I have played this so many times now, but I always go bankrupt right after I make an engine with 3D v1 and 2D v 3.
And I don’t think it’s my fault. Something is really really wrong. I do well. I get 9 avg. rating almost all the time before I make the new engine. Then I use alot of cash to make the best possible engine by researching everything to get a time lasting one. It probably costs more than 5 million with researches cost, time cost, engine fee etc.
And with the new engine I make a published medium game. I am certain it will be a massive hit. I use some of the new features, with the 3D engine and it is destined to be a hit. But then it gets an average of 4. 4! It’s complete BS. Why would an old overused engine produce instantly good games when a fresh better one delivers crap games. This basically killed me, while this crap engine made 2 more games under 4 rating.
I can’t be sure but on mine I had to many staff members draining the money and the medium games weren’t doing as good as the small ones because the staff wasn’t trained enough to do great ones yet that and if you use the new stuff from the engine each one cost more.Best to just make small ones till you have some money saved up and can train them that is my guess but I could be wrong.
There are a few basic rules to guarantee your success:
If you make a sequel/expansion it needs to be at least 40 weeks after the launch of the previous game;
When you make a large game you need the engine to have at least 2D V4 or 3D V3;
For a AAA game you need an engine of minimum 3D V5 and at least 3 specialists involved in the project;
You never release two consecutive games with the same topic/genre combination. It doesn’t matter if it has a groundbreaking engine, it will be destined to fail; you can release for example Action/RPG, then a Sci-Fi/RPG and then another Action/RPG. But never two Action/RPGs consecutively. That was just an example;
You have to keep in mind that some platforms respond better to some games/ages than others - for example, up until the first Playstation most of them respond well only to Action/Everyone.
Your best bet is to release only on PC, since you can succeed with all topics/ages combinations;
Try to find the list of bad/strange/great combinations (for example Military/Action is a great combination, Pirate/Simulation is a bad combination and Military/RPG is a strange combo);
Make sure you develop the games properly. As a rule of thumb: action, simulation and strategy should have the engine, gameplay, level design, AI, graphic and sound sliders maxed out, and the others at minimum; you can find more if you search for a game guide.
I hope those tips will help you. Also don’t hire too many people at once! 1 is enough when you unlock the second office, and when you start making serious money you can progressively fill your staff.
After my first sucuessful play through i dont mind building custom engines is all that important until late game? I made my my 1st engine with 3D v1 and 2d capabilities and manage to build good games (7+) from snes until ps2 era. strange if u ask me x)
All the tips I listed are important throughout the whole game.
Also when you start making sequels you have to use a different, better engine to get good scores.
It’s also not worth making engines with both 3D and 2D capabilities. It’s only going to cost you more money, and on the long run 3D matters most (you can’t make AAA games with 2D engine; at least not good ones)
And I like making games on PC if you ask me. More profitable and as I said earlier you can be successful with all the age groups, unlike the other platforms (PC is one of the few platforms with a strong mature audience). You also save money you would otherwise spend on licenses
I appreciate the help and I am well aware of all these things. But the game doesn’t work.
With the starter engine I produced two 9,5 rated games in a row in year 2. I made a new engine, got 9,25. 3 games in a row and somehow I only earn 3M on that. No bad console for target group etc.
I hire 2 lvl 2 employees I keep making 8-9 rated games with the rare seldom 9,5 game every now and then, but I still don’t make any money. I make a 9,5 rpg sequel on Playstation with new engine and 50 hype and look forward to 3-4 million. I only earn 600k and am fucked. Waste of another 8 hours.
I found that making really low quality games in the garage and making at least 2 million before leaving it is a game winning strategy. Keeping research to a minimum in the garage is also important. Once you get to the office, hire REALLY TERRIBLE employees that are balanced in skills then make games with very few features but 3D graphics. After every game, train them to be better researchers Or train them with game dev gems to keep them getting better. Every time you unlock a new 3D graphics, make a new engine with it and every other component you’ve unlocked in the other catagories. Don’t waste money by putting in every version of 3D and 2D graphics, only put in the newest 3D graphics. You wont make your first 1mil engine until around year 9 or 10 when you have or 100million in the bank. Oh and if you hire really terrible employees, you can fill all 4 seats in the first year and keep your people on without ever going into the red. Just make sure that you start doing medium games for publishing contracts as soon as possible until you have 100k fans, then self publish medium games until you have 250k fans, then self publish large games from then on out.
If every game you release is just about 12 percent better than your previous, you will consistently get high scores. To do this, you have to get better over time- NOT BE GOOD FROM THE GET GO.
But I get good ratings all the time from start to end and still go bankrupt in year 10.
100 million? How am I supposed make that? I make 200k profit from 9,5 rated games and make a minus on anything under 9k.
And those 575k dev cost in the link. I don’t even know where they come from. 30k for game engine. 60k for game dev. 30k for C.P. 10k*2 for Cutscenes and Story. 10k for Open world, 10k for Mono Sound and 5k for Level Editor. It’s less than 200k and yet I pay 575k. What the hell.
And I did even hire terrible staff and trained them to geet good ratings, which I did. But what to do when 8,5 rated games give you minus by weirdly low income and seemingly magic extra costs.
Make sure you time the creation of your medium games around when G3 will start and do a small booth until you can reasonably afford the large booth. It really boosts your hype and if you have a game thats 9+, you’ll make easily a million or 2. And that will keep going up as you keep releasing games.
Also that dev cost includes marketing, I believe.
Also I should probably ask if your games are being pirated. That’s a likely cause for cripplingly low profit.
No. But someone told me to shut down a fan-project in the start and it cost me fans. I never used medium games nor publishers because I was afraid it would be a fail and I would go bankrupt.
I will try again. Won’t stop till I beat the game. I don’t get why it’s so hard to survive for me.
Don’t blame the game, figure it out.
The game is just fine, I never went bankrupt in my 10+ playthroughs.
It just seems to me that you are using the pirated version - it’s the only reason you would go bankrupt at the exact same point every time like you describe it.
You don’t have the fans needed to sell your 9.5 rated games. You make some epicly awesome games, but NOBODY has heard of you. As such, your titles are all doomed to be “Hidden Gems” Awesome, but way undersold.
Upon starting Medium games, you should do publisher contracts. When a publisher handles your games, it doesn’t matter if you’re a no-name game studio, they push your games to the masses. As a result, your game gets a LOT of exposure, a TON more than you could ever hope to generate with advertising and good games alone. Yes, you get less money for your games, but you’ll often find publisher games making you more in royalties just based on raw volume. Along with all that volume comes Fans…Tons and Tons of fans.
Once you hit 100k fans, you’re well known enough to self-publish medium games and actually get properly rewarded with large sales volumes when you release a 9.0+ title.
yep 119k sells are way too low for a medium game with that kinda rating
when you had left the garage you have to stop releasing small games, in lvl2 (1st office) you’ll get a penalty for small games, hire at least one staff member to unlock medium games, and one more to unlock publisher contracts,
you could try to self publish medium games without at least 100k fans, but i’d say only do this when the publishers only have crap contracts (e.g. mature audience for gameling - don’t), and always try to use the publishers until 100k fans, they really push your fanbase
and i think the higher production cost maybe result from the salary of the staff members during development time (not quite sure about that)
You can also reset your publisher contracts by saving the game, then reloading from your save. They will be re-randomized.
The other reason that self-publishing under 100k fans is bad is that you can potentially ‘waste’ a good game.
When you hit a 9.0+ game, your target game score goes up by 20%, making it harder to make your next hit. This happens whether your 9.0 game sold 10 million copies or 10,000. Getting bad sales for your good game cuts both ways.
As such, if you hit a 9.0+ game with a publisher, don’t feel that you’ve “Wasted a good game” simply because someone else is eating most of the profits… that 9.0+ publisher game will be selling like hotcakes and you’ll be getting TONS of fans, often 20k+. The more fans you get with your games, the sooner you reach 100k fans. The sooner you reach 100k fans, the sooner you can stop using publishers.
The BEST publisher contracts are the 14% royalty 8.0 minimum score ones. If you get one of those (without it being a forced bad combo or bad platform/audiance) pull out all the stops and try and rock a 9.0+ game. You’ll get your fair share of the loot AND all those fans to boot.
good to know, never tried that, for me it’s like cheating and would destroy the fun on the game, in that kind of genre i have to take the risk of a possible fail and have to live with the consequences, if i would load the save everytime i fail, for me it would make no sense to play a business sim
I use, but do not abuse it. If all 4 contracts are the kind that would doom me to failure if I tried making a game for them (Mature action virtual pet for the gameling), and making a game is the only logical thing to do at this point, I’ll do it.
I will NOT, however, keep doing it until I get an any topic/any genre/any platform 14% royalty sweetheart deal. That is cheating, IMO and really not worth the effort anyway. As soon as I get one workable offer, I’ll take it. Even if its an any topic + genre I’m not good at on a platform that is retiring soon with a lousy royalty rate.
