game and triple-A titles can even go into hundreds of developers, while small indie

teams consist of at least two developers more often than not.

However, it's very rare to encounter a bigger sized game where every single part is made

by only one person.

This is exactly the case with Stardew Valley though since all the art, music, sound effects,

dialogue and programming were done by Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe.

In 2011 Eric graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma with a computer-science

degree so afterwards he applied at a few places, did some interviews, but they never offered

him the job.

At that point he didn't really know what to do next.

Eric has always been into video games, drawing doodles, making music, and writing, but he

hadn't really considered combining all his hobbies to become an actual game developer.

Now that he was looking for a job he decided to give it a shot and develop his first game.

Eric figured he could get better at programming this way and improve his chances at scoring

a job.

Growing up he was encouraged by his father to play around with computers since his father

was a technical, logical person himself.

His mom on the other hand was more artistic and this gave Eric an insight into both worlds

from an early age.

In high school Eric kept himself busy playing guitar and even joined a couple of bands,

while also making music on the computer.

After school, he would work at a pretzel place where he would stand at a kiosk and draw little

sketches.

“I guess it's all just a lifetime of creating stuff.

I've always just enjoyed making things, and in the process of doing that I learned a lot

of skills.”

He's a huge fan of the farm simulation RPG series Harvest Moon so when Eric wanted to

make a quick little game to get familiar with game development, he decided to create a Harvest

Moon clone.

“I liked that you could have relationships with the townsfolk and even get married and

start a family.

That was something you couldn't do in most games I played as a kid and it made the experience

much more personal.

That you were living in a world that felt alive, time moved forward with or without

your input.”

According to Eric however, the series became progressively worse after Back To Nature so

he frequently searched for a fan-made or indie Harvest Moon clone, but he never found anything

that satisfied him, which compelled Eric to try making one himself.

Initially he was planning on releasing his fan-made project, back when it was still called

Sprout Valley, on Xbox Live Indie Games since anyone was able to publish a game on that

platform.

Eric figured he would work on the project for a few months, release it and move on.

Perhaps a few Harvest Moon fans would enjoy it and the game would look nice on his resume

for future job prospects.

However, once he started working on the game and his development skills improved, Eric

started seeing more possibilities.

He believed it could become a legitimate game and start his career as a real indie developer.

Eric didn't have a deliberate plan when working on Stardew Valley and would just follow

his intuition when it came to expanding the game.

He started with creating the player avatar and next he added a simple area that would

later become the player's farm.

After that, Eric added the basic farming mechanics.

Before he would add things like crops and minerals, he would do proper research on them

to accurately match their behaviors and scarcities in the game.

He applied this technique to the rest of the game: work on one part until it was about

80% done before he would add depth to it and move on to the next part.

In September 2012 Eric, now 24 of age, publicly announced the game on Steam Greenlight to

see if people would be interested in the concept behind Stardew Valley.

The announcement was accompanied with the first official trailer.

Eric had also set up a website to keep people updated on Stardew Valley's progression.

As mentioned before, he wanted to develop a Harvest Moon homage at first, but since

he decided to expand the scope of the project, Eric saw an opportunity to improve on one

of his favorite video game series.

"The gameplay in Harvest Moon was usually fun, but I felt like no title in the series

ever brought it all together in a perfect way.

My idea with Stardew Valley was to address the problems I had with Harvest Moon, as well

as create more 'purpose' with tried-and-true gameplay elements such as crafting and quests."

In February 2013, a couple of months after the Steam Greenlight announcement, it was

revealed that Stardew Valley would be published by Chucklefish, a development studio and publisher

that specializes in retro-style games.

Eric said that the offer came at just the right time, since he didn't want to put

the game on Steam Early Access.

“It seemed like nearly every indie game was doing Early Access at the time.

I wanted my game to stand out from the crowd, and I knew that many people were growing tired

of paying for unfinished products.

Furthermore, I felt that Early Access was better suited to very open-ended sandbox games,

but was not ideal for a game like Stardew Valley.”

The team at Chucklefish helped Eric with creating a brand new website, including a new, better

forum system.

In May 2013 Eric announced that Stardew Valley had been greenlit so now with the help from

a publisher and Steam's approval, nothing was holding Eric back from releasing his passion

project once it was ready.

Yet, it would take an additional three years before Stardew Valley would be released on

Steam.

Eric initially estimated that the game would be done somewhere before 2014, but in November

2013 he created a blogpost to let people know that he probably wasn't going to hit that

target.

He explained that although the game was “mostly done”, there was still a lot that had to

be finished before he was comfortable releasing Stardew Valley.

He would rather focus on developing a polished feature rich game than a rushed quick release.

The following years Eric would frequently blog about Stardew Valley's progression,

which kept people's interest in the game and also allowed fans to provide feedback.

While developing Stardew Valley was definitely Eric's main focus, he still needed a way

to earn some money to pay the bills.

Therefore, he worked part-time as an usher at Seattle's Paramount Theatre.

Fortunately, he was able to live together with his girlfriend Amber, who was a plant

biology graduate student.

A perfect situation for someone who's developing a farming simulator.

During its entire development, the game went through quite a lot of changes.

Eric's game development skills would greatly improve over time, which is why he decided

to redo some parts of the game several times over.

The character art especially took some time before he was happy with it.

“I put in thousands of hours on pixel art just to get better at it and better at it.

I just persevered and forced myself to learn.

You realize the thing that you thought was good actually isn't.

You realize why and you improve on it.

And that's just an endless cycle.”

All the artwork was done in Paint.NET, a free raster graphics editor program for Microsoft

Windows and all the programming was done in C# using the Microsoft XNA framework.

Eric used the audio software called Reason by Reason Studios, formerly known as Propellerhead

Software, to produce all the games' music and sound effects.

Eric was very excited that he was able to work on Stardew Valley as a solo developer.

He enjoyed the total freedom to implement whatever idea came to his mind and enabled

him to bring a cohesive vision to life.

He also didn't mind that he had to cover all the development aspects himself.

“I also enjoy all the aspects of making a game: coding, drawing, making music, and

writing…I would get bored doing just one thing all the time.”

It was very important to Eric that Stardew Valley was as open and accessible as possible

to a variety of players.

“If you want to raise 300 rabbits, you can.

If you want to invest in a huge field of crops with automated sprinkler systems, you can

do that too.

The gameplay is flexible and open.”

Another improvement over the Harvest Moon series that Eric wanted to include was an

endless stream of endgame content.

He said that most Harvest Moon games end after two in-game years of farming, so he designed

Stardew Valley in a way so that people can enjoy the game for as long as they want, even

after many in-game years.

Besides making the game as open as possible, Eric also aimed for a certain feel that he

wanted the game to represent.

A feel that was intrinsically tied to his own values in real life and those were sometimes

more important to him than expanding gameplay mechanics.

For instance, at one point during development, butchering animals was part of the gameplay.

Stardew Valley allows you to raise farm animals that produce useful products for the player

like eggs, milk and so on, but some beta testers requested the option to butcher the animals

and collect their meat.

Eric initially added the feature, but he eventually removed it again since it didn't feel right

to him.

“I didn't want to have that sort of violence.

You give the animals names, pet them, and a little heart goes above their head and stuff,

and then you butcher them?

It just felt wrong.

It didn't jibe with the feeling I was going for with the game, so I cut that, and I don't

regret it.”

While creating the world for Stardew Valley, Eric, an Auburn native, took some inspiration

from the area he grew up in.

Therefore, many items in the game are local to the Pacific Northwest, like salmonberries,

ferns and chanterelles.

“I've lived in the Pacific Northwest my whole life, so the feeling of this nature

is deeply ingrained in me.”

Eric has said that he wants the game to be fun, but to also have real-world messages.

The story for example clearly illustrates the fight against capitalism and the importance

of local communities.

This is further emphasized by Stardew Valley's many villagers that all have their unique

identity and throughout the course of the game they all go about their daily schedules.

Furthermore, the player is encouraged to interact with them by giving the villagers gifts so

they can unlock more of their storylines.

While for the most part the game has a general fun, uplifting theme, the villager's individual

storylines can get dark sometimes.

“People struggle with personal issues and I wanted to portray that.

I think it makes the characters a lot more relatable...not just these ideal abstractions

of people that are sometimes found in games.”

Eric wrote and rewrote hundreds of lines of dialogue for all the villagers which would

take him several months of work.

The villagers also have their own individual cutscenes which required extensive work and

testing as well.

Eric also considered what type of game he wanted Stardew Valley to be.

He wanted to go in a more zen, slower-paced direction, since he's not a fan of games

that encourage more clicking than anything else.

That's the reason why the cooking mechanic for example is meant to heal more of your

energy than regular uncooked products, as opposed to selling the cooked food for more

gold.

Eric wanted to avoid players feeling like they had to turn every ingredient into cooking

to maximize their profits, which would just end up in the player clicking more buttons.

According to Eric, a game like Stardew Valley is a lot more personal than a game made by

a hundred people that's some kind of focus-tested experience where they just want to make as

much profit as possible.

However, Eric kept his real life identity a secret for years and instead used his nickname

ConcernedApe whenever he communicated about Stardew Valley's progress on his blog.

He later said in an interview that he's an introvert and likes to keep to himself.

“I think for me I've always been kind of a lonely guy, kind of a hermit.

I keep to myself.

I don't really have that many friends, I don't go out much.

I'm an introvert.

Art is a way to connect with other people.

It's a way to communicate and for other people to see who I really am.

I think everyone wants to feel like they belong or that they can connect with society in some

way.

This is just my way of doing that.”

His hermit lifestyle and his immense dedication to Stardew Valley would eventually put strain

on his relationship with Amber, who would often remind Eric to eat and relax by watching

Star Trek together.

His busy schedule allowed little room for anything else in his life.

“When I'm deep into a project that's consuming my entire life, that's what makes

me feel the best.”

Not once during development did Eric ask anyone for help, not even on online forums.

He taught everything he needed to know himself, since he hates asking people for help.

He's proud of that achievement and didn't want to have a subconscious feeling of owing

someone else credit for a specific part of the game.