Just wanted to highlight Brandon Sheffield's interview with Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada over at Gamasutra, which talks about why the farming sim and other of Wada's games are so relatively... humanistic? Is that the right word? Witness the following discussion:

"Brandon Sheffield: 'It almost reminds me of... many traditional RPGs begin with the hero losing his memory. But in this case, he has lost something which he does remember. Like, "Your parents are dead, and you're going to see your grandfather," or, "Your grandfather lost his farm, and you have to get it back." It seems like it always begins from a point of hardship, and I wonder why it's always focused on family first.'

Yasuhiro Wada: 'Think about what it's like if you went through a loss of someone in your family. But here in this game, I want people to be able to get it back. As I said before, if you were happy in the beginning, there wouldn't be any story. So the main goal is, maybe you start from a loss, something really hard, but you can become happy in the end.'"

There's even a curiously ecological, personal bent to the game series, as Wada explains later in the interview: "I'm not pushing to go back to the countryside life. I want to tell people that you need to take care of nature and the forest, and since everybody's going to the cities, there's no one in the countryside, and nobody is taking care of nature." Isn't it refreshing to hear about games and game concepts that aren't just 'kill the bad guys, get the girl'?

[UPDATE: Oh yes, and the extract we used for the news story was also interesting: "Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada has been discussing games he would like to create in the future, saying that he'd "love to make [a game like] Spore", and expressing interest in a game where "new stuff is going to be created again and again".]