Kinship Studies in Stardew Valley: Analyzing Player Immersion in Character Relationships

In my short yet intensive experience with Stardew Valley, I have primarily kept my nose to the grindstone. I’ve expanded my farm, caught fish, and (reluctantly) force myself down mines in search of iron. So far, I haven’t made a concentrated effort to interact with the villagers outside of quests. I occasionally gift flowers, storing away my rarer possessions for the future. I’ve seen Willy’s and Linus’s first-level heart events, but they don’t require much interaction to trigger. With such minimal interactions spread so thin over the village population, I can’t say that I’m particularly close to any of them.

However, I’ve seen playthroughs just the opposite, where players seize opportunities to interact with villagers, talking with them daily and giving various gifts to determine their likes and dislikes. Thus, these types of players experience heart events more often. At this point, I’m a bit hesitant to change my playstyle– why must I give these villagers so many gifts to get them to open up? I know that this is just the way character relationships are implemented, but it feels unnatural and one-sided.
This brings me to the primary question of this post: what influences the believability of in-game relationships in Stardew Valley? In this post, I will examine Stardew through the lens of kinship studies to determine how the player’s awareness of the game mechanics affects their immersion into the character relationships.

Relationships in Stardew develop by the accumulation of “friendship points,” gained by character interactions. Every 250 friendship points yields a “heart” with the character, indicating an increased level of closeness.

There are two main ways in which the player can interact with characters– conversation and gift-giving. According to the Stardew Valley Wiki, talking to villagers typically accrues 20 friendship points. For gift-giving, the amount of friendship points awarded varies depending on how much the character likes the gift– 20 points for a neutral taste, 45 for “like,” and 80 for “love” (with these values multiplying by 8 for their birthday). By giving the max of 2 gifts per week, players can increase friendship by an upwards of 160 points on a typical week, whereas the max number of points due to talking caps at 140 (one conversation per day). Reflecting real life, the daily commitment of talking to someone increases friendship steadily; gift-giving is inherently more volatile until the player discovers the characters’ preferences.

It would be a particularly one-sided if I argued that Stardew’s relationships are flat and superficial because the player can bypass a commitment to daily conversation by manipulating online resources to discover a character’s favorite gift and give it twice a week– these gifts are often rare and difficult to acquire, especially in the early-game, justifying their higher point values. However, as many players give gifts to supplement character interactions after maxing out their daily conversation allotment, their “altruism” at some point becomes noticeably intentional. At this point, they give gifts expecting reciprocation via the characters opening up.

Another method of increasing friendship points is replying to character quests. Unlike the player, characters will not deliberately seek out the player for face-to-face interaction– they send mail to the player or post bulletin board posts, which within the context of the story, could be for any villager (although in context of the mechanics of the game are indirectly posted for the player). However, in terms of how the game defines friendship– as a relationship mechanically developed by the player’s accumulation of friendship points –these interactions further ingrain the player as the sole agent in relationship-development.

The last major way players can increase friendship points is by cutscene-related events, including heart events and festivals. Heart events occur spontaneously, once the player has satisfied a certain number of conditions, such as entering a certain location and a particular time and season and a certain heart requirement with characters in question. Friendship points increase depending on the actions the player takes in heart events or festivals, like asking a particular bachelor or bachelorette to the Flower Dance (+250). While the characters often engage the player as a result of these spontaneous events, but it is the player’s response that accumulates heart points.

The fact that friendship points only accumulate with player interaction shows the games’ centering of the player in relationship development– the player possesses no hearts of their own that each of the NPCs can see, and the NPCs do not try to increase their friendship points with the player.
Not only does the player bear the sole mechanical responsibility for developing relationships as the game prioritizes it, but they are also responsible for the deprecation of these relationships– failing to talk with the characters every day, giving a disliked item, or picking the wrong choice at heart events has the potential to decrease friendship points. The player will lose 2 friendship points for missing a daily conversation and 20 for giving a disliked gift. On the surface, it seems that villagers do not abide by the notion of “it’s the thought that counts,” granted some of the disliked and hated gifts constitute poor gift choices in general (e.g. trash, monster remains,), and lost amount of points for missed conversations is relatively low.

One could argue that this argument is a matter of semantics as these are simply the mechanics of the game. However, I can prove the same point by taking the approach of player experience, comparing the quality and quantity of actions the players take to characters outside of the “friendship points” framework.

Players initiate conversation and give gifts, navigating around the characters’ schedules to interact with them. They choose and complete quests, deliver items in person, and take the initiative at festivals to interact with them. Characters do not change their schedules to seek out the player. They occasionally give gifts through mail, but this usually doesn’t happen until the player has already done most of the heavy-lifting to befriend them. They reciprocate your initiated conversation, and, granted, will open up to you in heart events and by allowing you access to their bedroom as a show of intimacy– but this all happens after the player already does significant legwork to befriend them. While your initiated interactions with the villagers are intentional and effort-based, most of the villager interactions with you are spontaneous, reciprocatory, not often done face-to-face (shown by the frequency of mail requests), and unintentional (e.g. asking for general “help” on the bulletin board, that in the context of the game world, should be solvable by any character).

It is entirely possible to have a positive experience with characters in the game. The player’s required effort might come naturally to some, and constant gift-giving can become habitual. However, the fact that characters only up open up after the player “courts” them (regardless of romantic intention) questions the magnitude of the characters’ commitment to reciprocating the player’s friendship. It also brings up interesting questions of grooming and the ethics of receiving friendship and even romance by these types of persistent, persuasive efforts. Focusing too much on the mechanics removes the life from these relationships, reducing personalities to points and hearts to be accumulated. It is the players’ awareness of these mechanics and how they choose to understand them that determines their immersion in character relationships.

Written by Sydney Glenn.

Works Cited

“R/Stardewvalley – Stardew Valley Unofficial Guide V4 – Villager Schedules Update! Now Includes Schedules for Every Villager, Every Day of Every Season (Download in Comments).” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/ea3z9o/stardew_valley_unofficial_guide_v4_villager/.