Despite having Game Pass for more than a year, there’s very little I’ve actually played from it. Sea of Thieves has been the main contributor for play time from it, with Zoo Tycoon, Gears 4, and State of Decay 2 seeing varying levels of usage from it. The latest game to be played from the service is Farming Simulator 2017. But that latest could have been ten months earlier when I’d found my latest hook in gaming. Let me explain that.

In 2015 I had bought GTA V on PC, with a push from my sister and a friend, and jumped straight into the online, where I spent a lot of time creating races as well as driving across routes of many others. To go with this, I had taken an interest in looking on Youtube for other races I could play. One of those places I stumbled upon was Smosh Games with their Grand Theft Smosh series. The other was the Yogscast main channel, which my sister had sent a video from, of the Biking on Water Ragequit Races video.

You might be wondering what this has to do with being encouraged to get into Farming Simulator 2017, but the story continues with a newfound fascination with the content of the Yogscast, or at least the GTA videos.

Soon after I added Hat Films to those channels from the Yogscast network I watched, and through Hat Films I started to move on from just the GTA content. Not long after that, I started doing the same on the main channel, as well as venturing through the other channels to see what they offered. Come to near the end of 2018, where as well as being a near daily watcher of both the main channel and Hat Films, I’d been looking at the videos ThatMadCat put out relating to the livestreams the Yogscast network hosted on Twitch.

That entire side of things I had avoided, as the only livestreams I had watched were those relating to events – such as E3, Star Wars Celebration, and even Summer of Sonic 2013. I was willing to commit for an event, but not really for anything else. Then came the Jingle Jam. ThatMadCat had put out a video of why you should watch Jingle Jam 2018, using content from all the previous years the Yogscast Christmas Livestreams had taken place. It was this that I felt would be a good entry point for general livestreams.

On the first of December I watched the entire first day in full, and was enjoying myself. The second day I only watched the opening stream, but the third day was another full day. I loved seeing the Yogs out and about looking around the Christmas markets of Bristol, but I loved watching them feed a cow for Christmas more.

The final livestream of day three had Lewis, Duncan, and Sjin play Farming Simulator 2019, working the fields from nothing in order to buy and feed some cows within the game. As I watched, I liked what I was seeing. The freedom to do whatever you wanted in a rural farming community.

As I continued to watch, I was looking the series up. I saw that there was one game on Game Pass. Farming Simulator 2017. I could have downloaded and started playing the next day, but I was on the fence about it. I’d enjoyed watching the stream, but would I also enjoy the game if I was playing? Despite it being available through Game Pass throughout the entire month, I still didn’t take the plunge in downloading it, and soon after the start of the new year, I forgot about the urge to play it. Until recently.

It’s now getting to the point where it will be one year since I first started watching the livestreams. While I haven’t been uber dedicated to watching every single one, I have made time to watch a few favourites live. And since it is nearing one year since I first started watching the livestreams, I wanted to rewatch those that first introduced me to them. Which is how I was reliving that opening day of Jingle Jam 2018 on the ending Sunday of September, the day two and three opening streams on the Monday, as well as the Bristol Christmas markets stream.

Then it came to Wednesday, and rewatching Feed a Cow For Christmas. All the memories from all those days came back to me as I watched – including the want to be playing a Farming Simulator game. So on the same day, I finally checked Game Pass to see if the 2017 game was still there, and in just the three days since I started playing have racked up over ten hours within the game.

The hook of the game, like most business simulation games, is to make money and stay away from bankruptcy. What I feel makes Farming Simulator different from most business simulations is the lack of urgency required to manage things. With other examples, money is used and earned quickly, with the sense that if you don’t develop new things within your field and attract new customers, there won’t be any advancement to the amount of money you can make.

With Farming Simulator, you can take things at a slow pace, relax as you plough a field or sow some crop, just enjoying the sounds and sights of nature. You can tend your own farm, or hire some helpers to tackle the jobs in case you feel you’ll make a mess of things. There’s still monetary value to be aware of – earning money is still a thing – but you never feel in danger of losing everything because of one bad decision, or spending months upon in-game months trying to recoup lost money from that bad decision.

While you set your own helpers to work, you can also help the other farmers around with their fields, learning and earning, and working on a bond that will reduce the cost of their fields should you wish to expand.

But even these can be done at your own pace – whether you travel from farm to farm tackling every mission you can find, or just taking one mission at a time every once in a while. You don’t even need to be entirely accurate or completely hit every spot to pass the mission, so these make a good place to start if you want to improve your own skills at operating the machinery.

2017 doesn’t feel as refined as how 2019 looked, but it’s still a good game that you can lose yourself to. I’ve already started looking at how the series has progressed, and to those games coming in the future. I have my eye on what becomes of the Switch version of Farming Simulator 2020, but I don’t think it will be as fully featured if it’s based on the mobile versions. It might just be that I go straight to 2021, but no matter which I go for next, I will always remember how I was first introduced to this series.

The Yogscast have been a part of my journey for four years, giving me plenty of laughs and a whole heap of entertainment. Last year, they introduced me to gaming personality livestreams, and this year I am ready to once again join the Jingle Jam for an adventure of Christmas spirit and holiday cheer. And hopefully another round of both Christmas markets and feeding a cow for Christmas.

Images Taken From:
GTA V Online – Biking On Water (Ragequit Races) YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon YouTube channel
FEED A COW FOR CHRISTMAS … YOGSCAST JINGLE JAM – 3rd December 2018 Yogscast Live YouTube Channel
Farming Simulator 17 (Original Screenshots)