Harvest Moon Creator Doesn't Like Sequels

Kris Erickson • Mar 3, 2009 • Comments ()

And he’s one to talk. According to Wikipedia, the venerable Harvest Moon franchise is now on its 20th title, with the upcoming Sugar Village headed for the PSP later in 2009. What’s worse, the game hasn’t really changed substantially from one installment to the next. Harvest Moon games still revolve around the core elements of planting crops, harvesting vegetables, making money, and eventually marrying hotties from the village. Sure, Innocent Life threw some futuristic robotic trappings into the mix, and Rune Factory even added some light RPG combat, but by and large, the Harvest Moon of 2009 is the same as it was more than a dozen installments ago. It is hard to think of a game franchise – bar the Madden series – that suffers from ‘sequelitis’ quite as badly as the Harvest Moon games do.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Natsume boss Yasuhiro Wada said that game companies need to come up with some new ideas in order to keep gamers interested. "I think new IPs must keep coming, not only to give more variety to the gamer but also to keep the creative people creative. What is the point of having creative developers if they are just making existing games better and not thinking of new ideas?"

Despite the hypocrisy of his statement, we wonder whether he is unfairly singling out the sequel for hurting the game industry. After all, some of the best games ever made have been sequels: Metal Gear Solid 2, Super Mario Brothers 3, Call of Duty 4, Dragon Quest VIII, and so on. Sometimes it is better to improve on an existing idea, rather than come up with a totally unique game that may or may not work successfully. What do you think? Are sequels as big of a problem as Wada believes?