Why sentimental pastoral themes make perfect fodder for video games

A growing range of video games take us into an imagined rural past that poets, painters and playwrights have explored for centuries

Story of Seasons is a video game in which you spend hundreds of hours very slowly growing an agricultural empire while attempting to convince a villager to marry you by giving them an egg every day. It is a game about hard work and settling down. The only thing you can fight in Story of Seasons is the natural rhythm of rural life - and it is a fight you will lose.

If this sounds weird to you (and I've certainly faced difficulties explaining the appeal of the game to some friends), you need to think about Story of Seasons in a broader context. There is history going on here.