{"id":241,"date":"2025-10-04T19:14:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T02:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=241"},"modified":"2025-10-04T19:14:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T02:14:28","slug":"video-games-as-evocative-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/241","title":{"rendered":"Video Games as Evocative Objects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Video games can evoke feelings of liberating escapism while shaping perceptions of real life. In her anthology, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With<\/em>, Sherry Turkle demonstrates the ability of objects to facilitate transitional periods of life. Several chapters demonstrate how beloved objects can mediate coming-of-age experiences. When reflecting on my own belongings, I realized a Nintendo game titled, Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town<\/em>, mediated my perceptions of adulthood. I perceive this cherished game as my own \u201cevocative object\u201d; as a young child, its virtual world evoked my excitement towards growing up.\u00a0
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For my seventh birthday, my oldest sister gifted me a mysterious Macy\u2019s box. Inside the box was my first video game console\u2013a pink, hand-me-down GameBoy Advance. Inside the console was a game cartridge titled, Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town.<\/em> As I flipped the console\u2019s on-switch for the first time, a saturated, pixelated screen and a cheerful soundtrack greeted me. The game was a farming simulator, where the main character collects profits by selling dairy, poultry, crops, and foraged items across the quaint atmosphere of Mineral Town. While creating a profitable farm, the player can build relationships with NPC townspeople, get married, and start a family. The game never ends; however, one can presume that winning consists of bringing economic prosperity to the town and becoming a likeable figure among its citizens. At the young age of seven, I did not realize the game\u2019s themes of coming-of-age, hard work, and social acceptance. Now, as a twenty-year-old reflecting on its narrative, I recognize its depiction of adulthood through the player\u2019s journey of moving to a new town, meeting new people, and pursuing a risky career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I played this game for hours on end, under the covers past bedtime, and during the morning before school; Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town <\/em>not only catalyzed my love for video games, but mediated my expectations of adulthood. Through numerous hours of improving my farm and achieving a successful lifestyle for the in-game protagonist, the game subconsciously instilled the message that hard work results in joy and companionship. Additionally, the game introduced concepts of trade and capitalism to its child audience by framing a profitable lifestyle as the player\u2019s ultimate goal. Within the game, the protagonist can earn the townspeople\u2019s admiration by gifting them items and talking to them on a daily basis. This mechanic led my immature mind to think that in reality, showering individuals with their favoured items and repeatedly speaking to them would guarantee their loyalty. The addictive, interactive medium illustrated friendships as collectible prizes, rather than everchanging, complex relationships. Unknowingly, this piece of electronic media produced an unrealistic view of adult life as fun, easy, and exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe this evocative object would belong in Turkle\u2019s chapter, \u201cObjects of Transition and Passage\u201d. Turkle notes transitional objects \u201c[mediate]\u201d a child\u2019s \u201cgrowing recognition\u201d of their independence (Winnicott qtd. in 314). Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town <\/em>taught me such independence by forcing me to make responsible choices in a low-stakes environment. If I forgot to feed my livestock or water my crops, my profits could hinder. Then, I would have less money to purchase gifts for my in-game neighbours and I would lose their friendship; as a result, the game taught me accountability in a simulated setting. However, as I grew older, I lost interest in the game. I no longer needed it to simplify the concept of responsibility to me; instead, I practiced \u201creal-life\u201d responsibility through managing schoolwork, chores, and extracurricular pursuits. As I ventured into my teenage years, the game sat in my dusty drawer, supporting Turkle\u2019s view that these objects of childhood development are \u201cdestined to be abandoned\u201d (314). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town<\/em> as a Cyborg Object
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Furthermore, this game acts as a \u201ccyborg\u201d object\u2013an object which combines the \u201cnatural and the artificial\u201d (Turkle 325).\u00a0 An example of a \u201ccyborg\u201d object is Annalee Newitz’s beloved laptop in the chapter \u201cMy Laptop\u201d. Newitz’s relationship with her laptop is deeply \u201cintimate\u201d; the inanimate device melds with her natural self causing her difficulty in distinguishing \u201cwhere it leaves off and she begins\u201d (Turkle 325). She exists as \u201cone with her virtual persona\u201d and views herself as the \u2018\u201ccommand line\u2026of glowing green letters\u201d\u2019 on her screen (Turkle 325). Similarly to Newitz, I developed an emotional attachment to my virtual persona\u2013the tiny, pixelated farmer on the screen of my GameBoy Advance. The more time I invested in my persona, the more she represented my hard work. As a result, my connection to her grew, similarly to the laptop’s \u201cco-extensive\u201d relationship with Newitz\u2019s \u201cself\u201d (Turkle 325). Altogether, this avatar was not just an escape to a simplistic world where adulthood did not seem so frightening, but a representation of myself and the adult I aspired to be.
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Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town<\/em>\u2019s Mediation of the Body<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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As Wegenstein states in Critical Terms for Media Studies<\/em>, \u201c\u2018the logic of the computer\u201d\u2019 has afforded humans the ability to exist as numerous \u201cselves\u201d (28). She notes that modern individuals experience satisfaction by constructing several virtual \u201cpersonas\u201d that contrast their real-life, \u201cmundane\u201d selves (Wegenstein 28). I experienced this phenomenon while developing my in-game persona; my avatar\u2019s economic and social autonomy contrasted my supervised upbringing. Moreover, the amount of exciting tasks the game afforded my character differed greatly from my simple, repetitive childhood. Rather than being a supervised seven-year-old child, the game transformed myself into a farm-owner, creating a self-sufficient life.
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Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Altogether, my virtual experiences afforded by Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town<\/em> mediated my expectations of adult life. Through using this object as a form of escapism, I gained a deep emotional connection to this game that remains with me today. While glamourizing adulthood, this game played a role in my childhood development by introducing concepts of hard work and responsibility.   
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Works Cited<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wegenstein, Bernadette. \u201cBody.\u201d Critical Terms for Media Studies<\/em>, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, U of Chicago P, 2010, pp. 19-34.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turkle, Sherry. \u201cWHAT MAKES AN OBJECT EVOCATIVE?\u201d Evocative Objects: Things We Think With<\/em>, edited by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, pp. 307\u201327. JSTOR<\/em>, http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctt5hhg8p.39<\/a> . Accessed 4 Oct. 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Emily Shin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos taken by Emily Shin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Video games can evoke feelings of liberating escapism while shaping perceptions of real life. In her anthology, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Sherry Turkle demonstrates the ability of objects to facilitate transitional periods of life. Several chapters demonstrate how beloved objects can mediate coming-of-age experiences. When reflecting on my own belongings, I realized a … Continue reading Video Games as Evocative Objects<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100779,"featured_media":243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,8,30,31,53],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-mass-media","tag-media-theory","tag-my-evocative-object","tag-technological-reliance","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}