Stardew Valley: My Happy Place

Last time I talked about the video game “Papers, Please” and how it can make you understand the path to dehumanizing totalitarianism. That was a bit heavy. This time I want to talk about a game that is on the short list of games that I consider my happy place, Stardew Valley.

Every Egg Festival I stick my character’s head into the Bunny cut out. It is kind of a tradition now.

On its surface, the only goal in Stardew Valley is to grow crops, raise animals, sell what you make and expand your farm. Starting out, your farm needs a lot of work. Clearing it feels rewarding as you slowly create more farmable land, then paths around the property, and locations for barns and chicken coops where you raise livestock. Yet you can only do so much in a day do to time and energy. So you can’t run around endlessly raising cash (like in Animal Crossing).

Meanwhile you are befriending the townspeople and learning their stories and concerns. Many, like the local business owner that barely has time for his family because a Wal-Mart like mega store opened nearby, express similar thoughts to what you probably hear in real life. There are overprotective parents, hidden loves, and family dramas. While this unfolds, you may grow a relationship with a towns person, marry, and even raise a child with them. (In an upcoming release you can even be called out if you date around too much!)

Shane is slow to warm over, but shows signs of depression and not fitting in.

As you grow your farm, family, and town you are awarded with the most heart warming cut scenes. Many of these, like playing a co-op game with Abigail or watching the Moonlight Jellies sail past are deeply memorable to me. I am often delighted when a scene starts as I go about my day, looking for the little tender revelation of one of the character’s lives.

There is magic in Stardew Valley. A wholesomeness and warmth that is refreshing and revitalizing. This is a game that reminds me that life, much like the farm, may need a lot of tending, but what you put into it pays back in dividends.

Penny is a terrible cook, but a great teacher and cares for her alcoholic mother in their trailer home.

Papers Please: A Window into Dehumanization

Video games have always been a part of my life. Occasionally these games will stick with me after I finished them or moved on. Few have stuck with me like the bleak bureaucracy of “Papers, Please”. In Papers, Please you play a man living in the fictional communist nation of Astotzka with his extended family. The premise is that you won a government lottery for the coveted job of border control officer. You must review the documents for entering the country and determine with the goal of allowing those in with the proper paperwork and denying all others. It feels like a simple and perhaps an even boring process, but the trick is that the game is playing you.

Here is where the bulk of the game is played

The game play almost exclusively is in the border control booth where you work. During your working time you have a view of the outside. Despite taking up a third of the screen, the only thing you can do in that area is summon the next person into your booth from the never ending line of people. In the booth proper you have a rule book, a voice recorder (used for interrogating people), and your stampers “APPROVED” and “DECLINED” to determine the fate of the person seeking entry to Astotzka.

A typical interview goes along these lines. Person walks in and hands you a passport and other documents. You need to review these to make sure they reflect the right names, dates, countries, and other details. If their paperwork is in order you stamp “APPROVED” in their passport and if not you stamp “DECLINED”. Then you return all their documents and they depart. When you find “Discrepancies” you can question the person about it, or just reject them outright. You’ll discover it is usually faster to do the later.

When your workday is done it is time to get paid. If you worked hard and processed enough paperwork then you will have money for rent, food, and heat. If you didn’t you may need to choose where the money goes. This is where your family comes in. They are never seen, they are just status indicators on the side of the screen, OK or not. If you can’t afford food and heat they will start to become sick and die.

Things are not going well

You virtually sit in this booth and look up at the never ending line every 10-30 seconds to summon the next person, processing as many of these people as you can so your family can eat. If you make mistakes your get fined. It feels stressful, mundane, numbing and that is when they hit you. The people ask to defect through you. They ask to allow their loved ones in without the proper paperwork. They ask you to overlook a paperwork irregularity. Do you? What about when that exception can result in something worse than a fine?

This was not a good day.

The trick with Papers, Please is that it shows you how a bureaucracy can force harsher treatment for the “greater good” and how these rules can force you, the player, to dehumanize others for the sake of your family and your job. This is why it sticks with me the way it makes me forget empathy and instead red stamp passports and watch these virtual people leave disheartened. Yet this is something all too familiar in our modern society through the DMV, TSA security screening at airports, or even phone support. People numbed by the bureaucracy and the endless lines of people they are forced to process. What Papers, Please reminds me is that the person trying to do their job isn’t the problem, it is the bureaucracy and how their harsh rules, unquestioned, came into being.

I’ll leave you with this adaptation of Papers, Please. Glory to Astotzka.