Hi, I’m Raph, and I’m an ex-hardcore gamer. (Hello Raph)
I’ve dabbled in many genres, but I’ve focused mostly on Simulations, RPG’s and various Management-type games. I was (un)lucky to be born with a very high intelligence, and I’ve also created two games myself (a soccer management game and a similar management game with focus on RPG, without the sports and in a fantasy setting, both text based since I draw like a six year old). My first serious online game was Counter Strike, where I played in the upper national bracket (nothing fancy, I’m not even a has-been, I’m a never-truly-was). I then played WoW from vanilla up until last tier of Cataclysm, and my guild (read: I was the Guild Master) was a casual raiding guild for Swedish ex-hardcore gamers. Halfway through T12 (Firelands) we peaked #6 World Rank, which is a considerable achievement when you realize we raided 0-4 times a week, 3-4 hours per raid. There was a lot of hate against us for this. After WoW some of us bought Diablo 3, and after a few weeks we got bored but wanted to do something fitting before ending our misery, so we leveled a character 1-60 together in under 15 minutes /played. It’s up on youtube, and there’s a lot of hate against us for doing this.
I’ve a hard time doing anything half-assed. I figure life’s too short, and there’s too much to do, so I’d rather focus on a few things and give it my 100%. If I don’t know something, I study it. I make spread sheets. I’ve even done simulation engines in order to test theories. I’m extremely analytical, I have this need to know how things work behind the curtains, and I don’t do anything half-assed. This feedback is not an exemption.
I’ve played most games worth playing released since the late 90’s. Some of the best games I’ve ever played was Outcast, Mass Effect, Sim City franchise (the latest was a letdown though), Civilization franchise, Dragon Age (sue me), Black and White, Golden Eye (N64) and Theme Park (on 16-bit SEGA back in the day). As you can see, most revolve around building something, be it a character or some form of community.
Now that you know some about me and my (gaming) experiences, time to get to the point. I’ve played this game a few playthroughs, and I felt the need to give my feedback on the experience. I realize I can’t give anything but my personal opinion, so the format is adjusted accordingly. It’s not a cold analyze, but my feedback coupled with my feelings and thoughts. Some people might disagree with some, or most of the things I bring up. I don’t mind this. It’s only my opinion, not a recipe for win. I also realize that people probably in some form or another already have brought some of these things up already. What I’m hoping for is that these points are taken seriously by the developers, and are skillfully implemented in Game Dev Tycoon 2, since these are too many and to massive/game changing for a patch or five.
I also want to make this clear, I enjoy this game, overall. Since the company behind this title is new and inexperienced, I realize there’s greater room for appreciating feedback than if a well-established developer had made a similar title. I’m trained to always up my lowest level, so these suggestions revolve around that. It might sound like whine, look like I’m criticizing, and feel like I’m complaining. I want to make it clear that my hopes are that something productive comes out of this, or I wouldn’t set aside seven hours to write this. I’ve skimmed two or three topics, and noticed some of my feedback have already been brought up, which is nice. It means I’m not alone in feeling the way I am.
If you read through all of what I’ve written (my apologies in advance), you’ll notice I suggest one thing at one point, and something different someplace else. My guideline isn’t just to drag up what I find bad, or wrong, but to offer constructive suggestions alongside. If I’ve already made a related suggestion, I’ll suggest something else. If one doesn’t peak the developers interest, the other might. There’s no need for me to assume a single direction where the game/franchise is heading, but to keep an open mind and suggest what might work, regardless if it makes a previous suggestion not work. I just bring as many ingredients I can carry; it’s the dev’s that cook the soup.
And without further ado, my feedback:
1) The way game scores are calculated.
I decided early on that I’d explore the game before finding the math online to min/max the way I do with everything I do. After finding a few “recipes” for Game Making of Excellence, I was surprised when I restarted the game only to make mediocre games despite not-out-of-date technology. It was only when I went online to learn the cause of this that I realized this game is about making mediocre games and then gradually increase the quality. Apparently if I make good games from the start I’ll shoot myself in the foot.
I suggest you calculate the game score on the “recipe” of creating it, in contrast to the skill of the people working on the various parts, and compare skill/experience of programmers, technology level of the engine, and time spent on creating the game against titles currently on the market, and rate it accordingly. Even the most legendary of titles IRL would’ve received crap ratings had they been released some ten years later.
2) Competitors/Rivals
In any excellent tycoon type game I’ve played (and I’ve played a lot of them), you always know who your competitors are, and you’re regularly compared against them. In this game you can conduct industrial sabotage on an RNG event, but you’ll never know who they are, how big of a competition they were against you, that annual G3 booth # they get, the quality of their games, where their office is, and what type of games they make. They mean nothing to you. They are like flied in another room, in another country. Irrelevant. Take a lesson from Theme Park, Restaurant Empire 2 or the good old Car/Airline/Railroad Tycoon.
There’s a surprisefully huge amount of players who enjoy competition. Beating it is what gives you a sense of accomplishment; victory. In this game it’s all about playing 35 years by yourself for and against nothing and then get an arbitrary number at the end. And this arbitrary number is in contrast to nothing, sheds light on nothing. It means nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to trash the game here, I’m giving you my feedback based on experience, logic and perspective. That’s all. Add competition, let the player name them, stick a face on them, and give them a speciality (like Action/Multi Genre/focus on a specific line of hardware, etc). Interact with them annually. There’s a G3 that’s awesome for PR, but there’s no award ceremony (GCDA/BAFTA/etc) for best games in genre.
3) Add RPG elements for the company
Add a trophy room. Let the player be able to pimp the hallways with statues of the characters from the players games. Let the player have the option to build a complex with a fountain at front and a helicopter pad in the back.
4) Add RPG elements for the player
Give him a salary. Let him buy a car, a house, go on vacation. Anything other than sitting in a chair for 35 years. Anything! Just being able to walk around the office would be a serious upgrade. Don’t want to be able to walk around? Solve it with humor and let him buy a wheel chair so he can stroll around while still working with a laptop in front of him.
5) Personnel. And this is a huge one
In any Management with personnel, you let a mechanic fix things, a janitor clean things, a waiter serve the food, a pilot fly the plane, and so on. In this game, there’s only one type of personnel. You remember that guy from Tekken, who you’d win with just mashing a single button? This game is that character. Mash one button and it all works out. There’s no PR department. No Support staff. If you’ve done a complete playthrough, do you just now realize you haven’t cleaned in 35 years? Since all the staff does is input code and go on vacation, who pays the bills? It is done automatically. I realize this game is about making games, not office management. But look at the non-existent (central) parts of what it is to run an office/company, and look what is implemented. Both the R&D and the Hardware departments require no management, just a number and it runs itself. What’s that Tekken character’s name? Bruce? Brian? Eddie, that’s it. The one button wonder. There’s a whole game to be played in Tekken, combinations to learn, read your opponent and adapt your fighting style accordingly, use the arena to your advantage, etc. What Eddie does to a fighting game is what Game Dev Tycoon does to the Tycoon genre; finding the correct button to mash, and don’t stop mashing it.
My suggestion, add different types of personnel. No company has only one type of personnel. A company is a group of people. No group consists of individuals that all do the same thing. When you grew up, did the entire family just vacuum the floor? No one did the dishes, went shopping, played some instrument or did sports? Mother, father and siblings all equipped with a vacuum cleaner walking around the house? Paint a funny picture? How about Sim City and all you can build is a five story residential building? How fun would that game be? How about Civilization and the only thing you can research is “Tech” with an incremental integer at the end? Or how about Tekken and the only character you can play is Eddie? Is my point starting to come across?
If you don’t want to add different types of personnel (R&D, programmer, designer, Tech-whatever, PR, Support, Market Analysts, etc), how about just giving the programmers different types of bonuses. Jim might be excellent at Adventure games, Helen might be awesome at RPG’s, etc.
A few years ago when I was bored, I went through the credits of the original release of World of Warcraft. I counted over five hundred rows of names. In this game you can only have half a dozen employees, and they all have to work on the same project at the same time. I can’t split them up to work on different projects (say 3 working on a Medium project and 1 working on a Small project, and just spam-educate the rest since I have the resources). Which leads us to the next thing I want to bring up.
6) Personnel, hiring
When hiring new personnel, it’d be nice with a picture of said person. I don’t want to hire all white male staff, I appreciate diversity, but once I got all African Americans. That’s not what I had in mind at all. Forgive me stereotyping, but I kept feeling that an all black staff was like having an all white basket ball team. And once I wanted an all-female staff, to see if there was an achievement. You know, for the lulz. This feature would also make the game more user friendly. The pictures that is, not the all-female achievement. And if you’re now hell-bent on adding that achievement, please don’t name it after me. When I die I don’t want that to be my legacy.
7) Projects
I want more control. Right now there’s nine categories split up in three in every third of the time allotted. Maybe I want two people to work on the World Design, and I want them to work on it in two of the three stages, to give them enough time to implement all the things I have available. It’d be better if I could do the planning during the planning stages of the game (before the first third). A time/personnel management window (project schedule) where I assign people to do various tasks from start to finish. Skip the 2/3 and 3/3 pop ups. It’s hard to get a decent overview when you only see a step at a time. If I’m to climb a stair case I’d like to know every step from the start, and plan accordingly. I don’t like running into the issue where I give one of my personnel 100% in the first two thirds, and then find out in the last stage that I need him to do a huge task. Or the opposite, I don’t use him in case I need him at the end only to find out I don’t, wasting potential for the project as a result.
Imagine this scenario, I sent someone on vacation mid-project. I now get a pop up for the second or third stage of the game development. I don’t remember the name of the person I sent on vacation, I’m bad with names and the game’s too short to learn and remember all the names. I can’t move the Time Management (or whatever)-window to see who’s greyed out, so I’ll have no choice but to wing it. Suggestion: Windows should be moveable.
I also wouldn’t mind opening up more branches (offices) of my company when I have hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. Let them all focus on different genres. My main office works on the MMO, my sister office works on my console, titles and actual hardware for it. A third office works on my RPG games. You get the idea. This won’t work if the main character is tied to a single office. As owner of the company you’d have to be able to freely distribute personnel, include one self.