Gamasutra Interviewed Yasuhiro Wada, creator of the Harvest Moon series.


I've always liked the premise of these games, or, really, any game that goes a non-traditional route in that it doesn't use heavy violence in its expression. For those not in the know, the Harvest Moon series deals with farming. Sounds ho-hum, but the series has slowly gained a real fanbase over the years, despite being published in America by Natsume, a smaller publisher.

Wada-San talks about his desire to create games in Will Wright's style, his motivations in making Harvest Moon (he wants people to appreciate nature more- not really "go back to it" in the sense that you abandon modern life, but maybe start a little garden, or grow some plants in your window).

In this excerpt, Gamasutra asks Wada about players who try to "break" the game. That is, do things that you aren't supposed to really do.

"It seems really difficult, because if you give players freedom, they're so used to fighting in games, it seems like they would immediately try to do that. Sometimes people try - even in Harvest Moon - to take the axe and hit the cow or something like that.

YW: That thing's going to happen, no matter what we're doing. But as producer, you have to think who you're targeting, either kids or adult users. When you create the game system, we can't actually log this kind of stuff, like beatings of the cow. It's really up to the producer, and it's his duty to think about this kind of thing."

Full interview here.