All Games Are Going Somewhere or Cleaning Something
Title is a reference to a recent Semi-Ramblomatic video by Yahtzee.
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View original on piefed.zipTitle is a reference to a recent Semi-Ramblomatic video by Yahtzee.
130 replies
Can't say I've actually seen anyone complaining about Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing for those reasons, seems like everyone loves Stardew, and AC complaints are just about nintendo's content pipeline being sparse on release.
That said, if people are complaining about "doing tasks" in Stardew and AC, I'd imagine that it's because it's mostly things you can do IRL. I can decorate my place or plant flowers or talk to other people in real life. I can't go kill bad guys in real life. In a way casual cozy lifesim games make me feel self-conscious, that instead of improving my virtual life, I could instead be doing this same stuff for my real life. Games that are more detached from real life don't seem as likely to trigger this guilt.
Also I'm fully expecting someone to respond that owning a house/etc is a fantasy, which is the fantastical appeal of Stardew/AC.
Just this week I was with friends, many genders, all of us play Stardew Valley and we all joked and lamented about how task oriented it is, like a list of daily chores. It is ok to acknowledge it and also enjoy it.
Mind you, doing things you could do in real life might actually be a major part of the appeal.
Sure, in real life I could grow quality potatoes or power wash a house or drive a truck to a city that's 400 kilometers away. And I'd get a little bit of dopamine from a job well done – after hours, days, or even months of work. Plus what's needed to acquire the tools/land/licence necessary to do it in the first place.
Or I play Euro Wash Farm Valley Simulator 2026 and finish the job within half an hour of gameplay that's just challenging enough for me to feel that I actually did something. While possibly interacting with a cast of charming and/or interesting people along the way.
There's a reason why job simulators are such a popular genre. They take the interesting bits from a job, drop the tedious parts, and greatly accelerate the whole affair. They're like working in real life but better.
Except Desert Bus, of course. That one very deliberately isn't.
I'll give you one then. My kids love Animal Crossing. It bores me to tears. There's no real objective and I just don't get it. I've got no problem with them playing it, the game is harmless, but I just can't get into it.
To play devil's advocate, for those types I suppose it's that there's active resistance to you accomplishing the (violent) task, as opposed to more relaxed games where that may not be the case. And if you want your tasks to task you, that's fine, but like, let other people enjoy what they like, it doesn't affect you whatsoever.
That's not how social insecurity works. Every waking moment should be spent worrying about how other people percieve you, then taking actions on that to prove to them that you're fine, even though they dgaf or even notice you. You can't be the main character if you don't.
A comment that has nuance and doesn't pointlessly segregate people for ragebait or teenager tier cliquing? Get tf off this site with that
No, I have literally never heard men criticize Animal Crossing or Star Dew Valley for any reason, really. But I guess they do in your head while you shower.
It's some capital G Gamer take from the same people hating on walking sims, has been a while since I've seen that though. Loud fringe idiots, as usual.
Fuck the generalization but I highly suspect it's mostly just a tumblr thing/kinda general meme to lead with will...
This is another fallacy men vs women BS attention seeking, ragebait post
It's not men vs women
It's people who only play COD and FIFA on consoles vs more involved and open-minded gamers
Sex has nothing to do with this but making it about sex is more headline-worthy...
I have heard a lot of men say that it's boring/pointless (but shoot thing with gun isn't)
I mean, they're entitled to that opinion. If you said an FPS was boring because it's just shooting people, I wouldn't be mad, they're entitled to that opinion too. Although I think you could make a pretty objective argument that a game like Call of Duty is at the very least more stimulating than a game like stardew valley.
I assure you it's not. You absolutely can lock in on some stardew.
that's just telling on yourself.
just admit you cultivated a healthy group of men in your life.
How DARE you!
You need to get out more.
There are a lot of people I know who think I am a wuss for playing games that don't involve shooting people and killing people and whacking people over the head with pipes.
I tell them I run a shop in a shopping centre and they go "that's not gaming"
tOuCh GrAsS in a dumb video game argument on a forum, gj
I didn't mean literally get out more. I run a virtual shopping centre - does it sound like I spend a lot of time outdoors?
I know some children who might think like that.
I don't know any men who think like that.
"I haven't seen the thing so clearly it doesn't exist"
The original posts implies a large majority is doing a thing. The reply isn't saying "nobody is doing this" it's saying "it's not nearly as common as they are implying". In which case "I haven't seen it so it's not that common" is valid.
Where exactly does it imply majority?
"ever notice how men criticize games like..." Strongly implies this is a common behavior from men, instead of wording it "ever notice how some people criticize games like...'
So the answer is "nowhere"
Your lack of reading comprehension is not my problem
Anything's possible when you make shit up kiddo
People writing memes and social media posts do not qualify with statements like "a statistically significant number of beavers" when talking about beavers. That is wordy and pointless. We can form basic expectations that the people we interact with don't make assumptions about 100.00% of any given population.
okay, I'll sacrifice myself for this, here's my opinion:
I haven't been able to get into Stardew, it just feels like there isn't much to do that requires thought. it's run here, buy a thing, decide where you want to go, buy that thing, maybe do a cave for a bit of something interesting but not too much of that
idk, just didn't have enough autonomy or choice, for me? and I wasn't invested in the story at all. seems like a cute mindless game that's good for relaxing, when you don't want to mentally tax yourself because you're gaming to relax. same goes for animal crossing, though I only watched it, never played it. animal crossing seemed like there was more thought involved, actually, as you had more control over stuff. less guided.
so now take those words and twist it into criticism instead of statements about personal preference, I guess, and you've got the source of the OP's comment
SDV is all autonomy and choice. You personally might not enjoy the choices you have available, but the game does not force you in any direction.
Choices you have:
What crops to purchase
How many to purchase
Where you plant them
Do you want to build a bunch of sprinklers
At what quality of sprinklers do you want to start using them
When to upgrade your tools
Do you want to go foraging Do you want to go fishing
Do you want to go increase friendship levels with villagers
Are you focusing on any specific villagers
Do you want to do this random quest
Community center or joja mart
Do you want to go to the mine today
Progress deeper into the mind or stay at levels you've explored for the resources they have
What farm buildings to purchase
When to purchase them
Sell this crop or use it as an ingredient
Which of the 20 perks do you want
What is your goal for this specific day
What is your goal for this specific season
Yes, it's a game that doesn't require a lot of focus but that doesn't mean it's mindless (it's not a clicker) or that it lacks autonomy. There's more autonomy in SDV than there is in say Expedition 33 where your choices are: Kill the paintress (not optional), your character build, and do you go to this side area now or come back later?
The take i remember (just one i read on the internet) for animal crossing was that it was too close to home (ie real life) for the real poster. first thing that happens is you get saddled with a huge mortgage/ loan that you have to pay off by doing repetitive tasks, etc, thats its essentialy a participating in capitalism sim, which matches most people's real life. I think the conclusion was
'instead of playing the game and working off my in game debt, I felt like I should be finding a moderately enjoyable craft/hobby that I can monetize as a side hustle to pay off my IRL debt, like student loans. '
Stardew is pretty devoid of meaningful choice because it's devoid of meaningful challenge. Other games in the genre, like Harvest Moon 64 or Rune Factory 4 (no particular reason for those examples, they're just my favorites in the genre) are defined by taxing time limits, complicated schedules to remember, and so on. Rune Factory 4 even has very challenging dungeons which reward understanding the crafting system and the various skills.
In this week's episode of "tumblr makes up a man to be mad at".
Apparently, it's
...
The title is. The post is just some random thing I saw and tossed into my fodder cart to haul back and feed to lemmy. I agree with the guy above you. However comparing red dead redemption to barbie's horse adventure amused me so here we are.
I'm not going back through the ZP archives to find it but Yahtzee once likened FPS to point-and-click games where the only command is "use gun on man"
It was his review of the orange box, specifically TF2, even more specifically his review of the sniper.
It's a funny joke I wish a better person made.
What's wrong with Croshaw?
He doesn’t use any punctuation.
He does now that he's gone fully ramblomatic.
He's less a reviewer and more a comedian, but he only has one bit. Once you know the bit, it stops being funny. It's been years since I stopped watching him, but I remember him being way too concerned with a game's fanbase being annoying when deciding on the review.
He's a good egg, just because you don't like some of his jokes shouldn't mean you disparage him as a person. Plus I think this view is extremely uncharitable. He's an experienced game designer himself and has a lot of insight underneath the humor.
What are you talking about? I never said anything like that.
You literally called him a bad person.
No I didn't. I said I wish it was made by a better person. Not a bad person.
You just defaulted to thinking I could only have one of two extreme opinions. Layoff, it's not that important.
I guess I can see that if his humor doesn't appeal to you, but he has plenty of other content where he talks about game mechanics and whatever without trying to put in jokes
Factorio.
You just do tasks to do more tasks.
Fix a bottleneck here, fix one there. Bam 10 hours gone.
Ok lets progress. Let's make sth. new, ok what do I need for that thing.
This, this and that and this and that. Let me quickly setup a production line for that.
Bam 20 hours gone.
All I am doing is being a slave of the factory
Lies. There is no such thing as fixing the bottleneck. It's only moving it somewhere else.
This is true... You widen the bottleneck and now another neck has emerged. The real enemy is infinite expansion.
I feel like there's a lesson about capitalism here 🙃
Factorio is what happens when we shoot rich people to mars.
There is only 1 task in Factorio, the factory mus grow.
Task 2 is killing trees
The factory must grow.
Stardew Valley lets me feel like that I have a satisfying job, when real corporations would abuse and discard me at their convenience. It is quite the power fantasy, being a productive member of humanity without having to sacrifice myself.
Receive the full value of your labor? It's absolutely criminal.
Tbf you sell stuff via the box which is presumably skimmed for some amount of profit (same in most games in the genre) so it's not quite a socialist utopia. Some of them are damn close though.
Unless you started with enough capital to also receive the full value of other people's labor.
Yeah, that’s how I played with Barbies as a kid, of course that’s what I want in a video game as well. Who doesn’t want to dress up their cowboy before going bang bang?
I would also want to dress them up for such a special occasion!
Somewhere (reddit I think?) there is a post about barbies, violent stuff and the death pit.
You should really look it up, because it's hilarious. And a little disturbing. But mostly hilarious.
I've just seen this a few minutes ago on my lemmy feed :)
https://lemmy.world/post/42189208
Wait it's your post :D
Plant 28 apple trees (world of Warcraft) 🤑🤑🤑
Plant 28 apple trees (stardew valley) 😴😴😴
Plant 28 apple trees (real life) 😱😱😱
Why even make this about gender at all?
It's kind of insulting to men who like games like stardew valley and animal crossing. What, are we not man enough because we don't fill our free time with simulated blood and gore?
They don't say all men don't appreciate SDV/AC (the tumblr user says he's a guy). But it's basically only men that criticize cozy games.
I think he was ragebaiting tbh
Imagine the same phrasing used to describe something "some" women do...
"Ever notice how women..."
Notice how it's suddenly not okay? So what's different about it when it's phrased the same way about "men"?
Eh, depends on the subject matter. Some things definitely have trends that divided down gender lines, and it's not sexist to point this out. Men trend towards violence, women trend towards relational and social dynamics. The raw numbers back this up, but there are exceptions (obviously).
Noticing trends is one thing, overgeneralizing is another matter. This is an overgeneralization and it's harmful because it reinforces traits of toxic masculinity. "If you're not violent then you're effeminate" is not the message we should be sending.
This isn't incorrect. I just tend to disassociate when I see blanket statements about men because I usually don't fit the description.
It's good to be vigilant about this stuff but I'm pretty sure this tumblr user is mostly shitposting, and it's clearly against toxic masculinity. I mean the distilled message of the post is "we are all the same".
Excusing overgeneralizations when they're applied to men? That's typical...
I guarantee you would feel different if someone was overgeneralizing about women. Do they just need to grow thicker skin, or is it only men who are supposed to be stoics?
Like I said above, I agree with you. A similar statement about women would be correctly seen as mysogyny. I'm just stating that it isn't any more egregious than gestures broadly
It's double standards
Usually whenever I call out double standards in gender stereotypes, I get some pseudo-feminist responding with something to the effect of "lol chud red pilled 'not all men!' lmao. Historical oppression! Suffragettes! Treating men with basic dignity is patriarchy! Demanding a bare minimum of respect is chauvinism!"
and quite frankly it really gets old...
Missed opportunity to mention that Doom Guy loves playing Animal Crossing, and Isabelle loves playing Doom and they're best friends.
Shotgun Isabelle is my favorite villager. Thanks to her I always know my island will be free of demons in my abscence.
Your friends need you. They always need you.
They never stop. They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you. You will be worse.
Rip and tear, until it is done.
https://youtu.be/U4lz8MN6MQA
I mean, Factorio is just work disguised as a video game. Doesn't make it any less fun. It's work that I choose to do rather than work that I have to do.
I describe it as "this is how I wish my job was"
I do literally program factories
So other than lack physical exertion I suspect the appeal of job simulators over actual jobs is.
Interviewing would be so much easier if it was simply, we need X skill, if you have X skill then do X task and we will give you money.
Yup, it's both of those for me. I've had a great job in the past, but my last few (including currently) have just been soul sucking
At least in the case of Factorio, it's work that has an extremely high barrier to entry to the point of being a pipe dream for a lot of people.
this is why I choose not to get into it, and why I struggle with Minecraft sometimes. it just uses the same area of my brain that work does.
I find it very difficult to just sit back and do simple tasks in Minecraft, instead of figuring out what to build next and all the parameters for that.
It's talking about skill based games vs "casual" games. I LOVE Stardew Valley, but I'm not going to pretend it takes a lot of skill.
Nah, pressing →→→BB 20 times to water plants every day in stardew valley is actually the same as nailing an aerial in rocket league because 'they're both tasks.' The only difference between games is the aesthetics and you're a worse person if you like the game with the aesthetics of warfare more than the one about homesteading.
Truly a braindead take but 'haha gamer bros mad.'
Just yet another rage bait post by bots that are coming in.
And the original post is just misandry rage bait on top of it, lol men violent
Are you... calling me a bot??
I saw a random post from tumblr and went "Ah okay this will go in the tumblr community."
I'm NOT the OP from Tumblr though if that's what you were implying instead?
Do you get off on cucking yourself or something? Literally no one has said this.
That fishing minigame tho...
Enchanted auto hook and one hook, one cork means I can practically leave the room
Maybe this hypothtical man gamer meant the tasks in some games feel more like chores
That's me with Graveyard Keeper, started to play it to pass the time at a friend's, and learnt to hate it, the game's day-night cycle is so short it kind of puts my brain in a constant "do job" mode, never time to reorganize and reorder stuff.
in Stardew Valley this is much less of a problem (the first year has this problem because of the community center), and in Animal Crossing this is not a problem at all and part of the main appeal is to furnish homes and to decorate your island.
This post seems like its mostly pointing at men who play AAA games which are usually very straightforward and handholding about what to do.
Graveyard Keeper's big problem is it's lack of bulk operation mechanics and too basic UI (At least when I played it a couple of years ago). Everything just required dragging items manually and constantly multi-pressing keys to do actions in bulk (or holding left for over a minute to reach another place). It's the kind of game I immediately had to set up a bunch of Autohotkey scripts for, otherwise the more you progress, the more it became a chore rather than feeling like you made it big. Fun game otherwise but that just killed it for me at some point.
Also you literally kill things in Stardew Valley
I mean one of the good parts of Stardew is you can play it a bunch of different ways and it doesn't place a lot of restrictions on you.
In the cave exploration parts you can basically play it like a full-on combat simulator.
You can also play it like a fishing game, a dating sim, and several other things. Or you can also completely ignore certain parts of the game if you want.
Both are fun. In the same year I put 100hrs into Oblivion cracking High Elf skulls, and plenty sawing Locusts in half in Gears of War, shooting endless waves of bots in GRAW, literally railroad spiking people to walls in FEAR, and bustin caps in fools in Saints Row;
I also became world Table Tennis champion in Rockstar Presents Table Tennis and put ~70hrs into making pinatas have sex and growing plants in Viva Pinata.
I can enjoy two things.
You're a lil bit freaky huh
Filled with fun! Filled with fun!
If you reduce any game to its core loop, all of them are pretty simplistic. That's just what happens if you simplify things ad absurdum.
And all these things are nothing but tasks.
That said, while this is pretty lame critique, that doesn't mean that every game is good and it also doesn't mean that every game is good for every player.
If Barbie's Horse Adventure had violence, I'd probably try it.
Can't say I've heard this opinion. I have heard "It's not for me" and the like. I bought and played Stardew Valley and it didn't really click with me. That doesn't mean I have bad taste or it's a bad game. It means I game for different reasons.
FWIW most online content about Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley that I have come across was made by dudes.
No, I have not noticed that, because this is made-up bullshit.
Dumb
If SDV was made as a “walking simulators” with decision making, would people still like it?
…I would.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but as another an example, I got into Knights of the Old Republic (the Star Wars MMO). But all that stiff grinding just wasn’t worth the rare view, music, or interesting character arc.
And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that more and more gameplay feels “pointless” like that. My brain can engross itself in Satisfactory setups, but after like a day I stop when I realize I’m grinding all alone. I get into Age of Wonders or Stellaris until around mid game, when AI civs get too dumb to be convincing.
So yeah. I think there’s a grain of truth there. I adore SDV, but some aspects do feel like “chores” just to see the passion and writing they gate.
KotOR were the single player games Star Wars: The Old Republic is the MMO.
I liked it a lot, personally... for a while.
I personally like action RPGs like Fallout NV and Outer Worlds, I mean yeah shooting people is a task but its a task to get to the fun part which is the funny (or cool) dialogue choices and seeing the story progress.
What kinda asshole disses Stardew Valley? That game's awesome.
We are just seeking positive feedback.
When you clean that trash pile in the game, it's as satisfying as cleaning the kitchen at home. but the trashpile in the game stays gone.
The kitchen is a shithole again 3 days after someone gets sick and it becomes another insurmountable task
3 hours. FTFY
<3
No, haven't heard much criticism about those games. Me and my friends play like every genre of game.
Man I love Yahtzee. I obviously don’t always agree with him, but Extra Punctuation/Semi-Ramblomatic are amazing.
Semi-Ramblomatic is his best stuff imo.
I play GAMES so that I can accomplish TASKS without physical EFFORT. Get with it, "gAmErS", this is peak living. And SOMEtimes I don't even have ENERGY for fake video game TASKS. Your move, BITCh
... Yeah, this is a common idiot dude bro chud take, can't argue that at all.
But I can say that a vast amount of games are mostly are or have loops of:
Go somewhere
Do something
Get a thing
Sometimes this is a fetch quest, sometimes its a scavenger hunt, sometimes its clearing out aome encampement of bad guys, sometimes its solving a bunch of social drama between npcs, etc etc etc.
What actually matters, to me anyway, are things like:
Are the going somewhere and doing something... actually challenging, interesting, rewarding on their own simply as the experiences themselves?
Is the reward meaningful? Does it actually change how you can do the first two parts? Or maybe open up entirely new kinds of actual gameplay, or at least just in game experiences?
Does the game offer you choices as to how you can do those first two things that will change your overall experience within the game world?
Does it offer you choices as to ... which things you will or will not even consider doing? Does the game railroad you, or does it give you multiple viable paths?
People will care about the answers to these questions to different extents, will have different answers to them, and those answers will have different types of preferences for the style, intensity and ... cerebralness (?) for all of them as well.
... though i do think it would be interesting / funny to make a game that... can either be played like the sims/animal crossing, or can be played like tarkov/mgs, and you could just 'win' through either kind of gameplay.
Excuse me, I only play live action excel simulators ie city builders and RTS
The only real excel simulator
https://weeklyrecess.com/article/the-story-of-the-hidden-flight-simulator-game-in-microsoft-excel-97/
You could also play Paradox games and get a pretty map painting GUI.
Or Factorio/DwarfFortress lol.
I loved ck 2 and 3, but couldn't put myself through the pain of learning again for EU or vic
Honestly you made a good decision.
Hopefully you're steering clear of Paradox in general, they're basically drug dealers for autists, lol.
Their... pricing models are... ridiculous, and lately, they seem to be cocking up basically everything they're actively in charge of development of.
EDIT: Normies get FanDuel, us turbo-optimizers get Paradox games.
Honestly I'm probably lucky that CK3 was laggy on my laptop or I'd be unemployed
I just cut out the simulation part and make actual excel spreadsheets for fun xD 🫣
The only criticism I've heard about stardew is that you end up one day moring into morning and now you have to go to work.
That's a good game thing.
Edit: forgot about that time you get fucked by a bear
Where do you go or what do you clean in Pong?
I quite liked Red Dead Redemption 2, though I disliked violence in there the most. But I don't think I would enjoy Barbie's Horse Adventure.
On a second thought, there might be more to games than horses and violence, will have to check
OSRS is just animal crossing for boys
Everyone who'd like to play 'Kill the Bad Guy': here is the link: https://plugindigital.itch.io/kill-the-bad-guy-
I'm going to assume Barbie's Horse Adventure is the better game and without DMCAstar's pretentiousness too. Maybe.
I tried out Infinity Nikki, finding it visually appealling, mostly out of curiosity what they'd pick for their core gameplay; what would "pique my mind's interest". They did kind of give a suite of open world tasks, but there was nothing there that gave the moment-to-moment excitement the same way combat does.
I honestly hate in some ways that our primary activity is just virtually killing things, but it comes out of basic evolution of what ends up being fun and engaging in game design.
This is a generalisation, there are plenty of people who enjoy peaceful games more than action games - be it farming games, city builders, puzzle-adventures, and so on. Like even when I played Civ 5, I never went for a combat domination victory (outside of achievements), but preferred science, culture or diplomacy.