im really enjoying this game, but i find that i always go bankrupt shortly after leaving the garage. Im not sure where im going wrong but if anyone has any tips id be gratefull, thanks
I’m in the process of making a guide, but it’s taking me a while.
A good tip, be aggressive.
Find the combos and sellers that work, get team members fast, make a larger sequel to a hit you’ve made, and so on.
if you take it slowly you’ll get lower than the technology and you won’t be able to keep up.
2 Likes
ok so i was making a mistake sticking to 2 extra team members, i should hire as many as i can as fast i can and concentrate on medium games with great combos.
2 in the beginning is perfect (if you mean yourself +2 others) because you and 2 others can make medium games and medium sequels to your successful games.
thanks for the help im gonna restart and try again
good luck! (:
playing safe in section 2 always made me lose.
Uhhhh getting extra team members FAST is the fastest way to lose.
I’m still a one man army in the basement. Just made my 89th game.
Mystery/RPG
Units Sold: 1.7M
Costs: 39K
Income: 11.6M
Profit: 11.5M
Score: 8.5
Fans: 31, 269
PC/Everyone - Y19 M7 W4
If you do it wrong, yes.
Everyone has their own playing style.
Me getting my members fast lets me make better sequels fast, so i’m on top of the market with the best games.
Some tips - please correct me if you think they’re totally off.
Think long-term: Make games with graphics from the get-go, and build your second custom engine with 3d graphics v1 (but wait until you’ve researched mouse support and get that in there as well, this is going to be your “we use this until we’re out of the garage” engine.) And then use 3d from then on, even if early 3d is less fancy than advanced 2d, levelling it up early will pay off later when you’re selling engine SDKs. I usually don’t research 2d v3 at all.
Before leaving the garage, try to have at least one, ideally two hit games so you have a buffer of around 3-5 million when changing offices. I know, it sounds like a lot, but you’ll be literally rolling in cash (compared to before) when you get your first 9.5 or 9.75 game. A Fantasy/RPG with an appropriate target audience/platform match (Y=Gameling, E=TES, M=PC) will, in my experience, almost always be a smash hit.
When you leave the garage, spend some money on getting one design person and one tech person (300+). For each successful game, get another one (the first one an allrounder like yourself, the next two design/tech specialists again).
If you’re going into console development, don’t get licenses for every console. If you know your game history, you know which ones are going to die quickly, and which ones are sticking around (don’t bet on the Dreamvast). The Gameling is always a safe bet, and whatever platform becomes the market leader is always worth developing a title or two for. Think of the PC as your safe haven for experimental titles.
Alternate between self-publishing smaller games and looking for Medium Publisher Contracts that are good Topic/Genre matches (Target Audience/Platform if applicable) but has low metascore demands (4-6). Even if the game isn’t critically successful, you’ll be kept financially afloat and accumulate fans (which is important at this stage). You need the publisher contracts to fuel medium game development, which is where you get research points - and you need those to stay on top of things, engine-wise. Then, as the game will probably tell you, when you start approaching 100k fans, your can self-publish medium and get all those delicious profits to yourself.
Typically you can do with one or two engine revisions per “Graphic Level Tech” - mostly one, two if you get some killer new features but don’t want to wait to research a new level of graphics before putting them into your games.
If you want to “play it safe” without spending 20 years in the garage, you can always save your game before you start a new project, and go back to your save and rethink if it gets panned. Very helpful until you find your footing.
I usually stay in the garage until I have about 4 million saved up and then I move on. I then hire two people, one specializing in tech and the other in design. Usually stay like that until I have over 50 million and then I hire two more, etc.
In terms of profit, I would usually get about 30 million profit from medium games until I could take the large booth at G3. At the beginning it’s okay to use only three people for your games, but soon you’ll need more people and will have to specialize them.
The first tip I have is to stay in the garage until you reach 10M-15M. If you go to the first office at like 1M, your money will be wasted mostly on maintaining the building itself. It will also prevent you from hiring more than one person, researching and making new engines. If you make engines, you cannot get new technologies as due to the lack of workers, it will take a LONG time to get the required Research Points.
The second tip is when you get to the first office, you will need to stay there until you get 28-30M. Setting that aside, since you have (minimum) 10M dollars, get 2 good designers and 2 good tech/programmers. This will increase both of your design and tech both easily, and get research points faster.
The third tip is when games get a bad review, it is due mostly to the following factors:
- Outdated engine features
- Solution is to always keep engines up to date with the years. This is important in sequels. Sequels MUST use a different engine than the previous, unless you maxed out to V5. And obviously, once you use a new version of 2/3D, don’t use the previous version EVER.
- Not making a new record on both Tech and Design
- This is easily solved by training your employees after making a game. That way, they always improve, and the stats get better MOST times…
- Incompatible audience, topic, genre, platform etc.
- This wiki page kindly shows the compatible stuff for each specific thing, such as audience, topic etc. If you have multi-genre, you are not forced to put a additional genre.
- Not focusing on a core development part for a specific genre.
- Again, the above wiki page shows the good focuses for a specific genre.
The fourth and last tip I’ve got is PC is the best platform for the long-run. After the game is over, you can invest in licenses in the Xbox 360, PS4, the iPad, Surface, Wii U, DS and the iPhone, since they will never expire, unless a game update is released. Since this is a game simulation, it doesn’t know that for example “Final Fantasy” is mostly only on Playstation’s. PCs are the best platform, because it lasts forever, and a cheap 5K to get started on a game.
Of course, the last tip can be ignored, since if you use a lot of platforms, it counts for your final score. If you care for your score, then variety can be good, however I recommend you make a LOT of games for that platform, to make it worthwhile.
thanks for all the help guys, iv made it to the third office and im making tons of cash 
I’d just like to add that you don’t max out engines at V5, but you need an R&D lab to get V6 and V7.
Yeah, I wasn’t really into the game at the time. I do know now there was a V6 and V7 on 3D Graphics. I don’t know if their was on 2D Graphics though…
I didn’t see anyone mention the percentages in the development process.
When you developing a new game and adding the extra features there is a percentage beside the name of the selected feature.
What are those percentages and is it better to be hight-low or non?
Percentage means that a game function in that field is lower then required by all extra stuff. You must insure you never release a game with percentage appearing in it.
After couple failures i got down to this formula:
Use the tables in the wiki to see what genre/platform works best for max profit/audience.
(Dont use this link if you don’t want spoilers)
Don’t make two games of same genre in a row, at least for me didn’t work too well.
Use the bar percentage in the wikis for the sliders allocation, when the tables say 0/100/100 use like 5/100/100, most of the cases works good, like 95% of the time, but after you walk out from the garage only use this as a reference.
Train your staff, use the staff boosters in game development.
Specialize your staff in engine, gameplay and so forth, and give them tech/des specialization for their categories.
Use large boots in conventions when you start to release AAA titles and not before, just for a expenses sake unless you have money for it, use research for AAA campaigns but don’t put a large budget in it, just enough so they keep the hype in the bug clean phase before you release a game, if you don’t use the research AAA campaign use marketing to keep the hype in the bug clean phase, you don’t need to expend much, just enough to keep the hype.
Leave the garage with enough money (for example 5M) to hire one guy in start of stage two, continue to make small games till you have like 50% more money from the start of the phase, hire guy number two and start medium games.
When you have more 50/60% money, hire guy number three, and so forth, i always do contract work after a game to earn research points and if is after a release of a large/AAA i do this to tire them so i can sent them all onto vacations at same time, so they are fresh for the next project, or use train for same result.
if i make a game with 3D engine V5, the next sequel must have or another game engine or more features, thats how i milk the sequels, for example:
New game, 3D engine V5, three features in Engine/Gameplay/Story, next sequel i can use same game engine but with more features, features are the key, which means a ton of sequels for each game engine version, this works too with the console development, launch a V5, then a V6, then a V7, make games for them if you see sells going low.
Just remember that the next sequel should have more final Design/Tech score then the previous for max profit/score.
And like previous post said, keep an eye on the percentages of the features.
It’s not the amount of games you do, it’s the quality of them that matters, 100 average games are not better than 20 top games, best games out there comes from companies that have too few IP’s (valve, blizzard, etc).
This is not cannon ofc, but worked for me, i did my first all 10 score game like this, and my Digital Tomahawk company is going good, i took alot of years to get here, so now its just a matter to improve.
Hope this helps 