Stardew Valley has incentive structures that should determine avatar behaviour. While these incentives dynamically change as the game progresses, at any given moment an avatar is encouraged to fish, scavenge, cultivate or meet people depending on that moment’s gameplay, with the overarching incentive of earning money. Naturally, one would expect that these incentives are the key factor in guiding avatar behaviour; the avatar should follow the incentives of their virtual world in a similar manner as humans generally follow incentives in the real world. A corollary to this expectation is that avatar behaviour is distinct to the mood of the player since it is the in-game incentives that drive avatar behaviour as opposed to the agency of the player.
However, my experience playing Stardew Valley has given me a far more nuanced perception of the motivators of avatar behaviour. I have noticed how my mood has a tremendous influence on how I play the game. After the initial period of getting to grips with the game set-up, I noticed fluctuations in how I responded to the in-game incentives and began realising how correlated they were to my fluctuations in mood. When I had a great day or felt happy, I found myself dedicating almost all of my time to connecting with the other villagers and carelessly exploring the map’s offering. When I felt sad or frustrated, I found myself attempting to establish order by restlessly clearing shrubs or erecting fences. When I was stressed or anxious, I found myself being highly driven in the game, relentlessly cultivating crops and trying to progress as efficiently as possible. This is not to say that in-game incentives have no role to play, but merely that within the overarching structure of the game, my experiences in the real-world influence how I respond to the in-game incentives.
In a similar fashion, the change from single-player to multiplayer game-modes also revealed a strong interaction between player and avatar for me. However, this interaction focused far more on revealing inherent personality traits as opposed to my mood fluctuations in a manner that the single-player mode did not reveal. The first personality trait that I noticed becoming apparent was a streak of competitiveness. While the earnings were equally shared among all players, I found myself striving to earn the most money by engaging in the most profitable behaviours. Similarly, I soon noticed an element of impatience coming through, as I was not in control of the game’s progress unlike with the single-player mode, and had to wait on other players to, for example, finish the day.
So, what does this mean? To an extent, it means that our avatars and behaviours are a reflection of ourselves and our experiences. We project our personality traits and mood fluctuations onto them in a fashion that is distinct from the incentive structure of the game. However, this mirroring is by no means perfect, as the incentive structure of the game still reigns supreme and the framework of the digital world diverges significantly from that of the real world. This means that some of my behavioural responses to mood fluctuations are analogous in both worlds, such as stress leading to higher productivity, while others are not, such as sadness leading to a desire to create order.
