Harvest Moon’s Yasuhiro Wada on the PS3, Wii, DS, and the PSP
Harvest Moon creator, Yasuhiro Wada was able to sit down with ComputerAndVideoGames and when asked what his goal is when he makes Harvest Moonover the years, noted that from the start it’s been all about giving players freedom within a set structure. He expounds:
It’s become more complicated and bigger. But what I have really been trying to do is give increasing amounts of freedom to the player, and allow them to do whatever they want to do. If you give the player too much freedom it can blur the line between the real world and the game world. I’ve always aimed to give the player freedom, but at the same time this freedom has to be controlled by very simple, easy-to-understand rules within a structured game system.
When asked about what the differences are between the DS and PSP he notes that it’s also really dependent on what players want to get. He says: “It’s down to choice. Players who want to play existing games with better graphics will choose PSP, but those who want to be surprised by new things would prefer DS.”
More to harvest after the jump!
Harvest Moon creator, Yasuhiro Wada was able to sit down with ComputerAndVideoGames and when asked what his goal is when he makes Harvest Moon over the years, noted that from the start it’s been all about giving players freedom within a set structure. He expounds:
It’s become more complicated and bigger. But what I have really been trying to do is give increasing amounts of freedom to the player, and allow them to do whatever they want to do. If you give the player too much freedom it can blur the line between the real world and the game world. I’ve always aimed to give the player freedom, but at the same time this freedom has to be controlled by very simple, easy-to-understand rules within a structured game system.
When asked about what the differences are between the DS and PSP he notes that it’s also really dependent on what players want to get. He says: “It’s down to choice. Players who want to play existing games with better graphics will choose PSP, but those who want to be surprised by new things would prefer DS.”
When asked why the Wii was his console of choice for the next Harvest Moon, he responded that it was simply because the types of people who are into the Wii are the typical target user for games like Harvest Moon.
He notes that when it comes to hardware terms and he were to choose a platform for the best playability of Harvest Moon, he’d choose a PC, and that’s because the platform allows them to create the game as high-spec as possible. Moreover if he were to make a Harvest Moon game for a high-spec platform, say the PS3, he says that he’d take advantage of the extra processing power by increasing interactivity. He expounds: “One example I will give you is that, at the moment, a player can only cut down a tree. But they cannot cut down a single branch. I would like to build a game with that level of interactivity.”
Unfortunately he notes that he has no plans at the moment of doing anything on the PS3. He emphasizes that he’d rather stick with Nintendo right now. Here’s his words: “Nintendo as a company has been very good to me, always very helpful, friendly and supportive, and that’s another reason why we chose to stick with Nintendo and develop a game on Wii”
While some of us here at QJ have disagreements with what he said about the PSP only having “existing games” – because we believe that new input methods aren’t a requisite for new game genres – we can’t argue with his loyalty to Nintendo. Hey, he’s been treated well, you can’t blame the guy.
Via CVG