Why do we play Harvest Moon?

Welcome back guys.

Today, I'm feeling Harvest Moon. I've been playing Harvest Moon: Wonderful Life for a while and question myself what keeps me going. 

The Game

Come here dear cows, time for your hugging session!

I'm a Harvest Moon fan since their first game (Harvest Moon SNES), and have played most of these games since then. In most of them, your objective is simple: to take a rundown farm and turn it into a successful business. You have many ways of doing so, but it usually involves buying some animals and taking care of them, planting some crops and harvesting fruits and vegetables, taking part in some part-time jobs at the village, foraging berries on the forest, fishing in the local lake / rivers. 

Apart from the farming-simulation part, most of these games are full-fledged social simulators as well, as you can usually woo a number of eligible bachelorettes (or bachelors depending on your sex and game), get married and have kids. So as to balance farm life with socializing with villagers, some festivals and birthdays are thrown into the formula, which are usually fun and help to break the daily monotone chores.

The Reasons

So how come this mix of daily chores and virtual life get to shake away gamers' lives? Many reasons come to mind: because it's so addicting, because you get to escape your daily monotonous life and live in an interactive fun village, because you get to feel fulfilled because of your actions and hard work. 

Tending the fields with my fellow apprentices.

Firstly, the game is so fun to play because it's very rewarding. You get to feel the satisfaction of working hard planting crops and taking care of animals when you harvest the produce. When you sell the goods you produced and harvested, you get to manage and adopt even more ways of earning profits, by buying more animals, upgrading tools, extending your farm and more. You can even train apprentices (harvest sprites) so as to work for you, buy mayonnaise and cheese makers so as to elaborate more complex produce, or automatize your farming processes (buying an automatic milking room for instance) -- it's an economy class for small businesses taken to practice! And one you start, it's quite difficult to stop, as it just gets better and better.

Relax... it's just dancing... or is it?

Secondly, the idea of living in a green, interactive fun village is like a dream. Personally, most of the time, I play games so as to escape a bit from reality. This game allows me to do so, as I'm taken away to a forgotten rural village with interesting characters to know and friendships to make -- in short, to lead a different life. Flirting with local ladies, getting married, having children... does virtual social interaction get better than that? However, the interaction in this game is driven in a vastly different way than The Sims. While dialogues in the Sims are fictional, they are real in Harvest Moon. Villagers will greet you and talk to you about the weather. Your bride will actually get pregnant and spend some time complaining about it. However, regarding health-management issues, Harvest Moon is much more carefree than The Sims, as in most of them, there's no health or energy bar as opposed to the complex system used in The Sims. Both games use varying levels of abstraction regarding these topics.

Caught a big one, eh?

Thirdly, and most important, is the idea that "hard work will be rewarded". The game is the living proof that if you work hard, life will reward you sooner or later. Being having a happy family that loves you, creating a big profitable establishment or saving a village from being demolished, you always get your "thanks" and feel fulfilled. And that is the central message of this game experience.



Feeling satisfied with this article and with my own farm, I'll be leaving Harvest Moon on my closet until needs for a rural escape arise. Until then, I believe I'll be trying out Pokemon Black or replaying Beyond Good and Evil.