The first time I played Stardew Valley was utterly overwhelming. As someone who was shuffled from school to violin lessons to STEM camps and rarely had the ability to control their own schedule before college, the game’s addition of an open-ended experience with an infinite number of possibilities to the repetitive structure I knew from my own life quickly became addicting. Every decision was my own. I could plan my time easily based on crop harvest times and the seasons, go about the days doing whatever I wanted, and see a report of progress at the end. I even occasionally paused the game to write down my schedule for the next day and track the items I still needed for the community center. After sitting down intending to play for an hour before bed, the next time I looked at the clock it was four hours later and I was halfway through the first season in-game.
I grew up playing sandbox games like Minecraft and Terraria, and Stardew Valley represents a continuation in the personal appeal of these games. Primarily, I went to video games for an escape and a way to be more creative than I could be in real life, where academic pressure and overprotective parents dictated my every move, leaving me doing homework until late at night and using any fleeting spare time to simply catch a breath. The way I play alone may appear overly structured for someone who claims to appreciate the freedom and lack of structure of a sandbox game, but I appreciate the freedom to make my own decisions and find the structure that works for me rather than have one externally imposed.
Who I am when playing alone versus playing with other people varies drastically, particularly depending on who the other player is. Playing a friend is easy. Early on we go to the mayor’s house, split the money, and go about our independent goals. The only distinguishable difference from playing alone is that I don’t feel the need to accomplish as much, as I don’t need to go fishing or farm as intensely as I would alone. Playing with a friend makes me less rigid in maintaining my personal schedule because of the need to coordinate going to sleep, but not much else. Our main interactions in-game are collaborating towards a shared goal like finishing the community center, and a lot of the fun comes from conversations on the phone while playing.
However, when playing the game with my sister I took on the entirety of the routine work. While I maintained the farm, watering as many crops as possible and clearing extra space until I exhausted my energy, she befriended the townspeople and went exploring. As the spring season came to a close, I had become a hermit who didn’t know anyone in town. While she knew every corner of Pelican Town, the only journeys I made were to Pierre’s for more seeds and the occasional trip to gather spring onions for extra energy. This isn’t far from my relationship with her in real life, in which I often picked her up from school, helped her with homework, and took her to her friends’ houses. Because she’s the second child our parents were much more lenient with her than with me. Much of my interaction with her has been about helping her have the experiences I wish I had. In playing Stardew Valley with her I instinctively and unconsciously replicated this dynamic, which I had not thought about until I compared my farmer’s high level of farming skill with the numerous five and six-heart friendships she developed.
The roles we take on as players are often more representative of our places in real life than we might imagine. Even when approaching video games as an escape, the introduction of other people into a farm in Stardew Valley grounds the game more in real life and the relationships that exist there, and those connections are powerful enough to manifest in the game space and define the gameplay experience.
