you need something to set you apart, and as a farmer a stewardship of the land would be just about the perfect thing. It’s something I pined for, but not something I wanted as desperately as conservation. What other options are there? As I mentioned above, the relationships could evolve further. But that is sheer capitalism, sheer commodity, and what’s more is most certainly what made a ostensibly peaceful and soothing gaming experience so intense for me. So, what’s the fix? Games do need some sense of progression and progress, and the build up of your farm is an obvious and frankly, immensely enjoyable, metric.
If you refuse to side with the Joja Corporation in town you’re able to revitalize the derelict Community Center, but again the way to do it is by moving good and products, and quite literally occasionally pouring cash into it. Stardew Valley claims to promote community and peaceful exploration of and self-discovery, but its only measure of progress is the amount of money you’ve raked in (again, you’re relationships with the townsfolk only evolve marginally before becoming static). So… what? Is it an argument for Mom & Pop shops?Ī quick google search revealed I was far from the first to strike upon these weird opposing viewpoints presented as one concentrated viewpoint.
You gave up your job at a soulless money-greedy company to start your own soulless money-greedy company. The dissonance begins as soon as your own farm begins to take off and you begin to really rake in the dough. Soulless, money-greedy corporations are immediately pitched as the villains of the game (and, to throw my own political/social spin in there: rightly so that the corporations are the villains – they are in real life). When you arrive in the Valley Joja is there too, but it’s made pretty clear you shouldn’t ally with them (though it is an option). I just had to earn money.īefore anyone goes and accuses me of putting my own political/social spin on a game that doesn’t necessarily have those things… it does! The game begins with your dying Grandpa bequeathing you his farm, prompting you to quit your job at the soulless Joja Company. I didn’t, in short, have to learn to live with nature. I could harvest as much as I wanted with no penalty, and there would always be enough wood to further expand my farm. Trees erupted from the ground no matter what I did, and would grow in just a few in game days. I also studiously collected the acorns that trees dropped and planted them elsewhere, to help boost the forest I was harvesting from.
When I started the game I was exceedingly careful in the trees I cut down, afraid if I decimated a forest too entirely I would no longer have wood to build structures later in the game. But most of all it bothered me how quickly trees grew back. It bothered me that my wife if anything lost personality when I married her. I was frustrated, for example, that people still greeted me as a newcomer to town even after I’d been there for a year interacting with them every day. When you get deep enough into a game, and when you love something enough, you begin to rework it a little, press on the minor points that could be improved. Growing my farm was so much fun and so neccessary I just couldn’t put it down, and even at work or in bed I was planning out in my head what crops I would next plant, what seeds I could afford, what buildings I would construct, and how much lumber I would need to build said buildings. In the first 72 hours I owned it I think I played for something approaching 30 hours. Stardew Valley, a game originally pitched to me as a soothing farming simulator, quickly took over my life. Only my first BoJack Horseman watch through as well as the first season of Jane the Virgin has caused me to so strongly physically react.
#Sunless sea soulless tv
I’ve written many times over about my rather addictive personality when it comes to TV and movies, but the video game Stardew Valley certainly holds a special place in the pantheon for me, in that I became so obsessed with it so quickly I began to dream about it while simultaneously becoming physically sick.
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