Well, I got news for you. I read you never even tried the game somewhere in here… What guy just looks at the front of a book and says “This is the best book in the universe.” Much like a person can’t say they like or dislike a game without trying it. So far, I have looked at pictures to see if when I TRY it, I know what to look for. And guess what? If this game should be less then a dollar, since this is the same as any other indie game, the entire indie game market could collapse. Think before you speak… Because sometimes your words can actually hurt the game dev’s feelings. They work their butts off and all you say is that their work means nothing? You try learning a coding language, gathering a team who knows same coding language and working your butt off to have people say your work isn’t worth a dollar.
I think he’s trolling…
Or is it just me?
(Wasting an hour (or something) , writing a post, to troll? I don’t think so)
No. I stated that its price is an indication of why the game isn’t good. Because if the developers doesn’t know how much sales they can expect, how price influences the number of sales, what kind of income they can expect from a game… if they didn’t research for the topic when they set the price of the game, they haven’t researched the topic to simulate market in the game. So your success / failure in the game wouldn’t be based on “real factors” and if you have actual experience some of the game wouldn’t make sense.
We speak about a tycoon game, that uses a term that is about business simulation. And yet the most important business decisions you make both at selling and at developing games aren’t modeled in the game in any meaningful ways.
What are the top 10 questions you should ask yourself when you start developing or selling a game or any other software?
- What would make my game different than others? (What my game is)
- Who would buy the game? (Who is it for)
- Where those customers are at? (Which platforms should I use?)
- Why would they buy the game? (Selling points)
- How much time time / money I am willing to invest in the development? (Budget, deadline)
- What can help me to keep these costs down? (Time and money saving technologies)?
- Based on the above how much money I need from each player to be successful?
- In my target audience: How much money an average gamer would spend on an average game?
- If my price is higher, would it turn away customer? Would I have to raise the price again?
- What other options I have to create the income I need? How it would influence my sales?
You say GDT wouldn’t simulate business, but would simulate game development. I am sure you haven’t developed a game before. I would compare this game to Need for Speed series. Those games never tried to simulate driving, their sole aim was to make you feel like the imagined undeground racers from the movies. Game Development Tycoon is similar to a lot of other games are focused on immersion into an imagined and simplified role and not on accuracy.
And it is probably written by people who wanted to develop a game, and haven’t even asked any of the above questions. They knew how they plan to get better with each game, how they would attract fans, etc.
It gives you an impression that you can be successful in a business you always dreamed about. Just like countless little simulations that keep a secretary entertained… By letting her run restaurants, hotels, etc. everything from her dreams, while sitting in front of the desks. These games take challenge out of the the gaming and usually end up on sites where you have access to all the games for a cheap subscription.
They try to sell you a dream. A game development process is often about a lot of challenges of different kinds. GDT doesn’t even try to simulate most of them. That approach is nice for casual games, arcade games. But for simulation and tycoon genre, you should simulate the actual challenges and the strategies you would use to overcome them. From financing, to tool selection, etc.
Oh yeah
Um, yeah, not so sure thats right bro
@mrdewdew Skyrim, only $19.99! I am happy now… But one thing I want to point out is that you said the game is “too long” for a casual games, well I think it should be like this or even longer because it takes you back in history to relive the whole gaming industry.If it didn’t do that, the whole game would change. And let’s be real here, $8 is nothing.
EDIT:
@Gamingthrou I agree. He said that you yourself, @Enerla and someone else (1 person only) make a game like GDT and make it successful. I add one more thing though: add and take out every feature that you think is bad, and even take out the Vector art that they used!
You also pointed out that there should be a deadline, well explain just about every AAA title coming out now. Halo Anniversary Collection , Assassins Creed Unity, Call of Duty Advanced Warefare, all of those games had problems on their releases. One reason is because the big shots at the companies don’t care and they want an extra quick buck. Reason two is because the developers are rushed to get it out on the deadline, so, they can’t make a good game. They have to release it and make a lot of patches. This is becoming unacceptable. You wouldn’t want that in a game tycoon.
This last thing I need to get out, bro…
8 bucks is less then Skyrim, for crying out loud, it’s the best price I have seen for an indie game yet, and also, just remembered, you said your opinions are facts. They’re opinions, they cannot be true or false.
Simply not true, only because our decisions differ from your opinions (which you present more as facts than anything else), doesn’t mean that we didn’t think about the same questions.
Please don’t make unfounded assumptions about us.
And as a remark to the realism of simulation games, let me quote Sid Meier:
It’s all in your head. I thought the more realistic you made a game, the more historically accurate, [the more] the player would appreciate it. In reality, I was wrong. You have to take into account what actually happens in a player’s head. I never get letters from players who say, I won too much in your game.
(source)
The way we designed GDT is purposeful, it’s supposed to be a story in your head more than anything else and guess what, it works for the target audience. Not everyone wants to play a spreadsheet.
I think it’s ironic, really. Those who constantly ask for more realism often just want theoretical realism… Reality would be a lot less logical and pleasant…
Anyway, if you really think a realistic game development simulator will be successful, give it a try, it will be an interesting experiment.
It is your choice to buy that game at MSRP. I would buy it at the cheapest option, as long as that is perfectly legal.
And as in EU it is allowed by law to buy a game licence at distributor then sell it online, and only deliver the key as physical products… it isn’t surprising that several bigger sites can team up with Paypal and other big companies. As what they do is perfectly okay by the law.
Cheapest offer is less than $5 without G2A shield. GDT is $8.14
The problem is: A lot of players prefer to have physical copies, but soon they would be without optical drive so you want to make sure the key they get with physical copies would work on Steam, Origin, etc. Retail prices should include manufacturing and shipping costs, and operating costs of both the retail store and the distributor. So both retail stores and distributors get the game at a deep discount from MSRP. Yet to stay on good terms with them Steam, Origin, etc. can’t be much cheaper than Physical copies. So people and companies would buy a lot of copies at distributors and sell cheap keys online.
But if as an indie developer you doesn’t make physical copies, you would have a good way to avoid this problem as you don’t have to sell keys, etc. at a huge discount. Even if steam and other stores try to protect themselves from the above setup, in EU they can’t as whatever they try to stop it by adding terms to contracts that would prevent resale of products would be against EU laws. So sooner or lather the problem would resurface with “cheap steam gifts” at very same stores.
As those big stores are operate within law they quite easily made deals with Paypal, etc. and when Paypal itself recommended a G2A sale…
So existence or lack of physical version is a very important decision and should affect your pricing as well.
And while some of the commenters: I should create a game similar to GDT, there are a clear problem. As soon as I am free to ignore the flaws, the game would get very very different, with a different audience. So it would be hard to compare success. And that argument is a bit underhanded tactics. Why? Because for non developers who knows a bit about the business it wouldn’t be feasible to do, but that wouldn’t make their knowledge less relevant. On the other hand: Developers often have their own projects.
But even worse: As I see suggestions for GDT II, if that happens and becomes a good game any similar game would have a hard time to get to market (competition, question of originality) but would hurt sales of a possible GDT II game as well. Are you sure that this would be fair?
It is strange that while Pastract presents intelligent reasoning, what I see from a few of you is quite different. Should I say if you aren’t happy with reasoning start to present some reasoning yourself? It wouldn’t be entirely fair, but as you see it wouldn’t be a totally unexpected response… But if you are too lazy to think, aren’t interested in the topic or in the discussion why do you think you should try to be an ass / troll there?
@PatrickKlug @Charlie @Anyone Please lock this topic, it is turning into a flame war and this guy doesn’t seem to be listening to good points. Don’t judge a game by how they market or the pictures on the screen, don’t even judge it as if you have played if you haven’t actually played it.
That is why I said probably because there were no way to be sure.
When I said you tried to sell a “dream”, some victories, etc. it is the purpose you describe. And when you say the reality is lot less logical than theoretical reality, I even agree there. Mostly because there are too many factors to consider. And some of the factors isn’t on the list most people would fully understand. As you see my point was: If you are unhappy about how much sales you have, you should always consider if your reasoning was solid. Because everyone makes mistakes and it is best if we learn from them. I am sure you considered these points, you will consider more. And I am sure other studios also consider a lot of things and it influences income for all.
If we usually make the same few top questions it is a good thing to hear. And your suggestion about giving it a go seems to suggest you don’t plan to make a more complex successor for GDT which can make this more feasible. But when you suggest it would be an interesting experiment… I think you assume too much when you say a complex simulation would “look and feel” like a spreadsheet. How would my game look like?
First of all, I wouldn’t call a game about game development a tycoon game, because the tycoon genre isn’t the best choice, I would go for a different genre. Why? Because most tycoon games have consistent game mechanics, exposed values, etc. for business simulation. Yet this market evolves quickly and developers themselves change. And a lot og good tycoon games not only tell you a story but also visualize events. And with coding it is hard to achieve. But in a hybrid adventure / strategy or RPG / Strategy, etc. game where business simulation mostly determines the end sequence and the contents of your endsave… Things are different. And as you see the detail counts there. As you see it is the first decision you made, where I think other decisions are present.
It would be part of business simulation, part of adventure. It would be a story of some university student who wants to be a game developer. It would be “more of an adventure”, but all the little choices would matter in the simulation. All the little choices would determine if the player could hit / miss the planned deadline, stay in the budget, would release a good or buggy game, could start to make a living from creating more games, etc.
The business simulation would be under it, and lot of decisions would be there and the player would feel the consequences… But the whole complex simulation would be partly hidden under an adventure game, you could play with different heroes, and at each and every play-through the outcome can be different. In one attempt when your “main char” goes to a party at one night, that is a wasted evening. In another play-through the character might hear a story he can turn into a quest in his game, etc.
In one attempt you would release the game in January, due to delays as you refine the game… In other attempt it could be in December. Questions like day one patch, etc. would become present. And with the story a lot of players would get insight. I would call it “An Indie Story” or something like that, but would allow to save the “end save” for possible sequel and make sure players can try to have “as big of success as Stardock” 
Point and click, “comicbook” like graphic with cell shaded pre-rendered images. While the game would have several dozens of variables to track when determining success / failure the player would rarely see a spreadsheet unless his in game character would read market research data, etc. But if his main hero is a programmer, he would have an option to date an English student who wants to write stories for games and by teaming up make his game better.
Would try to go cross-platform. Even if “point and click” is hard with a controller (on a console) it can be made happen. And at same time it could work on phone and PC. Would sell merchandise with the games main characters, etc. as it isn’t that hard if you have art assets. And once an early access version can be implemented would go crowd financing to try to finance a collectors edition…
I wouldn’t have a chance to get world wide attention with a “bankruptcy due to pirates”… but would sure as hell include piracy in the game. Some of the questions I raised could be raised in expansions, sequels.
But you chosen to use the word Tycoon, yet left most of the tycoon aspects out of the game.
The issue is: While it is an interesting experiment and can be turned into a beautifully detailed game, made with love, if one has a good story, he tends to have another as well. And I think game development can be an interesting topic that could lead to a lot of good stories, but there are better stories and if I have better stories why shouldn’t I implement those ones first?
And I assume that if there is love for the game, attention to detail, some humor is present, etc. most players could feel they are the hero of the game, the developer, who starts the “next big hit” (big hit like Minecraft, Eador, etc). But it is hard to imagine that from ZX Spectrum to creating a rival to PS 4 a company would flourish developing games in a row (one at a time) with little attention to detail.
Why comic book style graphics instead of full animation? Because it saves a lot of money and still could help a lot with immersion.
Should I ask “@anyone” to ban the likes of you, because you post personal attacks, often backed up with lies? If you don’t like the topic you are free to stay out.
And it is easy: Most people who decide they don’t want to play a game so they don’t buy it do so without playing the game. If you want to understand motives of people who skipped this game you should only use information available to them. That is why there would be no point in buying the game just to discuss more in depth gameplay. We both know this, but your “one more attack” ignores this as well.
For a lot of independent games getting people to notice your game is the hardest part. GDT is a game everyone heard about. Probably from the millions of people who heard about the game, and actually play games (even tycoon or casual business games) only a small percentage bought it. I am sure there are many different groups of gamers who haven’t bought it. I am sure they have different reasons. Trying to say there are almost no valid reasons behind it, no reason why people haven’t picked up the game, etc. and bashing people won’t make the game grow. It won’t make the next game successful.
And I yet to hear your explanation.
Oh and one more thing to add: Know what else hurts the feelings of most developers? When a lot of people who see their game decides not to buy it, and not even saying a word about it. At that point it is clear that either the game wasn’t good enough for them, or they don’t care if you can eat next day (you are a nobody to them)… or a combination of both. If you don’t like negative feedback and cannot take it without being offensive, I hope you won’t ever hear any negative feedback only feel it on your wallet.
[quote=“Enerla, post:50, topic:15867”]
Im dumb, I lie , I say my opinoin are fact and I dont reply to post which are true [/quote]
like
these guys work hard on games just because you dont like the game we do why are you here anyway you dont have anything else to do but bitch an moan about how bad a game cost or its dumb why did you even create a account?
Alright @Enerla
Just make a game, any game, a game made in 10 minutes or 3 years, doesn’t matter. Just make a game.
Tell us how successful you are
If you made a game better than (at least!) GDT, you will represent yourself.
You want a realistic business game about making games?
Do a game yourself. Done.
I also would be buying it at the cheapest option available. I purchased GDT at full price, but i also know many of my friends who have purchased it during a SALE. Steam Holiday sale, anyone? And if you are always looking for such a bargain, why are you arguing about the game at full price? Your argument is very confusing to a lot of people on the forum
There are 3 problems with “any game” argument.
1st: It wouldn’t be the first game I made either as myself (in 90s) or as paart of a team. So it wouldn’t be any new. But if we debate things even Carmack and other game developer legends often listen to others. Because they know sometimes the other person is right, even if they haven’t made Doom… I know some people (like you) have bigger mouth.
2nd: The argument still wouldn’t have a measurement for success. I say: If from 100 people who knows the game 30 buys it (30% of people who hear about it buy it) is better than a case where only 5% of the people get it. Others would speak about world wide popularity. Yet others would speak about quality.
3rd: Lets pretend I start a new project. How much time it would take?
And for this latest argument means. you don’t have any reasoning, you aren’t capable of intelligent debate, but you want to tell the others to shut up for months. I am sure quite a few people there are quite abusive. And whats worse it looks like the maintainers of the forum welcomes and allows that attitude.
From what is happening here, its seems as if YOU are being the abusive one