COOPER BOSWELL (HE/HIM)
DESIGN SOPHOMORE | Des 3515 Design Research Studio 1
The Social Economies of Life Simulation is a research project that aims to analyze the different methods of simulating human social interaction in order to better understand our lived reality. Life simulation games aren’t a novel idea (Consider Monopoly of Life), but with the advent of video games came an opportunity to simulate life like never before, and popularity of the genre skyrocketed. Research began to answer the question of why we want to simulate our lives, which led to findings of potential personal fulfillment, social need in an ever-digitizing world, and surprisingly radical interpretations of sociopolitical and economic structures.
Two blanket statements: human interaction is complex, and (almost) everything presented to the player in a video game is intentional. When designing a game that simulates life,every single aspect of life that is included—or excluded—must be consciously chosen. The ways we design our simulated realities and how we choose to exist within them may be able to tell us something about how we live our real, unsimulated lives.
My research began in a very formal and prototypical way, with scholarly articles and critical analyses abounding. But Marxist analysis of Stardew Valley and the framing of Animal Crossing through the lens of Japanese pastoral idealism began to bore me, and my mind wandered further from the actual prompt of "play," so the research pivoted in a much more fun direction. Using Stardew Valley as a litmus test also means that the game needs be played for (optimally) over 10 hours with multiple people, so it was I who bravely and selflessly booted up a new game with my friends and chronicled the goings-on of our farm.
The resulting graph of our 39 day playthrough is markedly unscientific and vibes-based, but certain benchmarks (such as leveling up in a skill or any other noteworthy efforts performed by a player that I scribbled in my notebook between days) influenced the final visualization. Points of note include: day 15, when Binging spent over $30,000 on strawberry seeds and we were all forced to pass out in the fields planting and watering them; days 23 and 27, when the aforementioned berries were ready for harvest; and day 28, when the main farmer changed with the seasons and Binging's labor-leisure ratio rapidly petered out. It is also of note that I (Pooby) was the only player that made any attempt at in-game romance or affection to NPC characters, with my friends choosing to spend their time maxing their levels and fishing all day. Stardew Valley in a way behaved as a 16-bit, bucolic mirror held up to my farmhands and I, reflecting our approaches to life and each other.
