
Stardew Valley and real-life labour (2017) - Tomte
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/13/stardew-valley-marriage-work/
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shhehebehdh
All the comments are about the publication or the author as of the time I
wrote this comment. Nothing about the article itself. Ok. I’ll bite:

Are there industries or regions where the style of labor depicted in stardew
valley is rewarded? Have there ever been?

I don’t mean that people are literally collecting magical fruit. But I mean a
place where a small farm can yield a good life for the typical small farmer,
and where such labor is respected? I spoke recently with a cousin about his
travels around the world. I asked him what country was his favorite, and he
told me that rural Uruguay was, because people live a modest but healthy and
happy lifestyle off the land. I thought that was a really interesting
observation, since I suspect that type of lifestyle is quite rare in the first
world.

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derReineke
A lot of places in the US it's becoming more common to be able to make a
living on a small-scale farm. Especially if you live near (hour) of a larger
city. You can sell a lot of produce to restaurants that want local
ingredients. I don't know if it's respected, but it's not looked down upon.

Also, apparently in the last ten years or so American farming has become
small-scale by a vast majority. I think it's about 90% are 3 acres or less?

~~~
ExBritNStuff
I presume that's 90% by total number of farms, rather than by produce yielded?
American farming is going the way of most other industries; a small number of
huge corporations dominating, and thusly controlling, the market.

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DizzyDoo
I've been enjoying Paul Dean's work for a while and I'm pleased to see some
writing from him pop up here. Part of his work in the last 10 years has been
on the website Shut Up And Sit Down
([http://shutupandsitdown.com](http://shutupandsitdown.com)), which does
excellent videos, reviews and articles about board games. He's recently moved
on from that project and I'm very interested to see what writing project he'll
work on next.

~~~
dcarmo
I was going to comment that I'd love to know/read more about the author. Where
can I follow him?

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captainbendy
His twitter is
[https://twitter.com/paullicino](https://twitter.com/paullicino), and he
recently started a Patreon for his writing, which is at
[https://www.patreon.com/Paullicino](https://www.patreon.com/Paullicino)

~~~
dcarmo
Thanks!

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jon-wood
RPS is one of the few sites I read daily for these sort of articles. They’ve
been sliding into the hole of posting endless reports on the latest press
release on big games for a while, but there’s still frequent gems like this
one in amongst all that - I’ll be curious to see if they keep it up with the
last of the original founders leaving for pastures new in the next month or
so.

~~~
gamblor956
RPS was acquired by (or rather, sold to) Eurogamer in 2017. The quality has
gone downhill in the past year due to editorial interference by the new
ownership.

~~~
lasagnaphil
I agree: I'm currently an RPS supporter, but am considering cancelling my
subscription because of the recent decrease in quality. But then considering
that RPS went downhill because of monetary reasons in the first place, I'm
quite conflicted right now...

~~~
reificator
I get where you're coming from, but if I were in your shoes I'd probably
cancel. If you were giving money in order to support writing that met a
certain metric, and that metric is no longer met, there's no reason to
continue supporting in the hopes that it will come back. It _can_ happen, but
time and time again it doesn't, especially if the payment system doesn't come
with a way to make your feedback heard.

