Stardew Valley Has Changed How We Approach Labour In Video Games
It’s fascinating how we gravitate towards games about work. I’m not talking about simulators that recreate real-world professions, but vibrant and experimental efforts where the act of toiling away in exchange for results is built into their very design.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is all about creating our perfect island paradise, ensuring we check in every day to gather resources and play the economy while also saying hello to residents who rely on our presence to keep on trucking. Stardew Valley focuses entirely on making a living and establishing relationships, which arguably means more than getting away from the hustle and bustle of city life that acts as the game’s conceit. I want to raid dungeons in search of loot and grow the largest pumpkin in existence that I can sell for oodles of previous gold. I wanna be rich, a fantasy that real life is yet to let me experience.
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Even Cult of the Lamb, an indie hit that is still capturing the imagination of millions, is centred around a gameplay loop of performing the same tasks over and over to build your reputation and become a stronger and more prosperous deity. We are in it for the grind, but the fact that labour is gamified in such an engaging way means the core idea of tackling it outside our usual work lives is no big deal at all. If anything, we actively embrace and want to see more of it in the games we play.
We’re noticing this trend more and more, and while it’s been the case for decades, Stardew Valley changed everything.
Harvest Moon, Minecraft, and Animal Crossing existed before the arrival of ConcernedApe’s masterpiece, but Stardew Valley would modernise the formula and nail a cadence of
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