Stardew Valley, like many life simulation games, allows the player to customize their avatar to their desires. One of the most basic options is one that many players are used to: Are you a boy, or a girl?
While there’s already something to be said for the lack of a nonbinary option, this is not a unique pitfall for Stardew Valley. Most video games have yet to even stray from a white, heterosexual, cisgender male protagonist. On the bright side, Stardew Valley sidesteps one of the most annoying aspects of the gender binary in video games: gender-locked customization. In many games with gender options, female avatars are allowed one set of clothing or hairstyle options, while male avatars are allowed another. Stardew Valley doesn’t force players into these arbitrary choices and instead allows any avatar to select any of the various clothing and hairstyles. You can even give a female avatar facial hair, which is all but unheard of. Additionally, the player’s body type looks the same, no matter what. The female avatar is not skinnier nor bustier than its male counterpart. Some may say is simply less effort on ConcernedApe’s part, given he didn’t have to draw a new sprite, but there are all too many games that treat it like a necessity.
Your gender doesn’t affect any of your in-game stats. You run, farm, fight, and interact with the world around you in all the same ways, regardless of gender. Again, implementing something as ridiculous as gender-based statistics would be adding work, so it makes sense that they don’t exist. What’s important is that players are still treated the same by the game itself, regardless of gender. All players are encouraged to go on adventures and create a domestic homestead. Even your romance options are not dictated by gender; all of the romanceable Stardew Valley characters are, for all intents and purposes, bisexual. The only real mechanical change is your avatar’s ability to get pregnant; if a female avatar enters a different-gender marriage, she can carry a child, but all other couples can still have children.
Despite the physical gender equality, however, Stardew Valley is not a feminist game. Why? Your gender still determines one more aspect: how some of the non-player characters (NPCs) interact with you. Of course, some of this is for basic grammar reasons. NPCs will use “he” or “she”, “sir” or “ma’am”, “guy” or “girl”, as appropriate. Other dialogue changes feel a bit worse.
The most notable example of this is in interactions with Alex, one of the romanceable NPCs. Much of his standard dialogue will change based on the player’s gender. If the player is female, Alex will repeatedly comment on her body and physical appearance, more so than with a male player. Even though the avatar is not a sexual design, Alex sexualizes female players merely for being female. This feels all too close to real-life harassment that many women face; no matter what they look like or what they wear, there will always be men who sexualize them for the mere reason of being a woman.
Some of Alex’s potential default dialogue, as taken from the Stardew Valley Wiki.
From a personal account, my discomfort with Alex’s dialogue was twofold: First, for the reasons stated above, it feels like harassment. Second, I am a nonbinary person who is assigned female at birth. In my own personal experience (not to generalize other AFAB nonbinary people), I am okay with she/her pronouns and feminine language, simply because I grew up with it. Meanwhile, he/him pronouns and masculine language feel somewhat flattering but deeply wrong. As a result, I always end up picking a female avatar in games where I’m not allowed a nonbinary option; it feels the closest to being me, even if it’s not quite right. But in my head, I–and my avatar– are still nonbinary. Running up against misogynist language makes me incredibly uncomfortable, both for moral reasons and because it instills a sudden sense of dysphoria.
I have never managed to get past my dislike of Alex, and never romanced him, but I know from the Stardew Valley Wiki’s accounts that gender stereotypes, unfortunately, permeate his dialogue. Worse, the player is never given a chance to refute Alex’s dialogue, except for in one instance in the scene below. Choosing the “angry” option doesn’t change how Alex treats you, though; he will still make sexual comments to a female player. This is, unfortunately, also true to real life.
An interaction with Alex. Screenshot taken from the “No More Dialogue Differences” mod on Nexus Mods.
Stardew Valley is advertised as an escapist fantasy into an idyllic farmtown life. While it does address some serious issues– corporate takeover, poverty, and depression among them– there is always a “solution” to these issues. There is no solution to sexism. A female player will never be able to escape these dialogues beyond simply avoiding one of the game’s main male NPCs. It begs the question: Why was ConcernedApe so concerned with including this aspect of the gender binary, when many others aspects were avoided?
Stardew Valley is, and likely always will be, one of my favorite games. But part of my enjoyment of escapism depends on my ability to be, well, me. And Stardew Valley’s base game doesn’t quite let me do that. Thankfully, the modding community has plenty of solutions, which incorporate neutral pronouns and neutral language, but ultimately this doesn’t erase the impacts of the original.
