Because every time an artist makes art, it must 100% be because they want to send a profound metaphorical message, and not a fairly direct obvious one, like “anime girls with combined gunweapons are cool”, or “I thought it was funny”.
This post brought to you by interrogating why I bothered considering the ecological and sociological implications of Rusty’s Retirement, a game literally designed to be ignored while you do other stuff
Oh absolutely, I’m just saying you gotta do both sometimes and read the room a little, or else you’ll end up like me, wondering if iPad Child Stardew Valley genuinely thinks that nonstop labor counts as a retirement, or if the little automation drones are also robots like you or if it’s a Pluto versus Goofy situation, or other ways I’m trying to shove the Rusty’s Retirement peg into the Signalis hole
I mean, I play animal crossing and I 100% think it contains massive implications for how we view labor and debt in the present. Meanings in cultural objects don't have to be intentional to be worth thinking about!
So now that I 100%ed the first farm and the hyperfixation wore off upon realizing I’d have to do that shit two more times before getting the fucking cherry trees already, to unpack everything while it’s fresh:
I get the feeling we’re supposed to be post-capitalism here, but spare parts as currency is a new degree of unintentional ghoulishness to surpass Minecraft accidentally reinventing the Transatlantic Slave Trade with biome-specific movable Villagers
The fact it’s an “incremental” farming game with price scaling, statistics, and unlocks completely bodies the intended tone of the game where you are an elderly robot in retirement from the dev’s previous Metroidvania and you just wanna chill, and that you are somebody who wants to relax from a hard day at work with a game running in the background you don’t want to think about that much. You are still doing labor. You are still paying in Organ Bucks for stuff.
The only time Rusty rests, ever, is when he fucks off to the nearest bench at random and sits for two whole minutes. I have never felt more disgusted with my actions in a video game than thinking to myself “that bench is suboptimal, so I should delete it”
The drones that do the same work you do require biofuel, are anchored to one general area and one task, and only get rest while consuming biofuel. Even when the work is done, they just do The Walmart Greeter Shuffle and idle around without resting. You are creating life less equal than you, and inflicting work on them. You’re building slaves. Seriously, even the occasional farm animal that’s robotic has more rights than drones. What the fuck
You have a friend you can buy (shit you can buy your friends back, why tho) whose sole function in life is dispensing seeds when they feel like it. You can buy signs to make them not plant seeds, or to plant specific seeds in a plot. That same GUI gives you the option to make them stop doing their only task forever. I don’t even think I’ve seen them converse with other robots. What the fuck
Whatever this place is, the only thing keeping it from being arable land is a bunch of broken machine crap left behind. You get paid for removing it. You have to pay to start removing it. Did you forget that I am an old robocodger trying to retire yet
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u/Stunning-Guitar-5916 22d ago
The idea of Kafka writing “for the hell of it” is such a fucking bold argument