mentioned it in class. I merely stumbled around, attempting to follow the vague instructions from the pop-up prompts. I roamed the open businesses, attempting to interact with the townspeople, but was often absolutely DISSED! Many of them told me they didn’t feel like talking to me because I was a stranger, which seemed awfully silly to me. When I tried to enter homes and was told that I wasn’t good enough friends with their occupants I thought to myself, AND WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT THAT?!
I found myself throughout the early days of my Stardew playing craving for someone to tell me what to do. I wanted explicit steps to take, a clearly outlined objective, and an understanding of what was the “right” way to play the game. Of course, these sentiments are almost antithetical to the appeal of Stardew Valley. The fun of the game is largely the freedom you have to make it your own. In this colorful digital world crafted with nostalgic aesthetics, the metrics of winning the game are kind of a choose-your-own adventure. You have a farm to work to make flourish, a host of construction projects across town, friends to make, and suitors to woo. You can play the game a hundred times and pick a different goal to focus upon and have a differently rewarding gameplay experience each time.
Once I figured out the nature of Stardew Valley as a kind of sandbox game, my frustrations were partially appeased. Still, I found myself doing a lot of research as to how to play the game right. I searched for surefire ways to get the townspeople to like me, found instructions for optimizing my farm’s production – I knew it was up to me to figure out the game for myself, but I still wanted someone to tell me how to do that in the most advantageous fashion. I would love to hear if others had a similar experience to mine, craving an authority to tell me what I was doing right and wrong. I wonder if this contributes to a larger social commentary or psychological phenomenon of a human desire to be told what to do. Perhaps a connection lies in the concept of the paradox of choice coined by Barry Schwartz, who asserts that the more options we have, the more difficult it is to make a decision. I would be interested to see what the breakdown of Stardew Valley players are that identify with these sentiments I had in my gameplay and who couldn’t possibly disagree more with me. I would hypothesize that factors of players’ self-efficacy levels contribute to these feelings that they need external guidance and approval of what to do; certainly, my lack of experience playing these kinds of games was a factor in my initial struggle. Altogether, I do think that these questions could relate to larger explorations of how players’ behaviors in games potentially reflect desires that are laden in other real-world contexts.
