Harvest Moon and WoW, Separated at Birth?

A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness for the DS. For those of you who aren't initiates, Harvest Moon is... well... it's a series of farming simulation games. You can't see me, but I'm squirming on my sofa in embarassment that I'm admitting this in public.

In Harvest Moon, you can grow diverse crops (potatoes, corn, apples, wheat, eggplants to name just a few); you can sell your crops for money or cook recipes; you can fish; chop wood; mine for minerals; raise chickens, cattle and sheep; you can set up cottage industries making goods ranging from yarn to yogurt; and you can build relationships with the citizens of the island, up to and including wooing the spouse of your choice and getting married. I'd call it a straightforward resource management game, where the primary resources to be managed are time and money.

I can sit down with Harvest Moon and intend to play for just one day of game time. But then the next day is a festival, and well, I want to see if my prize home-made ice-cream is a winner... and then the turnip harvest is in and I want to ship them out before I forget... and before I know it, I've blown through a week of game time, and I've lost who-even-knows how much time in the real world.

I sat down to try to write a post about Harvest Moon, trying to define its appeal for me, and it was a real head-scratcher. It doesn't have any of the things I thought I liked in a game. There's not really a compelling story, for one. No puzzles to be solved, really. It doesn't have amazing visuals -- it's a DS game, for cryin' out loud -- and the barks and music can both get extremely repetitive. It doesn't bring out my raging competitive streak. So why do I like it?

I admit, when I first started mulling it over I thought: Well... maybe it's because it's a wussy girly game, and I'm a wussy girl. ...Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? Right? But then, in a spectacular flash of insight, I realized that wasn't it at all. It's that Harvest Moon is just like World of Warcraft.

And in fact, Harvest Moon is more WoW than WoW is. Harvest Moon is WoW with nothing but the grind. And the grind is why we play!

I refer, of course, of Clive Thimpson's article, "Back to the Grind in WoW." Here's the money quote, for me:

Why? Because there's something enormously comforting about grinding. It offers a completely straightforward relationship between work and reward. When you log into WoW, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you just plant your ass in that chair for long enough, you'll level up. It doesn't require skill. It just requires putting in the time. Play 10 hours, you'll do better; play 50, you'll do better yet; and yet more so with 500 hours.

The thing is, almost no arenas of human endeavor work like this.

...

But grinding? Grinding always works. Always. You get a gold star just for showing up. This is a quietly joyful experience. It feeds our souls, as well as our sense of justice and fair play. We grind because we can't believe what a totally awesome deal we're getting handed here, often the first time in our entire suck-ass put-upon lives.

If you've talked to me much about games since that article went up in July, I've probably referenced that piece. (I'm more than a little shocked it's taken me until now to talk about it here.) It's become a real touchpoint for me regarding what people want out of games; the more I think about it, the truer it rings in my ears.

So I play Harvest Moon: I plant my seeds and water my crops, I visit all of my townsfolk every day, I milk my cows and collect my eggs from the chickens and make it all into food to sell; I collect and sell, collect and sell, over and over again, and I do it because it's so restful. I think a little about Zen monks raking sand around rocks, over and over again, and I wonder if this feeds a similar human need.

When I play Harvest Moon, I know there are no nasty surprises in store for me. I know it will all turn out to be fair. And if a game can give you something like peace of mind, even for a few minutes, who the heck cares abut graphics or plot, anyway?

Comments

[John Evans]

Heheh...I've recently played "Rune Factory", which is a Harvest Moon spinoff that features monster fighting *as well as* farming. (Two grinds in one!)

However, I think the important part of Harvest Moon is not the grind in and of itself. I think what's really important is the proliferation of mini-goals. Every time you plant a crop, you can wait until it comes in and go "Oooh, plants!". There are holidays you can look forward to. There are (at least in Rune Factory) little story bits that you can see every now and then. If you hang out with the NPCs, they'll start liking you better and saying different stuff to you. There's a merchant who shows up once a week with various unique tools like machines to make cheese and yarn. Making cheese is really something to look forward to!

Of course, in Rune Factory, there are also dungeons to explore. Each dungeon has a boss, of course, and completing it is necessary for unlocking the next one. Plus, you can befriend/capture monsters and they'll help out on your farm, or even give you milk/honey/wool (no cows in Rune Factory).

And the big thing in Rune Factory is that you need to expand your house, but it costs so many resources that it takes months before you can do it. And once you have your house expanded, you can buy better furniture and start working on more item crafting stuff like forging...

Okay, let me rein in my fanboyishness a bit and come back to my point; These are all things that you can look forward to, they're little rewards for advancing in the game. (What the guys at Play This Thing call the "dopamine drip".) I think one of the real draws of the Harvest Moon series is that they give you all these possible goals, and some are more "important" than others in that they have more consequences on the game, but for the most part the player is free to assign whatever importance they wish to them.

[rhiamom]

Geez, and you guys make fun of us Sims 2 players? Get their needs up, send 'em to work, and they'll get promoted with a pay increase. Buy a skilling object like a bookcase or easel, make 'em use it, and they'll gain a skill level. 10 levels of 7 different skills, 10 levels of each job, wants and fears to fulfill or avoid, lifetime wants, plus all the social interactions to allow your Sim to meet, marry, and reproduce.

It's just a slightly different grind.

[John Evans]

Personally, I don't make fun of anything that makes as much money as The Sims. :P

[Andrea]

Sorry for the delay in responding, John... I'm still trying to wrap my mind around "farming sim plus killing monsters." Do you see a big difference between Harvest Moon's "grow an S-ranked yam in time for the festival" and WoW's "bring me ten rat tails"?

I agree there are some notable differences, mainly involving the player's experience of time and time-sensitivity, but those are pretty inherent to either game... and the basic challenges feel similar to me; the player can choose to take up either challenge, or choose not to. The rat quest will always be there, and there will be another festival along in a week or two.

[lieben]

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