Oakie Robb sits on their bed, computer on their lap. As time goes on, they curl up closer and closer to the screen, the light from it washing over their face. In the game, they wear overalls and sport a green mullet; on their bed, their hair is blue and growing out from a pandemic buzz cut. Their hoodie says, “I love myself and I hate police.” Starting this save file in-game began as an experiment of sorts, to see how it felt. Now it’s their most often played.
Two months ago, Oakie waffled back and forth with the idea of a new name. A year or so before that, they came out as nonbinary and began using they/them pronouns. That decision to come out, while not easy to make, didn’t feel quite as daunting as picking a new name and asking other people to use it. They liked the feel of “Oakie” in their mouth, they liked the way it felt when their friends said it on the phone, but they worried too. “I often feel torn between wanting to choose a name for myself, for the me I’ve grown into, and wanting to hold on to the name I was given and the history it holds,” they wrote in a private Instagram post asking people to start using the name Oakie when referring to them.
That post was a bit of a trial run, an experiment to see how they felt. But their actual feelings were obscured by the incessant anxiety over what other people would think about the change. After making the post, they only got more worried they would miss their old name, that they had acted impulsively and would annoy people by changing names around again. What helped them finally start to feel comfortable and happy? An overly pixelated, open-ended video game: Stardew Valley.
The first thing the game has players do is walk around the little town they live in and say hello to everyone who lives there. So Oakie the Person sat in front of the computer making Oakie the Character run around in-game and find all the townsfolk. They noticed it right away: Here, in the town of Stardew Valley, no one stumbled on their name or raised an eyebrow at their gender expression. They had nothing to be worried about, nothing to distract them from how good it felt that everyone called Oakie by the name they chose, every time. It didn’t only feel good; it felt right. By creating an avatar for themself—a character who has always been Oakie, will always be Oakie—they started to experience real acceptance first, and then elation. A version of gender euphoria by way of a video game.
Making Up for the PresentStardew Valley fits into a section of games that includes farming sims, Animal Crossing, and maybe even The Sims. Open-world games in which the objective, essentially, is to live a happy little life in a little town and build a little community full of people who like you. The game begins with the player working for a soulless corporation, complete with skeletons rotting on desks. It’s no life to live, but thankfully, when your grandfather dies, he bequeaths the family farm to you. Which is how players land in a quaint little town, sitting on the ocean, populated with interesting characters.
There is an aspect to Stardew Valley that brings to mind—almost in spite of itself, as the thing meant to motivate players is a kind of skewed capitalism—cooperative communities. If players talk to the NPCs every day, giving them the things they might want or need to get by, they become the players’ friends, and they regularly return the generosity with their own gifts, recipes, and construction blueprints. Players can date multiple NPCs of multiple genders at the same time in a seemingly non-monogamous way, which means, essentially, everyone living in Stardew Valley is queer and polyamorous. Most of the NPCs have a special skill that they will share with you if you become their friend, and which they can even teach you to do yourself, like sewing or growing tea leaves.
Similarly, inside these games lie ideas that layer with the queer utopia posited in José Esteban Muñoz’s seminal queer text, Cruising Utopia. A perfect peacefulness that’s way too good to exist.
