If you choose to have Bess and Fanny hit it off in the game, you'll be given a five-part mission series detailing their specific romance. The contents of this quests are subject to change at any time, so keep that in mind.
Part I of V sees you kicking off this romance on your homestead by seeing what exactly Bess and Fanny have in common. You know they say opposites attract Wildflowers appear in clear areas of your homestead. Cherry candies are part of the cherry collection. Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki. Don't you think that Fanny and Bess would make one cute couple? In-Game Hint. White Roses are available in the market. Through working on your farm homestead and buying items, you earn experience, which in turn unlocks better items as you gain levels.
The game promotes socializing and sharing. Your ability to expand your farm homestead is dependent on how many neighbors you have, so if you have Facebook friends who play FarmVille FrontierVille , you will probably be getting a lot of neighbor requests from them. Other than that, there are many items that can only be obtained by having someone send them to you as a gift, and you can earn extra coins and experience by visiting other farms frontiers and fertilizing their crops, pulling weeds or scaring off crows snakes, coyotes and bears.
Each click represents an action: plowing, planting, harvesting, petting, moving, deleting, and so on. The game capitalizes on the kind of usability and user—interface literacy that has become naturalized by the World Wide Web and applications like Microsoft Office. Splash page as the game loads. Game still. What is crucial here is that games like FrontierVille not only replicate and capitalize on certain kinds of information economy work habits— button pushing, multitasking, spreadsheet manipulation, resource management—the game is further framed and skinned with romanticized and normative narratives, images, and values.
It offers simple, repeatable approaches in which benefit, honor, and aesthetics are less important than facility. Clearing the land requires only a click. Planting a square of corn requires only a click. Building a log cabin, ostensibly more difficult, requires multiple clicks. The start of the game opens with a letter from your spouse-to-be. Moreover, the game presents the U. In order to progress in the game, the player must meet these requirements.
It is interesting that FrontierVille allows for a modest intervention into this heteron- ormative futurity—the game does not set any requirement as to the gender or menu-driven race of your imminent spouse. By refusing to assume the gender of the forthcoming spouse, the game opens a space for queer possibility. Granted, unless the player refuses to pursue the family quest lines, the game still assumes that you want, need, and have to have a ostensibly monogamous spouse.
Once you begin the marriage line, you must complete several quests in order to prepare for the arrival of your spouse, including gathering money, resources, fancy clothes for the wedding , and building a house. As soon as you can prove that you are a worthy suitor and a capable provider, your spouse arrives and the player is given the opportunity to design the avatar.
The game does not differentiate between man or woman, same or different gender relationships, or among a range of racialized appearances. Unfortunately, the queer possibility of FrontierVille does not remain open long. Spouse customization screen: woman. What the addition of the spouse avatar does, in terms of game mechanics, is allow for the player to switch back and forth between the two characters to queue point-and-click tasks on screen.
The only advantage because there is no imagined disadvantage is that both avatars can be employed to work the homestead. Controlled by the com- puter, Hank tells you that he is in love with one of the women in your fair frontier town and asks for your help in matchmaking. Hank asks for your help to find love and matrimony.
The game does not imagine Hank falling in love with one of the other men in the town. And like the start of the game, you must complete these quests in order to progress, gain further resources, and expand your town. Whether Hank proposes to Fanny or to Bess, the women offer little resistance or rationale, claiming their love for Hank, and assent to marriage.
In this case, Hank picks Fanny the schoolmarm. Once complete, the lovers can meet under the Kissing Tree. It is interesting that the quests allow for another queer possibility—love between Fanny and Bess, where Hank is written out of the triangle entirely. Of course, that erotics is imagined as between two women, a common heteromas- culinist fantasy, and never imagined between Hank and another man.
Alas, by the time the second marriage quest comes around, any relationship between Fanny and Bess is forgotten, straightwashed, and the two must be secured as acceptable suitors for Hank. The player must choose who will start a romance: Fanny with Bess? The example of FrontierVille is important because it reveals the interconnect- edness and interpenetration of game design, mechanics, narrative, aesthetics, marketing, and play.
The game, like most mainstream games, is encoded— both algorithmically and ideologically—with heteronormative values of gender, sex, race, and family. Straightwashing in games is not limited to the limitations placed on potential or possible representations, narratives, choices, actions, or mechanics. Straight- washing in FrontierVille is largely about the failure to expand or include queer content and consequential design.
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