When you begin in your garage it takes approximately 5-6 games to create “that game” which will skyrocket your sales up to a million. And you sell around 100k units overall.
Then, you gather let’s say 5 million, go to the new office, hire the best guys on their field (I usually go 2 developers + 2 designers and make the founder a researcher) and start making games.
Then, you make games of better design and technology that get amazing stats but you sell around 200k units. How is that even possible ?
If you stay at the garage, you can make 6 million in 2 games. Literally. You, yourself and your Delorian can create 6 million in 2 games, but when you get 4 of the top guys in the industry and combine your strength, you make on a 7.00 rating game, maximum 1million which is consumed due to the salaries of your personnel.
It’s not really about the scores of Technology and Design, the clue to get high scores is matching topics/genres. These already give high scores, and design/technology will add your score up.
The ‘Problem’ is once you hit the first office and get out of the garage medium sized games are unlocked for all other companies. You don’t need to have the first employee to be able to research medium games for this.
Therefore the reviews take this into account.
Once YOU hit 3 employees and are able to research large games, this is unlocked for the other companies and the same takes place.
That’s why many gamers stay as long as possible in the garage to keep the small games profitable.
Tip :
Work on your fanbase. Fans are way more important than reviews for good sales record. You can hit perfect 10 rated games as much as you like. With 2000 fans and thus too less hype you won’t sell this game as well as a 3 rated game with a million fans.
Also, before researching medium games you should create a new Game Engine with the lastest technology, or your games will be old in comparision with the competition in that market. I had this problem in my first playthrough, but all went better when I tried upgrading before a medium game.
Some personal experience:
High reviews and low sales indicate low fan base or unskilled employees.
Low reviews and low sales indicate any number of bad factors working together.
Check out the wiki, it has a very good game developement page full of charts and combinations that work very well. The wiki also has insights regarding reviews and other factors that aren’t specific to the actual game design but affect things like review scores and sales numbers.
That wiki is under heavy edit by contributor-wannabes. I’m saying this, because I know so. Everyone edits something because they didn’t get the same result.
Do you really think I would write into this forum if I had a pirated copy? But on a serious note my problem is more of that I dont get high scores and therefore I always have low sales.
it all depends on your fanbase. with shitty scores like 2 or 3 out of 10 I still get millions of copies sold but the downside is you lose a lot of fanbase when you have a crappy game published (they buy anyway)
