Stardew Valley (Patreon)

Stardew Valley: The Story of Eric Barone (ConcernedApe)

Faced with the prospect of getting a boring job in a cubicle, Eric Barone rebelled. He decided to make his own video game instead. Four years later, the world fell in love with Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley is one of those big hits that nobody (well, almost nobody) saw coming - in the space of a few weeks in 2016, the game exploded in popularity as everyone fell in love with the world that Eric Barone created. Just as an aside, I (BretonStripes) take no responsibility for any mispronounciation of names - it was Kotor's responsibility to research interview footage as a reference point this time (it's normally me and I still butcher them sometimes!). It's interesting to see just how much of Eric's personal story is reflected in Stardew Valley. It's clear that themes of avoiding the corporate slog were fresh in his mind throughout development, and it makes it all the more impressive that the game has become such a success without any of the typical corporate involvement that accompanies big games. There's something very romantic about the idea of a lone developer working on their passion project without interference - we know that this game and its development provided some amazing inspiration for other developers (we'll be tackling the indie game Ooblets next time as a kind of sequel to this video). That said, the moral of this story isn't necessarily "quit your dayjob without a backup plan", while that works for some people (Kotor in particular) it's not necessarily right for all. Instead, the lesson to take away here is that in order to succeed, you need to look at your life and find what really makes you happy. Eric Barone wanted freedom from the daily grind, and that's what he achieved. You can achieve your goals too, whatever they might be, so long as you're willing to work on them and sacrifice where necessary. Speaking of sacrifice, Eric's girlfriend Amber is clearly the real hero of this story. There's not a lot of information available about her online, so we've deliberately avoided delving too deep into her own backstory as that's clearly not something she's interested in, but there is a great first-hand account from Eric about how important Amber was to the development of the game, which we'll link below. Anyway, thank you so much for all of your support, comments, and feedback. We're trying hard to make these videos more regularly, and while we might fall down, we're always eager to share these with you. Every thumbs-up and comment and share really helps us grow. Thank you for being amazing! If you'd like to support us further, there's always Patreon: http://patreon.com/videogamestorytime Next time (hopefully next week, but it might be a bit delayed) will be Ooblets, a game that's not out yet, but that we came across while researching Stardew Valley, and we just fell in love with the lead developer's story. You might have seen it recently at the XBox conference at E3. In the meantime, keep being awesome! Thanks, BretonStripes and Kotor Research for this video: http://www.vulture.com/2016/03/first-time-developer-made-stardew-valley.html http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/267563/The_4_years_of_selfimposed_crunch_that_went_into_Stardew_Valley.php http://kotaku.com/stardew-valley-s-creator-has-won-the-hearts-of-pc-gamer-1762636730 http://steamed.kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-stardew-valley-1766238624 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceFR8--6Obo Music: Drankin Song by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/