Why Stardew Valley’s Creator Hated His Game

this game sucks is exactly what went through Eric Baron's head just a few days before releasing his game stardew Valley Eric had spent the last 4 and 1/2 years working on it day and night entirely by himself and he hated it but it would near instantly become one of the most successful indie games of all time so how did something its creator hated do so well let's find out now making a game entirely by yourself is not easy you need to know how to code compose music make art and so much more so where did Eric learn all of these skills Eric's First Source of inspiration was his parents he describes his mom as a very artistic person while his dad is a more logical technical person Eric was very interested in computers as a little kid and his dad encouraged him to follow that interest they had a computer with the MS DOS operating system and Eric would begin to mess around with the B basic programming language at a young age his dad said that he'd give Eric five bucks if he could code a program that generates the Fibonacci sequence a task often given to most beginner programmers he tried to fool him by just printing out the sequence using a string which is essentially just writing the sequence manually rather than having the computer do the math so needless to say Eric did not end the day with $5 in his pocket but he didn't give up and would continue to learn programming in his free time time when Eric entered high school he got really into music likely thanks to his mom's artistic side he played guitar made music on his computer was in a metal band and later formed an experimental electronic pop band called 17 colorful [Music] feathers when they released an album online Eric wanted to include a game with it and made this the the official 17 colorful feathers adventure game if you get stuck the game's instructions tell you to message them on MySpace which well just make sure you don't get stuck in an interview with Eric he thinks that this game is pretty embarrassing now but for a random game made by a teenager for his band I think it's pretty cool Eric would soon get a job at ATI an the pretzel place and would draw stuff whenever things were slow once he graduated from high school he enrolled in a local community college and took his first actual programming class which he really enjoyed because of this he decided that he would go to school for computer science at the University of Washington Tacoma Eric was still working at anti ANS and based on this video he posted at the time you could tell he was having a great time I can't play the music for copyright reasons but it's that celebrate oh song I'm almost certain you've all heard it so I won't sing anymore but Eric would soon become very thankful that he still worked there as he would soon meet Amber hagaman a newly hired co-worker at anti ANS Amber was drawn to Eric's creativity and they soon began dating one of their common interests is that they both love the Harvest Moon video game franchise all of which are life simulation games where you inherit a small farm clean it up watch it grow make friends with the nearby Town citizens go fishing participate in festivals and really just live the lifestyle of a rural Farm owner Eric and Amber would spend date nights playing Harvest Moon Back to Nature passing the controller back and forth around the time Eric graduated from college things were getting pretty serious between the two and they moved in together to Eric's parents house until they could afford to move out with his brand new computer science degree Eric began applying for jobs but he wasn't having much luck during interviews he was always awkward and nervous and just really didn't do well something I and many of you watching can probably relate to All Too Well most job positions Eric could apply for were now filling up and he began thinking of ways he could improve his quickly shrinking odds he decided that he wanted to try making a video game he soon decided on making his own version of Harvest Moon Eric like many other fans had searched for years for a game that captured the magic of the early Harvest Moon games but nothing existed for a while he even role played on harvestcraft a fan-made Harvest Moon themed Minecraft server until at activity fizzled out the Harvest Moon series had fallen out of favor by most fans with the last few releases due to a copyright dispute that would double the video's length if I tried to explain it as well as a steep decline in quality like look at this what even is this why does this character not match any of the other Graphics in the game and the water in this river is Flowing sideways unironically Farmville looks better than this Eric told Amber that his game would take him about 6 months so he'd have a cool project on his resume once the next round of hiring started up as you now know his estimate wasn't even close over the next few months Eric would wake up make a cup of coffee head over to his computer and spend the rest of the day and night working on his game which he would call Sprout Valley although not for long as he'd Rebrand it to stardew Valley soon after now all developers also need a cool Alias to go by like how Marcus person the creator of Minecraft goes by Notch fans of stardew Valley may know that Eric decided un concerned ape but it wasn't his first choice originally he was going to go by the name and I'm not joking three piping hot Mouse and before you ask no he never explained why Eric took a pretty unique approach when it came to developing stardew Valley most Indie developers these days start with an engine built for making games like unity game maker or gdau But Eric truly wanted to build this game from the ground up using his knowledge of the Java programming language from college he taught himself C which he would code the game's engine in with the help of Microsoft's XNA framework XNA isn't a game engine but more of a set of tools to help developers make Windows and Xbox games it is much harder than using an actual engine in order to create pixel art he began reading about pixel art Theory and watch dozens of hours of YouTube tutorials he would then make every piece of art in the game by hand in a program called paint.net which I actually use for most if not all of the thumbnails on my RuneScape Channel there's my Shameless self-promotion for this video as you might have guessed Eric also composed every piece of music in the game in a program called reason with every aspect of the game as his skills improved he would go back and redo things the portraits of the game's towns folk for example were redesigned at least 10 times during development he'd lose entire days just fixing things he had made weeks ago Eric would also Jump Around quite a bit when it came to coding the game he'd build about 90% of a feature get bored and switch to something else some days he was extremely productive well others he got nothing done he'd sometimes waste days on 8 hour sessions of civilization old Final Fantasy games or just browsing Reddit when Amber got home he'd switch programs to make it seemed like he hadn't just spent all day slacking off but when he got an idea in his head of a feature he wanted to add to the game he'd work non-stop until he was happy with it it wasn't the most efficient way to make a game by any means but it worked for him now Eric's schedule didn't change much if at all every day since he was living rentree with his parents he didn't have to worry about money and by now had given up the job search entirely the fear of not finding a job was no longer the reason motivating him to make this game instead it was a different kind of fear he said I was afraid of the grind I was afraid of sitting in a cubicle and programming something I thought really boring and I wasn't passionate about I wanted something different and I wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted Eric wanted to make this work no matter the cost but living as a couple at your parents house isn't ideal and Eric and Amber soon wanted to move out together but you need money in order to do that something that the couple didn't have so Amber decided to get a job as a caretaker that she would do on weekdays after school and also got a second job working as a barista on weekends meanwhile Eric would continue just working on the game in their apartment now to most people this Arrangement sounds completely unfair and maybe even unrealistic but Amber didn't seem to mind she said when we were living at home it wasn't as hard and then when we moved out to Seattle the reality of having to support him became more real but it really wasn't a problem ever he was working so much that it was imp possible to be frustrated Eric would also pitch in in other ways like picking up the groceries and driving Amber to college in his beat up old Toyota Camry with a broken driver side door that may seem insignificant but remember this car for later in mid 2012 he felt as if he had done enough work to finally be able to show stardew Valley to the public and opened a website to document the game's progress he shared it on a harvest moon fan forum and many people there were instantly drawn to Eric's game as I mentioned earlier most of them had fallen out of love with the new Harvest Moon releases and stardew Valley looked really promising as Eric continued working stardew Valley would become all consuming 8h hour days of work turned to 10 and then 12 with an audience watching now Eric didn't want to disappoint Eric's family and girlfriend would begin asking him when the game would be done he'd say in 2 months 2 months would pass they'd ask again and his answer would be the same Eric said I had to prove that I wasn't just crazy that this wasn't just a pipe dream and that I was actually going to follow through on it that was really getting to me psychologically thinking about whether I was wasting my life wasting my time so part of my strategy was to convince the people around me that they should believe in me but that was difficult I was definitely embarrassed Eric's duties as a partner took the back seat and Amber began to feel quite lonely she was fully supporting someone who she barely interacted with every day she said that he would be working all day till 11:30 p.m. and I would be like hey you have to get off the computer you have to do something with me we have to eat dinner we have to watch an episode of Star Trek I needed more interaction with him although she was frustrated and misspending time with him she still believed in Eric's Vision in September of 2012 Eric thought that the game was nearly done he felt that if he needed to he could wrap it up in about 6 months so he submitted stardew Valley to Steam Greenlight a program where Indie developers could submit their games to steam steam users could then browse submissions vote on the ones they liked and those with the most positive votes would be listed on the steam store soon after posting it to Greenlight Eric received an interesting email from someone named Finn Bryce Finn is a British game developer who runs a company called chucklefish Finn made Eric an offer for 10% of the game's profits chucklefish would be stardew Valley's publisher their lawyers and PR staff would help Eric navigate the boring and complicated parts of making a game programmers would help him set up a better website and later on Port the game to other consoles this way he could focus all his energy on actually making the game itself chucklefish was also developing a game called Starbound which at the time had a huge amount of hype Eric thought that this could be his big break and for such a small cut he agreed on 17th 20133 stardew Valley was officially greenlit by the community the game would be coming to steam however Eric's estimation of the game being ready in 6 months was once again wrong he still had a lot more to do before he was satisfied even worse money was becoming tight by now most of their savings were gone and Amber was still in college so she could only work part-time Eric thought about putting the game on Steam Early Access meaning players could buy and play the game before it was finished but for a perfectionist like Eric that just wasn't an option so he got a part-time job as an usher at a nearby theater for a few hours a week making a game by yourself in your apartment for years is a really isolating experience so Eric enjoyed being around and interacting with people again even if he did feel a little embarrassed he said there were points when I was depressed and just thinking what am I doing I have a degree in computer science sence and I'm working a minimum wage job as an usher at the theater people would ask me do you do anything else and I said I'm making a video game I just felt embarrassed about it they must have thought oh this guy is a loser around this time he would get really anxious more and more people were getting excited about stardew Valley But Eric thought to himself I realized that it was crap and I needed to do something better like this wasn't going to be a big hit or anything he went back to the the Vicious Cycle of redoing old content cutting features and trying to improve the game the best he could but he still wasn't happy with it at the start of 2014 he realized something since starting work on stardew Valley he had never allowed himself to take a break so he decided that for the next month he would ignore stardew Valley entirely and make a little Android game on March 6th 2014 he released Air pair an endless Runner type game focused on a hoverboarding pair the game didn't do well in fact it's no longer on the Google Play Store and the experience made Eric realize that he doesn't want to make mobile games but it was a nice change of pace for a while he got back to work on stardew Valley and by 2015 once again felt like the game was nearly done but anxieties and Dread began to creep back in Eric had become sick of working on the game it had basically consumed his entire life for the last 4 years and he still had nothing to show for it even worse he still thought the game was terrible imagine playing the same game every day for 4 and 1/2 years all day I was just absolutely sick of it I was bored I didn't even have an objective Sense on if the game was good or not in fact I thought it was bad now on the bright side money problems were now easing up as Amber had since graduated from college and began work as a full-time lab technician they also moved into a house with two friends to get some more space and help ease Eric's Lon less by late 2015 the game was truly nearly done except for one feature multiplayer Eric had promised fans that multiplayer would be available by the time the game released but it was taking much longer to code than he hoped it was boring monotonous work and Eric hated it so he decided to break his promise it was time to give the people what they really wanted on January 29th 2016 Eric made an announcement stardew Valley would be out next month on February 26th and would only cost $15 he was actually in the home stretch now he spent the next month completely enveloped in his work day and night fixing bugs adding new content and just rushing to get things done chucklefish was able to help him through this last leg too they sent early game codes to journalist and twitch streamers who would not only drum up hype for the game but discover more bugs for Eric to patch a process that he was previously doing all by himself despite only three streamers being given codes the game quickly became one of the top games on Twitch and would frequently appear on the homepage but with all this work he didn't sleep for days then the evening before the game's launch disaster struck he had encountered a gamebreaking bug Eric doesn't remember what it was anymore but it was bad enough to send him into a panic he spent all night fixing it and fell asleep at his homemade standing desk early in the morning soon after he woke woke up from his nap it was time to release the game Eric Amber and their roommates gathered around the computer and waited for Eric to publish the game he still had that thought in the back of his head that the game was crap but luckily he was wrong the sales rolled in at an insane Pace it was an instant success Eric was hoping to sell maybe 10 or 20,000 copies at the most but by the end of the first 2 weeks he had sold 500,000 and dozens of perfect and Perfect reviews from major Publications were pouring in despite all his doubts and anxieties telling him otherwise Eric had created one of the best games of all time but Eric still wasn't done as sales continued to rise he would spend the next few weeks fixing every bug that popped up if a bug was so bad that it broke a player save file he would personally fix it for them seeing players have issue with the game really affected him and he felt like he them Solutions as soon as possible he was now working about 15 hours a day much more than before the game launched but really it was all worth it by April sales hit 1 million but then Eric broke about halfway through 2016 Eric just couldn't do it anymore after nearly 5 years of non-stop work he needed a big break he had started on the multiplayer mode but it was beyond monotonous so for the first time ever he got help chucklefish offered to task one of his its programmers with making the multiplayer mode and Eric accepted after a long break full of alcohol a plant that you can't grow in stardew Valley and ashwaganda he got back to work creating new content and expansions for the game fast forwarding a bit stardew Valley has since sold over 30 million copies and has been ported to any gaming platform you can think of Eric is now a millionaire multiple times over but hasn't let the money change him 6 months after the game's launch with $12 million in his bank account he still chose to live in that house with Amber and his two friends rather than buying his own and he drove his beat up old Toyota Camry with a broken door until it finally gave out he kept it as long as he could but the final straw was water leaking into the cabin causing fungus to grow all over the steering wheel which honestly just sounds like a scenario straight out of the world of stardew Valley speaking of which he hasn't forgotten about his game stardew Valley is still receiving massive amounts of new free content every year and Eric makes frequent appearances on the game subreddit he send parted ways with chucklefish as well due to a number of controversies coming out of the studio but has thankfully hired his own team to help him expand and maintain stardew Valley Eric also got to meet the creator of Harvest Moon yasahiro wada wada played stardew Valley for the first time gave it a ton of praise and even signed Eric's old SNES copy of the original Harvest Moon Eric has since started work on another game called Haunted chocolate here although he's keeping the details about the game mostly Under Wraps but he's making it the same way he made stardew Valley alone but just because he's doing it alone doesn't mean he's lonely as Amber is still with him by his side to this day Eric's story is an inspiration to everyone out there that with enough persistence you can truly accomplish whatever you want in life but also a warning that if you let it it can be allc consuming to the detriment of yourself and especially those around you

Channel: Nello

Views: 266,340

Keywords: Stardew Valley, Eric Barone, ConcernedApe, Haunted Chocolatier, Video Game History, Video Game Documentary, Chucklefish, Gaming History, Nello, Video Game Historian, Indie Games, Indie Game, 17 Colorful Feathers

Id: v0OsW8HSqA8

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024