Rinde said, advertising has been limited to farming publications, but the game cracked 's top 10 list of best-selling new software within weeks of its release.ĭestineer may have found a niche. In addition to appearing in Wal-Mart and Target stores, it will be sold at John Deere dealers and at toy stores that carry die-cast models of John Deere equipment. Rinde said that a large segment of the game's market would be farm-equipment aficionados, and that these consumers might revolt if it made, say, the 1750 six-row planter look like the 856 six-row cultivator. As part of its licensing agreement, the company, based in Moline, Ill., was allowed to review the game to ensure that its tractors and combines were rendered accurately. Deer Hunter sold five million copies, a phenomenal showing for a PC game designed to appeal to a pickup truck crowd.ĭeere & Company also took a role in the design. At first, the game was sold exclusively at Wal-Marts, where shoppers looking for fishing rods or rifle scopes made the straightforward shoot'em-up a surprise blockbuster. Rinde helped create one of the first broad-appeal hits in 1997: Deer Hunter. In a previous job at WizardWorks, a software distributor that is now part of Infogrames, Mr. ''So we just kind of put 2 and 2 together and said, 'Nobody's done a really good farming simulation.'''
''There's a huge audience in America that's involved with agriculture, and there's a huge audience for simulations,'' Mr. But Paul Rinde, chief executive of Destineer Publishing, says John Deere American Farmer is ''what I would call a broad-appeal game.'' Destineer, based in Plymouth, Minn., publishes the game under its Bold Games brand. The game isn't the first for the PC to focus on farming - SimFarm by Electronic Arts, for example, came out in the early 90's.
In real life, the only option may be bankruptcy in John Deere American Farmer, a computer farming simulation geared toward rural gamers, a simple click of the restart button does the trick.
A blistering summer or sudden price plunge can doom a farm that's already mired in debt, having spent a fortune on equipment and seeds. AGRICULTURE is a brutal industry, given the vagaries of both the weather and the commodities markets.
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