“If I made Stardew Valley again, I would try to be a little more nuanced”: Eric Barone says the Community Center versus JojaMart battle was too black and white
Stardew Valley’s creator reckons its central decision between building a community center or helping a giant supermarket chain from turning it into a warehouse was too “black and white.”
Stardew Valley doesn’t offer a ton of tough, moral choices, except for the objective at the heart of the game. You can choose to grind, build friendships, and work together with the other villagers to restore the community center. Or you can pay to turn it into a Joja warehouse – the basic rewards are the same, but the journey to get there differs.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone said he would have to “lean community center,” even though the decision is “one of the things I kind of regret about Stardew Valley.”
“I feel like it’s a little bit too on the nose with, like, ‘Joja are the bad guys and the community center is the right way to do it,'” Barone said. “It’s like, I think if I made Stardew Valley again, I would try to be a little more nuanced. Like, maybe there are some positives to Joja, you know? Nothing is ever that black and white in reality. There’s usually nuance to everything. And that was something that I wanted to have in Stardew Valley – like nuance and things – but I kind of failed in that particular aspect, I would say.”
Of course, in the context of the game, who could blame Barone for siding with the community center? The player character finds comfort in rural life after having escaped a mindless office job working for JojaMart, so falling back into their clutches feels like falling back into your old ways.
Maybe Barone’s next game, Haunted Chocolatier, will have a little more of that “nuance” he’s after.
ConcernedApe regrets making Stardew Valley’s fishing minigame “too hard” when you start out, but still thinks it’s good overall: “I know it’s controversial”
