When I entered this class, I had never heard of Stardew Valley before. I was excited however, because of the love that people expressed toward this game. There was a tone of reverence and excitement to share the experience of playing Stardew with the people, like me, who had not yet been inducted into the cult.
I went into the game essentially spoiler-free, having only read the game’s summary on Wikipedia. It’s a rare opportunity to be able to have a true first experience with a piece of art this beloved by a community. As I began playing, one of the aspects of the game I was looking forward to most was the social component. Developing various relationships with members of a new town seemed like a really promising avenue for a game to explore, and I was interested to see how it would approach such a broad topic.
However, the more I interacted with Stardew’s NPCs, the more disappointed I began to be with what felt like a lack of depth in the characters. And the more I noticed this feeling, the more certain aspects of these social interactions began to bother me.
I divide the social aspects of Stardew Valley into two categories: conversations and gift-giving. Conversations include dialogue with characters as you walk around the town, letters you receive, and occasional interactive relationship cutscenes. In my (albeit limited) experience playing the game, conversations rarely feel engaging. Instead, they are either utilitarian, completely surface-level, or strangely binary.
There’s nothing wrong with the utilitarian (e.g. getting smithing information from Clint) and surface-level (e.g. saying hello to Demetrius in the park) conversations in theory. These types of interactions are often necessary to communicate important knowledge to the player or to limit the numerous conversation opportunities in a role-playing game with so much freedom. But the one type of conversation that ostensibly allows the player to engage more deeply with other characters seems hollow, too. These interactive cutscenes often have dialogue options that are drenched in judgement to the point of actually feeling jarring, whether it’s choosing whether or not to be mean to a homeless man or choosing from a list of options where one is literally labeled “creepy.” Real morality is obviously never this simple. Even the best choices will almost always have some sort of trade-off. Philosophers as far back as Aristotle have understood the need for ideas like moral relativism to account for the nuance of the real world. Yet even some of the surface-level dialogue in Stardew Valley can feel like a dramatic wink at what the game thinks is the “right” answer, like when they mayor says he will sell the community center if one more person gets a JojaMart membership card. Hmm… I wonder who he could be referring to…
The game’s other type of social interaction, gift-giving, is also a bit underwhelming in my opinion. This process is transactional and extremely predictable once you learn characters’ preferences. Gift-giving also ties in with the game’s numeric evaluation of your social relationships in the form of red hearts which are filled in as relationships grow and improve. As the number of hearts increase in a relationship, the player also begins to receive material benefits in the form of opportunities, materials, and even cold hard cash. It’s also the main way to develop relationships, leading to an implicit connection between the ability to give gifts—wealth—and the player’s ability to have a fruitful social life.
Okay, enough ranting. I still really enjoy playing Stardew Valley, and the game’s social interactions aren’t all bad. Many people actually seem to really enjoy them. Maybe they all just read the wiki to figure out optimal gift-giving, but I don’t think that’s all of it. I think it may actually be possible that the aspects of the game that push me away are the same aspects that draw others in. While I had hoped for a game that portrayed interpersonal relationships more realistically, many people are exhausted by the intricate nuance of modern life. Work, real-life relationships, and the numerous other responsibilities of being an adult can often feel overwhelming, so it’s understandable that people would welcome a break from such a complicated and uncertain world with open arms. It’s the same reason so many books, movies, and TV shows feature a clear villain: sometimes it’s just a relief to know what’s good and what’s bad.
Finally, I’d like to take a moment to discuss what I think Stardew Valley could have been if it lived up to what I wanted. For comparison, I thought about another indie game I’ve played recently, also with a retro pixellated aesthetic: Celeste (2018). Celeste is a single-player platforming game in which the player dodges obstacles and navigates difficult terrain with the end goal of reaching the summit of a large mountain. Along the way, the player also meets and gets to know other characters. These social interactions illuminate interesting, nuanced characters, and conversations focus on themes of purpose, friendship, mental health and self-discovery in addition to moving the narrative forward. The gameplay progression in Celeste is much more linear than that of Stardew Valley, and Celeste features fewer characters, but I still feel that Stardew could have benefited from more of the kind of personal, human dialogue found in Celeste.
To add another example in a similar niche, a game like Undertale (2015) features many consequential decisions that the player has to make—most famously, the decision flee or kill monsters that the player encounters throughout the game. These choices are recorded, but the player is not made aware of that fact until the end of the game, forcing self-reflection on those instinctual decisions. These types of games are great in part because of their ability to communicate a message without having to constantly lecture or talk down to the player. That’s what I feel I wanted, but didn’t get, in Stardew Valley.
As I stated before, I still like Stardew a lot. I think both complex decision-making and feel-good gameplay have their place in video games; Stardew Valley simply chooses to lean more on the latter. Maybe if I try to appreciate the game for what it is, I can eventually learn to enjoy its social components as much as I do the rest of the game.
