The ‘desk-chair countryside’: Affect, authenticity and the rural idyll in a farming computer game

Agricultural computer games engage millions of players world-wide in farming practices. This paper investigates how farm-based computer and video games act as sites of cultural production. I utilise a case study of Stardew Valley to assess how notions of idyllic rurality are staged, encountered and reworked both by and for the 'desk-chair countryside': people who engage in rural activities on their computers. Computer gameplay is a distinctive form of rural engagement, requiring active decision-making and performance of farming activities, immersing players in novel rural worlds through complex configurations of computer equipment and virtual world avatars. Drawing on non-representational thinking, and concepts from the 'experience economy', the paper focuses on how tropes of idyllic rurality are mobilised and challenged through the affective responses elicited in gameplay. I argue that imaginaries of peaceful farm life and happy (pet) livestock are reinforced through affective encounters that appeal to 'referential authenticity' (nostalgia) and 'influential authenticity' (the higher calling of caring for animals). In contrast, community interactions appeal to 'natural authenticity', progressively revealing human in-game characters as they 'really are' (flawed individuals dealing with life issues ranging from paternity to post-traumatic stress), utilising 'influential authenticity' to call players to support their neighbours. This integration of affective encounter with natural and influential authenticity enables the critical reworking of rural imaginaries to form what I term 'authentic idylls'. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological opportunities of computer-mediated virtual ruralities in rural studies research.