Stardew Valley was released in 2016. My understanding is it took 10 years to make (Eric Barone worked at a movie theater, and when he wasn’t at work he was working on the game) and he’s been supporting and releasing new content for the game for 8 years now. The Wiki pages for the characters contain the artwork for the characters he’s drawn, and redrawn, and redrawn over the years.
He basically won the cozy farming genre, it’s time to move on, for his own health if nothing else.
If he is enjoying his work and able to continue living as he is doing it, then why must he “move on”? Why can’t he continue to make content for Stardew? Why are you thinking he is “unhealthy”?
He seems very happy to keep working on it and he’s bringing on help as he needs. He’s even taking breaks from other project to prevent burnout. Seems like he’s practicing good balance. Why does someone need to move on from a passion project they’re approaching with a level head and have invested their career in?
Terraria was released in 2011, and still gets free updates with similar frequency to Stardew. Minecraft alpha was released in 2010.
Sure, Eric won the cozy farming genre. He is also clearly passionate about the game. Maybe looking out for his own health is exactly why he continues to dabble with the game.
I wouldn’t go as far as masterpiece but indeed the music is very important. The best Final Fantasy, in my opinion, have OST composed by Nobuo Uematsu, a musical genius, for example. And they wouldn’t be as good without his work.
That’s how I feel about RuneScape! I don’t find it a particularly fun game, but the music is so great and iconic and fits the game so well, I hear it and want to play.
nail those 3 things and don’t fuck up anything else, and people will throw money at your game, because the rest of the industry seems to refuse to provide games that are simply enjoyable without trying to turn you into a dairy cow.
At this point they should just hold on to all the updates they want to add, and make it a sequel. I love all the things that they’ve added and it’s clearly a piece of passion, but at some point they’re going to need to publish something else
This reminds me of the new game Andrew Gower and his brothers have been working on, Brighter Shores. It’s a pure passion project based on a from scratch game engine that was created to make programming (even massively) multiplayer online games much easier.
The goal isn’t profit but rather, to have fun, and make a cool enjoyable game. He’s said they’ve made more than enough money from the sale of Jagex and RuneScape back in the day (which FWIW, he regrets that sale and a lot of what has happened at Jagex/to RuneScape).
I love to see game developers (and people in general that … “make it” and then go “you know what, I do have enough”).
I never thought about it like that. If he makes an average of just $0.50 per sale after all the storefront fees and taxes and stuff, he would still have enough money to pay himself $200,000 a year for an entire lifetime, just from the sales he’s already made. No wonder he’s so chill about keeping the game updated for free. What an awesome guy
He has hired a few contractors to help build out features like co-op, (though the first few versions were entirely him on his own). That would eat into profits a bit, but even if he paid each of them $100k for their work there are few enough for it to be a drop in the bucket
I thought $0.50 was low for this math to work out, but turns out 30 million copies of Stardew Valley have been sold, so that’s $15 million, which over 60 years is $250k/year.
Still though I have no clue if $0.50 is normal take home per copy sold for a self published game (it seems low), but I’m very happy he’s doing well for himself and hopes he makes more per copy sold. I’ve bought the game 4 times, so I’m doing my part!
Yeah, I chose $0.50 as an absurdly low assumption, because while the game nominally sells for $15, I don’t know anything about costs involved. A quick google search says his net worth is somewhere around 30-45 million dollars, which is about twice what I estimated. Which most people would use as an excuse to sell the game to Microsoft and retire forever, but Eric Barone is too good for that. I just realized I only own the game on mobile and xbox. Reckon I might buy it on PC next paycheck
Read a book that goes over the development of Stardew written by Jason Schreier and covered Eric a good bit.
The dude was was worth multi millions shortly after Stardew had launched and it hadn’t even occurred to him to buy a new car. Jason hung out with him and watched him climb over the seat to get into the drivers seat of his car because the door was broken. Then at some point Jason asked him how it felt to be a famous developer and Eric basically just said he didn’t care about the fame and actually didn’t want it. He just wanted people to enjoy what he made.
Saying Stardew Valley is a passion for Eric is an understatement. By the time he finished the game, he basically hated working on it. And ever since its launch, he’s worked on it for no reason other than to make a better game.
Eric Barone is a shining light in an industry of constant shame.
The cozy-game genre specifically is a relatively recent category, even if there are plenty of older games that could fit into it.
It definitely isn’t a term you would have seen back when Stardew Valley was released.
And then it says the reason that Hades 2 has resource gathering is because stardew valley influenced it…
That’s not how you should read this section of the article.
Though Stardew Valley did not invent the farming genre – and obviously took a lot of inspiration from Harvest Moon – it certainly triggered the avalanche of similar farming games that followed. On top of that, numerous games have farming and other life sim elements in them now, regardless of genre.
“On top of that” phrasing implies they are making a separate point.
Just to add support to your point, it’s literally in The Official Stardew Valley Cookbook that the inspiration comes from Harvest Moon. He’s not at all claiming to have invented anything. ConcernedApe is a humble treasure.
(I just finished reading the cookbook is why I pulled that information from there. I’m sure there’s lots of other places where he said that.)
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