One somewhat common critique of Stardew Valley is how much time is required to progress and get to the stages of the game that users deem enjoyable. Want to start a new game and explore the deeper levels of the mines? Too bad, you have to spend a painstaking amount of time grinding to acquire the proper swords, pickaxes and energy/health replenishers. Want to start a new game where you can build a farm with all of the cool animals and crops that you’ve always dreamed of? Too bad, you have to spend a painstaking amount of time grinding to reach the levels, complete the achievements, and save up the gold to make that feasible. Issues like this are a significant barrier to players who don’t have the time or willpower to make dreams like these possible. How could this issue be solved? How could Stardew Valley be made enjoyable for those who can’t or don’t want to put in those hours?
A mod is more or less the activity of adding custom content to existing computer games by other players, and the mod that I am analyzing for this blog post helps answer these questions. The CJB Item Spawner is a mod that allows the player to spawn any available items in Stardew Valley on command. The player simply has to open their inventory and they will find that they have the opportunity to toggle between every item that can be acquired immediately. From an observational perspective, this makes the game “easier” in a number of ways. After downloading this mod and playing with it, players instantly have access to all of the items, including but not limited to an unlimited inventory of tools and equipment, artifacts and minerals, and animals and monsters, that Stardew Valley has to offer. Activities like foraging and fishing become obsolete. Game storylines like finding the right gifts to give townspeople to become better friends and acquiring target objects to complete missions become effortless.
Stepping away from the impacts that this mod has on the story of Stardew Valley, the CJB Item Spawner completely changes the game from a more analytical user experience perspective as well. Players can make their farm look any way that they want it to look without putting in the work that they would need to otherwise. In other words, it allows players to unlock the full creative potential of the game. A player’s ability to succeed and thrive in Stardew Valley becomes less about their amount of free time and their skill and understanding of the Stardew world and its mechanics, but more about their creative inclinations.
While this mod has a lot of potentially positive impacts on the game and the user experience of it, there are some glaring downsides. One potential negative result of this mod from an analytical perspective might be that it negates part of “the spirit” of the original game. One of the reasons that players find accomplishments like getting deep into the mines, finally getting married, and building the farm of their dreams is that they serve as testaments to the hard work that they poured into the game. It’s harder to develop attachments to achievements that one did not necessarily have to work for. If this mod was always automatically installed when one downloaded Stardew Valley, the entire culture of the Stardew Valley community, one built on the extensive effort and shared accomplishments that make the game special, would be altered completely.
The CJB Item Spawner not only changes the difficulty of the game as it might seem at first glance, but changes the meaning of the game to users in both positive and negative ways as well. The CJB Item Spawner makes Stardew Valley a more accessible game for those who do not have the necessary time to invest in progressing and makes the game more about the creative desire of players while diminishing the challenging adventure aspect of it as well.
