Ok Im Never Modding Stardew Valley Again

Stardew Valley may expect similar a game near farming, only it'south really about people. And OK aye, also a lot of farming. In Stardew Valley, you can befriend and, in some cases, romance characters in the game's tiny rural community. You give them gifts, acquire more than most them over time, and experience special events with them. You can fifty-fifty go married, and all romanceable characters will give yous a shot whether you're a guy or a gal. It'south an intimate sort of game where you sink into a comfy quicksand of a schedule, where a bunch of fictional people become role of your day-to-24-hour interval existence, and you theirs.

It's been interesting, then, to spotter some players change these characters to be more in line with the feel they want from the game or their own perceptions of characters in their heads. Already, at that place are endless mods to make bachelors and bachelorettes sexier, handsomer, more anime-like or into unlike characters birthday.

But there's also been contend brewing around a certain form of character amending: ethnicity/background. Information technology began shortly after Stardew Valley launched, with one player releasing a modernistic that made Maru, a young adult female with a black father and white mother, look whiter. They ultimately took down the mod later a tempest of backlash, and and then backfire to said backlash. (Other players have since posted their ain takes on that modernistic, however.) The gist was that many people didn't get why somebody would desire to turn the game's only non-white matrimony option white. At the aforementioned time, though, other players were confused as to why making Maru lighter was a trouble, but modding Alex, the lone jock in a town of gentle dark-green thumbs, to be more Hispanic-looking wasn't.

For his function, Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone said some of these mods make him feel weird and occasionally uncomfortable, but he's not gonna stop people from making them. "It's difficult to really even say how I feel about that," he told me during a contempo interview. "I want people to dear Maru for who she is. That'southward how I feel, only if people experience differently I don't really know what I can practise about it."

At that place have likewise been mods pushing in the management of adding more character diversity to Stardew Valley. Notsnufffie's ongoing Diverse Stardew Valley project is i of the biggest, overhauling a handful of romanceable and not-romanceable characters. They have made mods that turn Haley and Emily black, Robin and Sebastian Southeast Asian, Harvey Sikh, and Leah Native American, amidst others. Once again, though, some players wanted to know why this mod is acceptable, but ones that change the game'south scant few non-white characters aren't. Notsnufffie weighed in with a pretty even-handed response:

Demetrius and Maru are the only people of colour in the game. Whitewashing them removes the very little representation the game has. White people don't demand more than representation. They tin pick up whatever game, see any movie, sentinel any tv prove and see characters like themselves. POC are and then often just in movies, tv testify, etc as small-scale characters or to run across a 'we have POC and therefor non racist' quota.

I'm making over some of the characters in Stardew Valley as POC because frankly I almost didn't purchase the game considering I was so disappointed with the lack of representation. You lot don't have to apply the modernistic, like I won't use the whitewashed Demetrius and Maru. But I know I wanted to play a game with a more than diverse cast of characters, and know in that location are people out there that might want to as well, so I thought I'd share.

I can definitely understand where they're coming from, and I'm glad they said it.

Information technology'south a tough situation with games like Stardew Valley, though, where a modest cast of characters is front-and-eye. Unlike in some other games, every NPC counts. They're all unique individuals with in-game lives and backstories. Changing their appearance — or even their stories — is bound to ruffle some feathers.

I feel similar the game's romance aspect also makes things tricky. I've seen some players say that they're simply more attracted to characters who await a certain way, whether that means they're black, white, Native American or any number of other backgrounds. Standards of bewitchery come from all over the identify, and while a lot of that is dictated by systems and communities that might favour whiteness, I don't think it'southward necessarily wrong to adopt some appearances over others — at to the lowest degree, on a personal level.

I feel similar it wouldn't hurt for Stardew Valley'southward cast to be a bit more diverse, but I also get why some people might non be in favour of that. I'm non sure if mods are a blanket solution to problems of representation — just a fraction of people utilize mods at all, later all — just I suppose this presents a sort of tenuous residual. Like modder Notsnufffie said, if yous don't want to use certain mods, you don't have to.

At the same time, though, I don't dear the idea that, if some people want to see themselves represented in games, they have got to scissure open up a modding API and exercise the work themselves. That'due south… not a great precedent to set. This sort of modding is still a relatively underexposed matter, though. Hither'southward hoping game creators are watching their communities and learning, untangling what all of this means and learning how they can improve their games for everybody.

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Source: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/03/stardew-valley-player-mods-game-to-make-characters-more-diverse/

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