Digging in Pixelated Dirt: The Rise of the Cozy Farm Game

Nicholette Bentz, a student at Emerson College, never considered herself someone who games. Her experience mostly lies in games of Mario Kart and app store games like Hay Day. Gaming was always her “boyfriend’s thing” up until the start of this year. As a long distance couple (Illinois–Massachusetts) looking to find ways to stay connected, her boyfriend, Terry, recommended they play Stardew Valley to keep in contact. “It’s something really simple that we can both do… we have our own farm and do little quests together,” Bentz says.

Bentz and her boyfriend aren’t the only couple playing Stardew Valley. According to Steam Charts, the regular player base is 30,000 monthly. More so, September’s Nintendo Direct included four major games of a farming genre, which makes a large chunk of the brand’s lined up announcements. But what is attractive about making colorful cartoons grow tomatoes, dig up carrots, and water flowers? By talking to both professionals in media and avid gamers, we learn about life and popularity of the cozy farm game.

Origins and Growth

In 1996 Harvest Moon was released in Japan, marking it one of the earliest farming games. At the time of release, Crispen Boyer, a video game writer and critic, says in Electronic Gaming Monthly, “An RPG [“role-playing game”] about farming? Talk about a hard sell.” Despite his opinion, the farming game did very well. For two decades, a stream of Harvest Moon content was widely distributed through many different gaming consoles, and over many different countries (mainly Japan, followed by the United States and parts of Europe).

Sarah Zaidan, Visual and Media Arts Professor at Emerson College, says that 2009 marked a huge step in farming games with Facebook’s Farmville. “A cursory search on "farming" turns up how Farmville was a huge topic at the [Game Developers’] Conference in 2012,” she says. Farmville was a wildly popular FaceBook application that involved interacting with other users to gather seeds and animals for an online farm of your own. A 2020 New York Times article described Farmville as “a relaxing activity that would appeal to a broad audience, especially among adults and women who had never spent hundreds of dollars on a console like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii.”

The popularity of Farmville and the usage of high-speed internet gave way for a myriad of casual farming games–a term used by scholars and players alike to describe games that do not take large amounts of effort or consoles to play– , and the demographic for such games grew. Reddit user u/LeChrome surveyed Stardew Valley fans, and released their findings: 48.5% of players were 17 to 25, while 33.7% were 25 to 35. Brian Reiber, 17, has been playing through the Animal Crossing franchise since he was 7 years old, which is a common answer for Generation Z gamers. Reiber says he “didn’t understand the complexity of Animal Crossing as a kid, and really got into Stardew Valley over the pandemic. That’s really fun because you got to play with friends.

COVID-19’S INFLUENCE

While there have been farm game trends coming and going for the better half of two decades, 2020’s quarantine ballooned the community of farming gamers. Terrasa Ulm, Professor of Interactive Media at Clark University, says “I really do think there's a marked uptick due to the pandemic that has now maintained a steady interest level. Being able to play a game to distract yourself, or to engage your mind but on more pleasant or more thoughtful themes.”

The release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons at the start of the pandemic could not have come at a better time. The most recent edition to Animal Crossing, New Horizons takes the player to their own island where they are tasked with decorating the space to attract new island residents by planting flowers and trees and crafting landscapes. Ulm says the game “really gained broad appeal during a time when we all had a bit more indoor time on our hands, quite a lot to worry about, and a significant lack of non-digital ways to spend time with friends and family in comforting scenarios.” Playing Animal Crossing “brought back a sense of serenity and hope that not everything was out of my control.”

With Animal Crossing, many games began releasing updates over the pandemic to cater to an audience that was completely indoors. “One of my friends who introduced me to Stardew Valley was talking about this update where they added a separate island for people to explore and farm,” Reiber says. “I know Minecraft did it too during the pandemic. There were updates to create, like a decompress. A more peaceful environment.”

THE DRAW

Nature

Zaiden says, “I can't imagine our ancestors would have thought farming was relaxing, especially before the Industrial Revolution. However, the idea of the natural world being something to be desired and romanticized is a very old concept.” In every farming game, new and old, there is a definitive relationship between the player and nature. Why not move to an actual small town, or old farmhouse, and plant real vegetables and take care of real animals? A digital natural landscape allows those anywhere in the world to feel some connection to nature. Those who live in city apartments or lack the physical space to take care of a garden are able to romanticize nature.

Reiber says, “the reason it’s romanticized is because [farming games] are not a necessity… In that game, we have the choice to choose what [plants] to grow, what characters we interact with. The reality of farming is done for occupation. There’s not as much–if any– stress involved in these games.” Digital landscapes offer more flexibility and ease than traditional farm life. Ulm says, “I think a desire for something within your means to hone and have a positive effect on, and to witness a positive reaction and outcome from your efforts–that is a driving force that often connects these games. And farming, nature, and design all reflect the main ways society does this in the physical world, so it is only logical to use these themes in the digital.”

task Completion

Completing small, daily tasks is everything in a farming game. The primary draw of games such as Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley is not so much the interest in actually farming, but rather the manipulation of a constructed environment. Tasks usually include watering or harvesting crops, feeding your animals, greeting neighbors, and walking around the given area.

Zaiden says, “games reduce complicated actions to simple repetitive game systems…Humans generally find repetitive patterns relaxing, and this is a major element in a lot of game design and generating feelings that are frequently described as ‘fun.’” She says, “there is also the element of dopamine to consider: the neurotransmitter that releases in most humans when they complete tasks. The same applies to tasks in game worlds, such as decorating one's island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or locating all of the cats on each floor of A Building Full of Cats.”

Completing tasks, then, is scientifically known to bring you comfort and stress relief. Which ties nicely back into farm games’ relationship with COVID-19. At a time where the world was at a halt–and many people scrambled to do anything to fill their time–a simple game with chores and jobs to do each day is unbelievably good for mental health.

Reiber says, “when you’re working really hard on school or some physical activity, you don’t really get to see the progress. But in the game, it gives you a visual representation. That representation just makes you feel content with yourself because you can see your making progress.”

The future of cozy

Nintendo has many new farming-centric games to look forward to this year. The genre continues to expand into subgenres, including cozy games that involve more mystical elements, like Potion Permit, or the creator of Stardew Valley’s new project Haunted Chocolatier.

“Now that the genre has become well-established, something I've noticed lately are games that use a warm and cozy atmosphere to engage with serious themes, or subvert player expectations,” Zaiden says. Many of these games are beginning to combine genres or experiment in new and interesting ways.

Ulm says, “Seeing more students propose these types of games for their capstones or listing these genres or publishers as their ideal future heading after graduation, is incredibly heart-warming and encouraging…a testament to the power of games to inspire hope and optimism and healing in the world.”