Stardew Valley is a farming simulator that raged the steam last year. However, behind its unique appearance, Stardew Valley shares the same core mechanic with other life simulator games. In this blog post, I am going to demonstrate through multiple details in the game that Stardew Valley takes on a capitalist mode of production. By alienating characters from their products, the monetary system in Stardew Valley creates a never-ending cycle of accumulating money. Then I will propose possible modifications of the game mechanic that could possibly make it less capitalistic.
Like many other life simulator games, Stardew Valley tells a story of escape: an escape from the repetitive or boring life. In the first few days of playing the game, I really enjoyed the game itself by planting new vegetables, waiting until they are ripe, and greeting townspeople. The fact that I am getting a great sense of satisfaction and fulfillment from doing all sorts of work in the farm perfectly demonstrates Marx’s point that performing productive labor is the “species-being” (A word crafted by Marx in his Capital meaning the pinnacle of human nature) of humans.
However, after learning about how the monetary system in the game works, I realize that this small town is definitely taking on a capitalist mode of production. To fully appreciate the significance of the Capitalist mode of production, it is necessary to understand what mode of production means in the first place. Generally speaking, the mode of production is the way in which a society organizes to make its necessary products. In the Capitalist society, products are made by a high division of labor, and products are distributed through exchange on the market, where every product presents itself as a piece of the commodity. Clear evidence for the capitalist mode of production in the game is the mechanic that you only have to put your products inside the box in your farm, and they will be exchanged in the market and become money in your account. According to Marx, products are exchanged in the markets in the form of commodities in the capitalist mode of production. Under the capitalist mode of production, the large exchange of commodities conceals the natural qualitative form of labor and its products. It forces labor and its products to take on the universal form of homogeneous human labor. In this process, private labor is hidden behind the form of commodities. Therefore, Marx concludes that for the producers of products, “the social relations between their private labors appear as what they are, i.e., they do not appear as direct social relations between persons in their work, but rather as material relations between persons and social relations between things.”
By thus deforming social relations, the Capitalist mode of production assumes the dominant place over people. Everyone in the Capitalist society lives under the complex network of commodities and loses the domination of his own labor.
Another few days into the game, most players would enter a loop: making money, increasing the productivity of the farm, and then ending up with more money. This is precisely the Money-Commodity-Money (M-C-M) cycle in Marxist theory. At this moment, the initial satisfaction of growing and harvesting crops has almost disappeared and the dominant satisfaction now comes from getting more and more money and witnessing the upgrade of the farm. This is when your labor is not satisfying the need itself, but something external to it. As time goes by, this cheap thrill will quickly fade, and then you reach a point where you discover that this alternate life in the Pelican town is meaningless.
How to make the game less capitalistic? That is the question I have been thinking about ever since I lost interest in accumulating money. The most crucial change should be about its current monetary system which determines the capitalist mode of production for the game. My preliminary thought is that instead of directly exchanging the products for money, they should be exchanged personally around the town. Also, the implied goal of the game should not be to maximize the profit of your farm, but to make the whole town prosper. This would mean that there will be no private farm, and the products will be allocated around the town according to each townspeople’s need. In order for this mod to work, it is crucial that the relationship between the character and townspeople should be deepened so that the need-based principle could be more willingly practiced.
Of course, this could be a bad practice in terms of business: in a society where capitalist mode of production and thoughts are deeply rooted, we are imprinted with the capitalist mode of thinking. In these life simulator games; many people want to feel a sense of self-entrepreneurships which they could not have in their real life. They become a capitalist landowner in escape of being a screw in capitalist society. However, in both the real and virtual world, they are still in the cage of capitalism.
— By Bingqi Wang
