MARVELOUS EUROPE RE:NEWAL


The publisher once famed for the Harvest Moon games has rebuilt itself, with a new team working to new values in pursuit of new developer relationships. Richie Shoemaker sits down with Marvelous Europe’s Marc Melton and Sarah Burns for a recap, and to see where the story goes next


T


he UK subsidiary of Marvelous Inc. has endured - or perhaps enjoyed - something of a renovation over recent years. Established more than a decade ago, the publisher happily


remains synonymous with Story of Seasons (nee Harvest Moon), but has sought to distance itself from what our in-house expert Vince Pavey calls its “pervy anime” past. It’s not a transformation that’s quite total, given that a number of games that Marvelous publish retain much the same aesthetic, but it’s actually been quite a fundamental if fragmentary shift. “There’s been a lot of changes, different decisions and a new team


built over the last three years,” says managing director Marc Melton, who joined when Marvelous was just as well known for its lecherous anime games as for its family-friendly life sim series. As a product mix it was not a good look, or one that was likely to age well. “Marvelous had gone down a certain direction, and it wasn’t


working as well as perhaps Japan wanted it to,” he says diplomatically. “I felt, from working elsewhere, that the product portfolio and the resources to support that product portfolio wasn’t quite fit for purpose for where we wanted to go.”


46 | MCV/DEVELOP October/November 2022


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60