Harvest Moon creator believes Farmville has helped Harvest Moon

Yasuhiro Wada believes the success of Farmville has helped grow the Harvest Moon fanbase.

The Harvest Moon creator freely admits that the farming simulator has always been something of a niche or cult favourite rather than a blockbuster, but told IGN that social gaming is changing that.

"I believe [Farmville has] helped by increasing the market," Wada said.

"In Japan, the latest Harvest Moon game released for the 3DS, and it's a huge success over there. It's because in Japan there's Farmville, but there are also a lot of other farming social games on their version of Facebook, Mixi.

"I believe the people that have played those games were more willing to go out and give Harvest Moon a shot this time around."

The Harvest Moon games don't include the social features of Farmville and its ilk, but do usually utilise a limited-actions-per-day system; unlike social games, you can simply send your farmer to bed for the night in order to keep playing.

During his time at Marvellous, Wada also co-created Deadly Premonition and later served a stint at Grasshopper Manufacture. He has since founded his own studio and plans to release a portable indie.