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.
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?
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.
Check out Curtis Stone, Urban farmer on youtube. I think there are different (new) models for small scale farming that are sustainable and profitable. (So rewarded and respected)
And if anybody wants another example, I recently enjoyed watching a series by a man called 'maximus ironthumper', a self-employed blacksmith who built his own house on a plot of land in rural england.
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), 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.
He's currently writing a book. Another commenter linked his patreon below to someone else, but just to ensure you see it as well: https://www.patreon.com/Paullicino
He posts very regularly for patrons and I would strongly recommend it if you liked his writing for more than the attachment to gaming.
I was wondering whether it was the same Paul Dean from SU&SD. Thanks for confirming that it was, and that I was reading the article with the correct voice in my head. :-)
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.
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.
I still read RPS even though I mostly play on console these days.
I don't really feel like making the money + time investment of a full blown pc.
Some RPS articles, especially those that don't talk about games like products are still worth a read.
Sadly, I have also come to recognize one or two RPS contributors as those I should just skip entirely.
RPS is also more and more anti readers, nowadays it adds a "container" on top of Youtube that injects their own ads on top of it. Since it is completely independant it also does not care if you have youtube premium.
I tried to reach out to them numerous times about that but I didn't even get a response. I had to add RPS to my adblock rules, to my chagrin.
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...
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.
Yeah, I opted not to renew my subscription when they were sold, and the direction they've gone since the acquisition has led me to believe that was the right move.
I read RPS nearly daily for around a decade but I stopped when they started blocking me for using an ad blocker. I miss The Flare Path (and Tim Stone's other articles) but the quality of writing had dropped quite a bit elsewhere. Most of my favorite writers had moved on.
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.