Features i'd like to see

Game Dev Tycoon ideas
#1

I posted this on the steam forum but one of the devs suggested i put it here: … so here goes:

Have to say, im enjoying this game a lot … but there are a few things i would like to see added:

  • Development methodologies selection (waterfall/scrum/etc) along with animations and effects. For example selecting scrum should show the team regularly get up and stand in a circle. During this time no development takes place but a boost is provided for a while afterwards

An agile approach should give the player the option to modify developer assignments during development as well as add/remove features (this will be more useful with some of the suggestions below)

  • More staff management issues such as staff suddenly going sick, demanding a vacation, having ‘heated debates’ over development issues etc

  • the ability to put multiple staff on a single aspect (e.g. graphics) with an averaging of the staff skill levels occuring and, if one member is considerably higher skill than the other, a mentoring effect that trains up the junior dev but reduces efficiency in the ‘guru’ … also, too many devs on one aspect should have a negative effect so you cant just throw people at a problem

  • Ability to assign a developer to perform ‘code review’ to reduce bug production

  • Dedicated QA staff, without which the bug count in a released game would be considerably higher than the bug count shown

  • Ability to assign a portion of a developers focus to marketing (e.g. dev blogs, forum presence)

  • during development marketing resources should be unlocked that can be released for marketing purposes (concept art, screenshots, gameplay videos, demos) these should come with the appropriate amount of developer downtime to publish (screenshots = no time, gameplay video = quite a bit)

  • ability to place games into closed and open beta tests (finds missed bugs and gives a ‘last chance’ to invest further time in various aspects of the game prior to final release… e.g. beta test feedback might say the graphics suck, allowing you to put a developer on graphics improvements before finishing)

  • larger dev teams. to the point where i can assign a ‘graphics lead’ with 3 or 4 developers under him

  • ability to port a previously released game to a different platform. Porting only possible from higher tech to lower or equal tech (no gameboy to PS4 porting) and incurrs a penalty to design (as can be vouched by any PC gamer whoose had to suffer through wave after wave of crappy console ports)

  • beat-em-up genre

  • ability to choose a generic distribution platform (e.g. steam) as an alternative to developing our own (with a royalties fee, and requiring the player to gamble on which platform is going to be popular

  • a cost to needless additional features (the ones selectable on the right hand side when developing) or placing too many features (on my last play through i would just select them all, regardless of the game) … i would like to see people complaining that the game is ‘cluttered’ if too many options are present (especially if targeted at a young audience)

  • political social pressure in addition to trends (e.g. people making a fuss about violent video games)

  • researchable design innovations whose availability in a title is dependent on topic/genre and are a gamble as they may cause controversy or even lawsuits (“you added the ‘hamster launcher’ weapon to your action title and marketed for young audiences … little timmy subsequently launched his pet ‘fluffy’ into his brothers face … im suing your :heart::heart::heart:!”)

  • have the posters decorating the office be your top game titles (have a stock of images for each topic and add the game title as dynamic text)

  • have a wall in the office that fills with gold/platinum awards as you earn them

  • add an annual gaming award ceremony with different categories (best in genre, best indie game, GOTY, etc) let us use these awards in our marketing campaigns as well as show the trophies in our office

  • have fans be game specific as well as company wide, have it tie in with sequel creation

  • allow hosting of fan competitions to boost hype, have a prize option be a visit to the office (disrupts workflow),

  • have option to accept community content submissions during development which take some of the load off the dev team but have a high risk of introducing bugs

  • have researchable community content platforms that prolong a games life and can also be used to generate a report for suggestions to be used in a sequel

  • more in depth game design optiosn rather than just topic/genre (e.g. setting, era, realism)

  • more options for customizing the office with suitable buffs/debuffs (coffee machine, vending machine, inspiration rooms, etc) … basically would be nice to be able to create google HQ :stuck_out_tongue:

  • ability to bring in contractors for large projects

thats all i got for now…

2 Likes
#2

Nice, there were a lot of them, so i skimmed through them. But the first few look quite good

#3

Played it all weekend. Had a lot of fun with it. Here are the things on my personal wish-list:

Developing slowly increases the skill of your developers. Failing that, remove the research point requirement to train employees. It does not make sense that you have to cannibalize your ability to research new game features to train your staff. Generally speaking, in the real world, you would learn skills while researching.

Allow mentoring. This places another developer under the first, and the output they produce is vetted by the senior developer. During this time, the junior developer could gradually increases in skill. This happens a lot in real life. Sometimes you don’t hire people with skills. Sometimes you hire people you can groom.

Add the ability to add “Polish” a game. This could be a variable much like hype. Once development nears its completion you can select a polish option. Like marketing, it would have diminishing returns and cap out. Polish can help increase the game rating, even if otherwise it would fair poorly. Polish can make or break a game these days.

Do not penalize game development if someone takes a vacation. People take vacations all the time during development cycles. It does not unduly tank a project. You plan for it in advance or work on other things. Failing that, allow employees to go on vacation at any time, so once a game is done you can send them all packing for a few weeks, before the next project starts. That way you don’t have to guess when they are gonna need a break.

The ability to pick your starting topics, so if you want to make a Square Soft or Bioware or whatever you are not stuck with random topics. That way you could play through multiple times, emulating some of your favorite developers, rather than have it be luck of the draw.

Ability to edit a game engine. This creates a new engine based on an old engine. Time and cost are reduced, depending on the severity of the changes. You should not have to completely re-invent the wheel each time.

Ability to set all assignments on a game up front, without going through three different periods. Would prefer to be able to setup the teams at the start. This is especially true if skills have changed between projects.

Ability to determine the length of the development cycle. Perhaps this will allow additional features. That would allow teams who are making games with fewer features (i.e. casual games) to produce more games, over time, while the bigger, more feature-rich games take longer.

Give more details as to why the ratings tank. Is it because you have fallen behind on the technology curve? Is it something else? Very hard to figure out what went wrong, ratings wise.

Add some sort of % text to the sliders so we can see what the amounts are, numerically. If we want to fine tune and experiment with values, it would help.

Add an ability to suppress all dialogues, and move the upgrade to new facility message to a menu somewhere. After the first play through, all those messages start to get annoying, and you can tell when making a new game what platforms are available. I just click through that stuff as fast as I possibly can.

Add an option to NOT auto-generate names for games or engines, and prevent a user from creating a game or engine without the name. I got into the habit of naming stuff better, but it was a little annoying one playthrough when my best game was Game # 8.

All I can think of. Overall, have to say, I have enjoyed this game more than a lot of AA titles of late, so looking forward to any improvements you make.

3 Likes
#4

Thanks for the feedback!