Your Favourite Game Developer

Spoiler alert, the last entry in a few days in this challenge is going to be Stardew Valley, I'll explain why in greater detail when that post rolls around. It's necessary to give that spoiler now though because Stardew Valley was developed by Eric Barone also known as ConcernedApe and he is my favourite game developer.

It would be difficult to write this post without acknowledging just why Stardew Valley isn't covered in great depth.

I want to shift focus instead to Eric himself and his approach to development. He is an Indie game developer - independently developing games rather than developing them for a studio. Prior to Stardew Valley he only made one game that was released publicly called 17CF Quest which was a point and click adventure aimed at promoting his band at the time, it wasn't great and he admits that. He wanted to develop his skills as a game developer however and started out programming in C# with XNA Studio and Stardew Valley was born.

The development process was long, guarded, and very little was shared with the public beyond a few screenshots and a few videos which you can still find on his YouTube channel, along with a rather depressing video where he's sitting in the stock room of the retail job he worked at the time looking miserable. I've mentioned Shane as a character from Stardew Valley previously in this challenge, and that video gives off Shane energy.

Fast forward to the present day and one thing is clear, Eric as a developer is committed to the community that sprouted around his game. He has engaged with them in the Reddit community, engaged with content creators that focus on the game, and gone on to create extended media and experiences that relate to it, including a board game, and Stardew Valley In Concert, an orchestral experience where people got to see the soundtrack to the game performed by an orchestra on stage.

Eric is currently developing a much anticipated follow-up to Stardew Valley called Haunted Chocolatier, which is set in the same universe but isn't connected to the first game. The premise of the new game will see the player run a Chocolatier Store with the aid of ghosts as companions. The art style looks similar to Stardew Valley but with a noticeable shift towards the narrative as a focus rather than the core mechanics of the first game.

As with the development of Stardew Valley, very little information is known about the game at this point. A trailer has been released, some screenshots, and a few blog posts on Eric's website detailing progression of the development process. Stardew Valley wasn't just an indie game development process, Eric created the whole thing from scratch with assistance only needed for the networking components of the miltiplayer functionality. Everything else came his creative vision, from the story, art, music, and programming. He has stated he wants to continue that trend with Haunted Chocolatier, but that he's unlikely to be so militant in insisting it's a solo development throughout the entire project.

The reason Eric is my favourite game developer is first and foremost because he has clearly devoted a lot of his life to his games and it shows. It's also quite clear that's not motivated by greed or chasing profits which I will mention in greater detail when I cover Stardew Valley in its own post.