I never got to play Stardew Valley before taking this course, but I did know of it fairly well because the game was really big in Korea during the quarantine days back in 2019. I also had one friend who loved this game and constantly praised its amazing complexity in narratives and addictiveness. So, I was excited to try the game myself and see how I would interact with it – I was so ready to get addicted.
When I first started playing the game and created my new farm, I spent at least more than an hour creating my avatar. I wanted it to be perfect: I wanted to connect myself with my avatar so that I could immerse myself into the game. This is why I wanted my avatar to resemble both my present self and an image that I strive for. So, the first thing I did was to name the avatar after myself – Celine. Then, I made my avatar’s skin has a yellowish tone and her hair to be a bright brown – just like how I look now. Yet, even after spending so much time crafting my avatar, there was just something that made me hesitate from identifying myself into Stardew Valley Celine. And no, it was not the fact that Celine on my laptop screen was a literal pixel art. It was more because the avatar could not resemble my face as an Asian. I was not allowed to change the face of the avatar, and simply changing the skin color into a more yellow hue was not enough to make it look ‘Asian’. And this subtle feeling of distance intensified as I got to meet the NPCs in the town. None of them were Asians while most of them were white, with I believe only two – Demetrius and Maru – being a person of color. I understand that the Pelican town is a quaint farming village that is likely to be located in a place like North America where you would not expect to see many Asians. But I still would have appreciated it if they added a bit more diversity into the game. If not NPC, it would have been nice if the players can craft their avatar more freely to make them as any race they want. After all, Stardew Valley is the world where Dwarves, Junimos, and Humans live together; a few Asian representations would not make things more unrealistic than it already is.
I started playing the game anyway, and for the first few in-game days, I spent most of my time trying to figure out the game mechanic itself. This was my first time playing a farming simulation game so the process of figuring out what to do was indeed a bit stressful. It was not that the mechanics themselves were hard, but I wanted to get straight to the business. And just wandering around trying random stuff was not therapeutic but rather frustrating to me as I constantly felt the need to optimize my time usage. I was not using my time most efficiently, and from the class discussion, I learned that I would get an evaluation of my works by the end of year 3 and for some reason, I wanted to ace that. And this feeling of slight anxiousness got even worse as events and quests started to pop up in my journal. The very first quest I got was “Robin’s Lost Axe.” I was instructed to look south of Marnie’s ranch, but I didn’t know where that was and even after I found the place, the area was too big, and I didn’t want to waste time just wandering around looking for the tiny little Axe from what it seems to be a huge forest. So, I started to consult the omniscient wiki and google. All I had to do was to type: “where is Robin’s axe, Stardew Valley” and google will direct me straight to where I can find the axe: near the sewer drain (which I think is nowhere near Marnie’s ranch). Starting with this, I became more and more dependent on google and wiki. I looked up the ‘Stardew Valley Ultimate Guide for Beginners’ and learned things like the most efficient ways to make money quickly, what NPCs like as their gifts. and the best spots for fishing. And like this, the Ultimate Guide slowly started to dictate my playing of Stardew Valley. Whenever something new happened, I went straight to search it on Google rather than trying it out myself. And whenever I don’t refer to the guide, I started to get stressed thinking that I am not optimizing my gameplay. With that, I slowly began to reduce the time I spend playing Stardew Valley.
So, in a nutshell, I was not able to get myself hooked on Stardew Valley. And I think the reason for this is that I got off on the wrong foot with this game. Would things have changed for me if I enjoyed more of the freedom and adventure Stardew Valley gets to offer without sticking to the most efficient gameplay? If I experimented more – perhaps making a blue-skinned avatar and exploring more of Pelican Town, hanging out with Junimos – would I have got myself hooked on Stardew Valley?
