Stardew Valley creator on the game's music, and fan pressure
He just can't stop
Switch fans are still eagerly awaiting the console release of Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update. In the meantime, the game’s creator ConcernedApe took part in an interview with Aftermath, to discuss just how big Stardew Valley has become, and what motivates his continued work on it.
One of the bigger offshoots of the game is Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons, an ongoing concert tour featuring orchestral renditions of the game’s score. According to ConcernedApe, that music is really the entire reason for the game’s being. Originally, he dreamed of being solely a musician, but turned to video game development after struggling to achieve that goal.
“I wanted to make music and somehow have a career making music. I would have been happy with any form that took, but when I was in high school, my original dream was to be in a band and go on tour and play shows. Little dingy venues – that would have been awesome. But I quickly realized that’s not an easy thing to materialize. So then I shifted into electronic music, and I would have been happy if I could have been successful just online doing that. But that also didn’t work out. So eventually, I finally got the music out by making a video game. I’m happy now because I still get to make music and have it be part of something that people are interested in and want to listen to.”
ConcernedApe also commented on the amount of new features available in Version 1.6 of Stardew Valley. After all these years, he could easily step back and only release smaller updates while working on new projects. So, why does he continue to release such large updates? The answer apparently, is that he just can’t help himself:
“It wasn’t something that was necessarily planned. I was like ‘I can’t just release a technical update, because if I say there’s a new Stardew Valley update, and there’s literally no new content, I feel like people will be disappointed.’ So at first it was just the Desert Festival, but I have this problem where once I start, I can’t stop. I’m thinking ‘Oh, this isn’t enough. It’d be really cool to add this. I would love to add this.’
I feel responsible for any issues that people have, or if anyone doesn’t enjoy the game or has a bad time. It’s not only with Stardew Valley, but anything related to Stardew Valley: the merchandise, the board game, the concert – anything like that.
Once I reopen the book on Stardew, I always have a hard time closing it again because I always want to add more things, make it better, make it cooler, make people happy. It’s exciting. Every single thing I’m adding, I’m thinking about how people are going to play this and talk about it and love it. It’s gonna be part of their experience. It could make a memory that they might cherish forever. That’s a special thing. It’s hard for me to not want to do that.”
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