The Culture and Attitude of Stardew Valley

In the idealistic valley community of Pelican Town, interpersonal connection and respect and admiration for nature reign supreme. Stardew Valley is a game where the simple joys of getting to know the town’s colorful inhabitants and learning to symbiotically live in the rich natural environment are the main draws of the game. Early on, a central conflict of the game is whether or not the player chooses corporation or community. With the struggling economy of the small town, even the mayor wavers in his resolve on whether or not to give in to Joja Mart. The manner that Joja Mart is written displays definite anti-corporation attitudes, as Joja Mart is portrayed as irresponsible toward the natural environments of Stardew Valley. In terms of the mechanics further incentivizing the player against supporting Joja Mart, the alternative path is to renovate the community center with the support of forest sprites called Junimos. While the major community renovations are the same, if the player chooses the community center renovation, there are bonus rewards that the player gets that do not exist in the Joja Mart route.

Technicity in Stardew is displayed through its default control scheme, which favors experienced computer gamers with its use of WASD movement, mouse selection, and 0–9 hotkeys for the inventory bar. However, Stardew also allows players to customize their experience by allowing them to remap controls in settings to what is most comfortable to the gamer. However, that takes a certain amount of technical savviness to be able to navigate to the settings, as it is not on the main menu. The player must find the settings menu once they have begun the game. Technicity is also shown in how this game represents gender and sexuality. The player chooses what gender they wish to play as and can customize their character however they wish to look. The gender does not, however, limit romantic options to heterosexual relationships.

“Cyberculture, as a material reality and lived practice, provides the opportunities for the articulation of outsider identities and is also the means through which existing normative meanings around gender and ‘race’ are circulated.” (Kennedy, Helen and Jon Dovey. Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2006.)

The subversion of the current dominant technicity norm questions and challenges the white heterosexual male default, as it allows players of all races, genders, and sexualities to enjoy the game at their comfort.