On any game file i start after year 10 any game i make ive tried everything followed guides did new topics sequles for my best selling games and any time i make something the average score is 3 and when i do the exact same thing in another file before year 10 it gets 9s and 10s any body know anything?
You are definitely not the only one ^^ just search the forum a little bit and you will find planty of threads similar to yours. And the awnsers are always the same. Use the wiki, develop new engines, you are doing something to hasty, I won the game in my first run, it’s easy… Blabla
Patrick and his brother are working on a balance patch but don’t expect it before August…
Edited Post of AlotOfMoney
To give you more specific advice, I need to know more details of what you are doing.
Can you give me an example of a game you did that bombed, including the type of game, the genre, the size, the number of employees, the skills of the employees, your engine and your sliders?
In order to get another hit, your game needs to be 20% cooler than your previous one. So if your last hit had a 25 design and 25 tech (50 quality total) Your next game needs to have around a 60 design+tech points total if you want to get a good score.
If you’re still in garage, focus on making the best engine with the newest 2D Graphics and as much features as possible. This definitely helps in getting more design and technology points.
If you’re in the new office, hire 2 people (doesn’t matter what level, but level 2 or 3 is preferable), research medium games, and do publishing deals. This will give you money and a lot of fans.
Yes, publishing deals are KEY when you first move into stage 2. You actually get a penalty to any self-published medium games when you make them with less than 100k fans. Games made under publishers both avoid this penalty, and give you a LOT more fans with each game due to the level of exposure they give your games. Also, due to the lack of fans, self-published medium games at this point won’t sell well at all, even if you get really good review scores. This is because hardly anyone knows about you.
Once you hit 100k fans, then you can toss publishers by the wayside and start self-publishing medium games.
You might have been following a certain trend when you released the game when before year 10 and got loads of nines and tens, following trends is an easy way of getting better scores.
In regard to publishing deals, you by NO means need to use them to make bigger games, I am in level three, I have the R+D and the hardware labs, I self-publish large games I have Millions in the bank and I have never, ever done a publishing deal or any contract work, If you know how to make your target audience happy with games, you simply do not need publishers or contracts.
So to get better scores you should follow trends and use targets audiences well (for example if you are doing a casual game for young people, focus mainly on gameplay and level design because younger audiences don’t need good stories because they don’t understand them)
If your problem is persisting after following the advice I have for you maybe you should try publishing deals or creating a really good engine.
I agree that you do not need to use publishers. My first full playthrough made it to year 30 just fine without taking a single publishing deal. My reasoning to suggest using them is that it will take a lot longer to get to 100k fans with self-published games, and you’ll have every title suffer that penalty until you hit 100k. (The penalty isn’t massive and you can still get good scores with it pulling you down, but it is still there).
I would argue that over the course of 10 medium games (starting when you first hit level 2) if one person went for publisher contracts and did them until they hit 100k fans, then switched to self-publishing… and another player JUST did self publishing for all 10 games, the player who used publishers would have more fans and more money at the end of the 10th game than the player who self-published the whole time…all else being equal. (Same quality of games, same trends, same set of employees etc)
I made a game called final fantasy it had story up to max gameplay down by a tiny bit. engine minimal. Dialogs max A.I down by a bit and world design half ish. graphics just under max world design max sound 3/4 of the bar it had design 12 and tech 14 it was a fantasy rpg in year 2 on the pc and when I mad the Sequle on the playsystem It was the same but better engine with 3d graphics v2 easter eggs and other extras and design 28 and tech 26 and the average score was a 2.75
Sorry Forgot to say it was a small game for every one and the second was medium for everyone