Are you excited to learn some things about Farming Simulator 17?
I hope you are excited to learn about Farming Simulator 17 from me, a person who has never played a Farming Simulator game, and for whom all news about this franchise is both charming and baffling. I sat for fifteen minutes today in a lightning-speed Farming Simulator 17 preview and I am about to convey as much of the information that I learned as I can to you, the interested consumer. Are you ready?
Okay, here is fact number one: Farming Simulator now has LADIES in it. You can be a woman farmer. According to the developer Giants Software, Farming Simulator is now mainstream, and it therefore requires the range of customization options its diverse audience expects. “We’ve got quite a mass market audience now, the last version sold 5 million times, and we’ve got kids, [and] older people,” they told us– as well as all the old hardcore players, many of whom are actually farmers. There are also a lot of “casual simulation players” checking out Farming Simulator now. The people demand to be a lady!
Fact number two: you can now grow a wider range of crops! When I asked myself this morning, “what will I see at the demo of Farming Simulator 17?” I answered to myself, “Probably a crop,” and boy, was I right — there are several new crops in Farming Simulator 17, most notably sunflowers, which track the movement of the sun across the sky. Another major new crop is one which American fans of the series have apparently been clamoring for for a long time. “I am actually from Germany,” the Giants representative told us, “And apparently here in the US, it’s quite popular! It’s soybeans,” he said. Then he drove a truck up to a field of soybeans so that we could see them.
Kris: Are these soybeans? I can’t tell, I’m from California, help
At this point in the demo I was getting very into the whole idea and ethos of Farming Simulator, so I said “Yeah,” out loud, and nodded vigorously. I have no meaningful knowledge about actual or simulation farming of any kind, but I was pleased that our American crops are finally making an appearance in this mainstream staple. I am also pleased that Farming Simulator will now add more of America itself to the game — namely, Washington state. There’s a new map that lets you farm in Washington! Good!
Because I was not previously aware of any facts surrounding the Farming Simulator franchise at all, I learned during the press meeting that Farming Simulator has dedicated servers where people farm peacefully together, and that this is good and popular, and kind of a lot of people do it. I learned that Farming Simulator 17 will have these online dedicated farm-servers again on PC, and that console version will have a multiplayer co-op mode limited to six people.
At this point during the press meeting I was feeling extremely unprepared and silly. Here was a whole world of farming facts I had never known; there are whole legions of these people constantly farming on dedicated farm servers which run 24 hours a day. I began to feel even sillier and less-prepared when Giants started to talk about the heavy machinery available in these games. I would say that they are the stars of our game,” the fellow from Giants said. “Players know them very well so they need to be quite detailed.” He teleported over to a parking lot filled with gigantic trucks and started listing off the names of various important tractor manufacturers which The People demand to have in Farming Simulator 17.
Some of the machines he showed us were fairly recognizable to me — tractors and trucks and stuff — but others had strange blades and rakes and scoops and spiralling screws of death attached to the front “And this is a giant potato harvester,” said the Giants representative, pointing at a truck that looked like it could disassemble a live human even if they were actively attempting to escape. You can now lease this equipment in-game, instead of buying it outright, and you can also repaint many of them and customize their tires and other features in different ways. You can also turn on a very large number of blinking machine alarm lights. Every machine now has “more dynamic lights than Farming Simulator 16 had. basically an unlimited number of dynamic lights in the game,” we learned.
Another new thing: trains. I was not aware of this previously, but Farming Simulator games already have logging in them, and logging equipment, and trees to log, so Giants has added trains that you can use to drive the logs around the maps. They told us that they expect “some people will just drive around in the train and others will come unload the goods.” This struck me as kind of an adorable image. If you ever buy Farming Simulator 17 and become a full-time train-driver, please tell me about it.
Farming Simulator mods are apparently very popular, and Farming Simulator 17 will introduce a Mod Hub in the game. Consoles are also getting access to the mods, and will have a mod browser of their own avaialble at launch. “We will also have a modding event next month in Germany actually where we will invite over 100 modders,” the Gians rep told us. They’ll use this event to teach them how to convert their mods to the new game so that large number of mods will be available immediately at launch.
Look: I knew nothing about Farming Simulator before, and now I know quite a lot, and it honestly sounds extremely charming and even cute. If you ever want someone to drive a train repeatedly around a far picking up logs from forestry sites and soybeans from your soybean-farms, get in touch with me — I am willing to try anything once, and this weird little universe of flashing alarm lights and deadly potato harvesters sounds like something I should probably give a try to.
