celeste

The initial appeal for me was that I enjoyed harvest moon, except for how the old tech made the experience of playing it suck so bad, I couldn’t replay it. It was annoying doing any of the basic tasks like switching tools iirc. so there was a huge opening in the market for a new harvest moon that wasn’t annoying to play. And where you were allowed to be gay.

So the initial buzz came from that, imo. the people who wanted a new harvest moon game were like ‘wow, finally!’ and then word of mouth did its thing. these days, nostalgia for it specifically drives people back to play, along with extensive modding and occasional free updates keeping things fresh.

i think other people can explain better why the harvest moon formula itself is so appealing, but i just think it’s interesting how an indie game can get so popular by just being like "what if i made this big corporation game people want a new entry from, but fixed the stuff in it that sucks?’

I guess he canonically dies in a videogame, which is a reason they might not bring him back

https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/impact/why-the-r-word-is-the-r-slur

There’s a limit to how carefully you can word things to protect its meaning from people determined to read it in bad faith. I have it too - the desire to be long winded to preemptively protect myself from misunderstanding. But there’s a risk that we’ll turn everything we say into long blocks of soft useless mush. There’s no precision precise enough to be safe.

We have to, I think, decide to write for people willing to reach for us when we hold out a hand. There are enough willing to try that any general misunderstandings can be clarified with conversations other people can read if they want to understand. If enough of us are willing to do this for each other, it might be possible to build spaces where people who slap that outheld hand away don’t have to dictate conversation. And maybe we can both be less wordy.