Stardew Valley Overview
Stardew Valley is a simulation role-playing, farming sim in which you inherit your grandfather's old farm and are tasked with fixing it up. You start off with a small farmhouse and a large front garden that is overrun by weeds and trees. Once you manage to clear away the overgrowth from the farm, you’re able to start planting some crops and raising livestock. Since you’re new to town, it would also be a good idea for you to familiarize yourself with the area. So, you decide to explore Pelican Town. Through your meeting of the town residents, you start to explore the area, simultaneously making progress on your farm, pulling weeds, chopping trees, and planting parsnips. You also decide to go fishing, mine in the caves, craft items, cook food, and even find love through dating one of the NPCs (non-playable characters). As you continue to explore the land, you come across an abandoned Community Center where you do quest to restore the community!
Executive SummaryOver the course of roughly 3.5 months spanning from September to December of this year, our team was tasked with studying a virtual field of interest to learn more about a given topic and the users who interact with it. Our team chose to complete our study on the popular farming-sim game, Stardew Valley, with our main field of interest being the official Stardew Valley Reddit page, r/Stardew Valley. Our team consisted of 3 team members total which were me, Alaina Chapple, and Erinn McKine. Some of us have had a lot of experience playing the game, while others are hoping to learn more about the game through this experience.
This ethnographic report will set out to explain our research process throughout the semester, as we observed interactions, interviewed participants, and discovered answers to our main research question of, “'What does the game Stardew Valley mean to you?” . Our cohering metaphor that my team came up with is "Stardew valley as a stress reliver." Our team had research methods consisted of:
Team size: 3 members Approach: Virtual applied ethnography Duration: 3 1/2 months |
Team Members
Methodology
Our team conducted a virtual applied ethnography for Stardew Valley's reddit page. It is a research based approach were I explored the different social interactions that occurred in the virtual environment. The interactions can take place on the internet in different forms such as chat rooms and discussion forums. A virtual ethnographer builds on principles that already exist for research that needs the researcher in the setting for a long period of time to understand culture and gain depth. An ethnographer usually observes ongoing social occurrences in the specific field site by interacting with inhabitants to learn their way of living. This semester, we were assigned to do a virtual ethnographer of a virtual space which led to research being conducted on Stardew Valley. My team members and I got consent from the moderators of the forum to let us observe. On the side of the reddit's home page, there was a list of moderators for us to get in contact with. After we received consent, we were ready to begin our observations and fieldwork.
Fieldwork
Observation
During the observation stage, each team member was tasked with completing a journal which consisted of jottings and field notes with over the course of 12+ observation hours to understand some of the social interactions that take place between Stardew Valley players. We decided to use the Stardew Valley Reddit community as the main source of our observations. I did a total of 12 hours for my journal ,and I had a total of 15 field notes. My journal ended up being a total of 32 pages. I first gave the date and the length of the time at the top for each observation. I then gave a summary of the interactions I saw on the reddit post. I listed out my jottings in bulletin points and named peoples usernames and their interactions with one another.
I gave an overview in a SPEKNA form which was very specific and detailed explaining the setting, participants, ends, keys , norms that I noticed, and what my analysis was of the observation. While I was observing I noticed a lot of the same patterns ,and most of my sessions had a similar analysis. Users who posted wanted to show that there are many things to do in-game that can bond people together in real life. They also help and uplift one another on the forum a lot even with serious real life issues. I learned a lot from observing, like using with different personalities and opinions came together to unify and bond over several elements in the game. The reddit forum was and is extremely active until this day consisting the same patterns as I noticed during my observation period.
I gave an overview in a SPEKNA form which was very specific and detailed explaining the setting, participants, ends, keys , norms that I noticed, and what my analysis was of the observation. While I was observing I noticed a lot of the same patterns ,and most of my sessions had a similar analysis. Users who posted wanted to show that there are many things to do in-game that can bond people together in real life. They also help and uplift one another on the forum a lot even with serious real life issues. I learned a lot from observing, like using with different personalities and opinions came together to unify and bond over several elements in the game. The reddit forum was and is extremely active until this day consisting the same patterns as I noticed during my observation period.
Interviewing
During the interview phase, our team came up with an early interview introduction script, game-specific interview questions, and Reddit-specific interview questions. The first task our team did, was create an early interview introduction script. Our goal with this script was to make sure that our interview participants felt comfortable answering our questions, as well as to explain to them that we were here to gain more insight on Stardew Valley users who interact through the Reddit page, r/StardewValley. Our other goal was to try and find an answer to the question of, “What does the game Stardew Valley mean to you?”. Our team ended up interviewing four participants that we found on the official Stardew Valley Reddit page, and we used Discord voice call and video chat to conduct our interviews with each participant.
I was the moderator for 1 out of the 4 interviews which were conducted. The other 3 times I took detailed notes of what the interviewee was saying. After the interview finished we were able to put all of our notes conducted on the Miro board and share our opinions. I noticed the same patterns from the interviews that I did when observing the reddit page. Dozens of people use Stardew Valley as a stress reliver and to help improve their mental heath. I interviewed our third participant named Crystal. I was in my bedroom laying down ,and my team members and I used discord to call. The participant was trying to explain what stardew valley meant to her by explaining how she interacted with the game, and the tone was very fun and playful. It was ordinary for her to be playful and happy especially since there was an icebreaker in the beginning to get to know the participant before starting the interview ,and that we bonded over common interest in the game. I came to analysis that Crystal plays Stardew Valley as a stress reliever ,and it is very easy going and calming for her.
I was the moderator for 1 out of the 4 interviews which were conducted. The other 3 times I took detailed notes of what the interviewee was saying. After the interview finished we were able to put all of our notes conducted on the Miro board and share our opinions. I noticed the same patterns from the interviews that I did when observing the reddit page. Dozens of people use Stardew Valley as a stress reliver and to help improve their mental heath. I interviewed our third participant named Crystal. I was in my bedroom laying down ,and my team members and I used discord to call. The participant was trying to explain what stardew valley meant to her by explaining how she interacted with the game, and the tone was very fun and playful. It was ordinary for her to be playful and happy especially since there was an icebreaker in the beginning to get to know the participant before starting the interview ,and that we bonded over common interest in the game. I came to analysis that Crystal plays Stardew Valley as a stress reliever ,and it is very easy going and calming for her.
Analysis
When our fieldwork was over, my team and I were able to go on Miro and gather what we observed after completing the observations and interviews. We had our conceptually ordered matrices for interviews and another one separately for our observations on reddit. We were able to do an analysis after we collected our data. We came up with dozens of sticky notes to find the commonalities in behaviors that we noticed. I jotted down my sticky notes in hot pink at the bottom of the patterns templet. We were then able to come up with a cohering metaphor from noticing all of the similar patterns that users had. Metaphors are a fundamental way to determine how people organize and understand the world. As ethnographers we can turn to a social theory in order for us to decrease and wrap up our data gathered.
There were major important patterns that my team discovered based on what the users talked about. Users stated that Stardew Valley helped them find love connections, that it helped them relax, it eased their anxiety, and made them feel apart of a community. We focused on the main information surrounding our research question which was used to reduce our fieldwork. Based on the results from all of our observations, we found out which pattern was the most common and got a clear answer of how Stardew Valley really meant to users. In the end, we clearly saw that Stardew Valley is a stress reliver.
There were major important patterns that my team discovered based on what the users talked about. Users stated that Stardew Valley helped them find love connections, that it helped them relax, it eased their anxiety, and made them feel apart of a community. We focused on the main information surrounding our research question which was used to reduce our fieldwork. Based on the results from all of our observations, we found out which pattern was the most common and got a clear answer of how Stardew Valley really meant to users. In the end, we clearly saw that Stardew Valley is a stress reliver.
Challenges
There were only a few challenges encountered. When on the reddit forum we tried very hard to get a response from admins to gain consent in order to observe the forum. It took the admins an extremely long time to respond back. I personally was frustrated ,and I even messaged a Discord admin and got a response right away. It made me almost change setting of the field that my team was going to observe in. Also, when we did gain consent most of the posts made by our team received no replies, which was a frustrating experience. However, we did manage to find 3 participants after making several posts, despite the challenge of recruiting Stardew Valley players through the online forum. I dealt with a troll who didn't take my post seriously and thought it would be funny to joke on. However, my team was successful in the end as we got our 4 interviewees.
Conclusion
After spending time observing, interviewing, and researching Stardew Valley and the Stardew Valley Reddit page, our team has learned a lot about its users. Since ethnography is the study of people and their unique customs and cultures, we’ve been able to find many answers to our research question of, “What does the game Stardew Valley mean to you?” from the users that we’ve observed and interviewed. We also came up with an excellent cohering metaphor because Stardew Valley is a stress reliver.