Ok, I've been playing harvest moon on a GBA Emulator. Addicting as hell. If anyone reading this has ever played harvest moon you would probably know how incredibly tedious it is to water and harvest crops everyday; Especially if there a lot of them. I was also playing minecraft where you can farm as well. But, in minecraft you can make contraptions that will automatically farm for you but failed to be a challenge as the farm contraptions could be built easily and as soon as you build them farming is not hard at all and you don't have to bother with it anymore.

Now, here is my game idea (completely non-commercial). You would start off in the game a lot like harvest moon is. Nothing apart from a bit of money to buy your first seeds. After a while an engineer comes into town. You can give him some money to buy parts to build your own machine or pay him to make you one altogether.
You buy a weak engine, wheels, and a basket.
Now you have your very own moveable harvest thing type thing! It means you no longer have to go back and forward to put crops in a food bin but instead you drive the machine to the field, put all the crops in the basket and after you're finished you drive the machine to the food bin and put each crop in the bin.
After you get a lot more money you can afford a motor for the front of the machine and a knife which you super glue to the motor (safety first). Now the machine harvests and drops the crops in the basket on top of the machine. But, you still have to drive back and forward to the food bin.

After you get more and more money you can purchase a conveyor belt! The conveyor belt is close to the field and moves crops from the field to the food bin. But, you still have to remove each crop from the basket into the conveyor. Now what happens is an Electronic Engineer arrives in town. he sells you another motor and a lever. You take the basket off of the machine, put the motor onto it, attach the lever to the machine, wire the motor to the lever, attach the motor to the engine to power it, and attach the basket to the motor. This means that you no longer have to remove them one by one but now they unload at the same time.
The engineer can sell you pumps for watering the crops. The electronic engineer can sell you sprinklers. You can buy conveyors for chickens eggs and milk pumps for cows.

Now, this is when the electronic engineer discovers micro-processing and computing. You're farm can now be programmable! Now you program the harvest thingy to go up and down the field, dock at the conveyor and drop all the contents of the basket into the conveyor. You program the chicken coop to drop one food a day into the chicken pen.
I know that after the micro-processing comes it's pretty much automated from there but what happens is it turns into a programming game. You have to program the micro-processors yourself. The micro processors you can buy get better and better over time. You buy more and more land for your farm and you become a corporate farming giant ;D Obviously the technological advances would happen very slowly so the game doesn't get too easy.

Gunna be fun programming this........

Anyone like the idea or is it just me?

Go for it and make it a Facebook game.

Fuck that noise. Facebook can kiss my ass. Anyway, it would be one of those games that only geeky guys like myself would play so no one on facebook would play it. Don't even know if facebook has a java API...

Harsh response! I dunno if it's wise to dismiss such a massive potential audience like that (assuming it would be possible to make the game on Facebook, as you suggested it might not be).

Yeah it's a bit harsh. I've been taking in lots of anti corporation propaganda lately.

Well if a game like this were to come around I doubt many people would play it. Mostly because it turns into a geeky programming game but also because it's a game in which people would have to devote time to. If the players are not anonymous to their friends then they probably wont play. It's the same reason people don't click the "Sign in with facebook" buttons on games like WOW, well I wouldn't anyway. If it's Facebook then the majority of players would be younger audience which is not necessarily a good thing. Not because they are young but because kids who play it will get bullied and stop playing (bit of an exaggeration).
I did find a Facebook API for Java but it's seriously outdated.

I always thought that the charm of harvest moon is that the player, presumably an urban or at least suburban person, is doing these various rural, bucolic activities by hand... *headscratch* I've played several of the harvest moon games, but if I were going to design a game from that inspiration I would either go the "animal breeding sim/tycoon" direction or go the "raise monsters for tactical combat" direction.

There's mods for minecraft that add very similar "farm machinery" type components, which you can use to automate your tedious tasks, and economy mods, which incentivise the production of goods (and hence the automation of production), and micro-processor mods, which let you automate your automations.
So yep, it's definitely a playable concept!

Yeah it's a bit harsh. I've been taking in lots of anti corporation propaganda lately.

Those Netflix documentaries can mess with you after a while.

There's mods for minecraft that add very similar "farm machinery" type components, which you can use to automate your tedious tasks, and economy mods, which incentivise the production of goods (and hence the automation of production), and micro-processor mods, which let you automate your automations.
So yep, it's definitely a playable concept!

Forestry - iConomy ( Bukkit Only ) - Build Craft, Industrial Craft 2, Redpower 2
It's easier to just install Tekkit, instead of each mod separately.

Back to the subject at hand. If you can create a fun farm sim game, go for it. Harvest Moon was OK, though it required a lot of micro management IMHO .
The issue is the market is flooded with some pretty boring farm sim games at the moment .... American Farmer, Sim Farm, Green Farm, Farm Ville, Farm Simulator 2011, Farm Frenzy, Agricultural Simulator, e.t.c.
I'd love to see a good farm game, that is not "ZZZ" for once.