Whys that?. My only game for Garage, I only developed on the G64 and gameling, why should I skip it when I made tons of money?
The G64 has its uses. Say I’ve just researched my new engine and am pretty sure my next title will be my smash hit. If you have researched target audience at this point, I could make my would-be smash hit a mature title in order to get the free “first mature title” hype event. The PC also supports mature titles, but you want a device with a bigger market share when planning for your smash hit, as that will let you get more profits and thus more starting capital to being stage 2 with, thus making the G64 the superior choice in this one instance.
That is pretty much the only case when I use the G64. Before my custom engine I stick to the PC. Once in stage 2, My platform of choice varies depending on what the publishers want, but if given a choice I’ll either go for the PC or Gameling depending on the genres I intend to focus on. At that point, the G64 is on its way out.
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Another Tip: Do one round of training for all of your employees in between each game you produce; focus on training their design/tech (whichever is appropriate for their skills/role). When you go to make your next title, their raw skills will be slightly higher and thus you are more likely to make gradual progress compared to your last game. Even if you don’t do anything else to innovate and stick with the same sliders in the same genre (different topic to avoid a penalty) you’ll probably get better scores.
This serves two more purposes: Training becomes less effective the more you do it in rapid succession. By waiting in between games to train, you get more bang for your buck.
Lastly, if you finish a game and your employees are getting close to needing their vacations, better for that bar to show up in the middle of a training session than in the middle of a game development.
When you are upgrading your engine, you don’t need to train design/tech, as the engine upgrades are likely to boost the quality of your next game on its own. You can instead focus on research/speed training instead.
Doing a round of research training for yourself and brand new employees really early in stage 2 can be very powerful, as those extra research skills will increase the total research points generated for all future games. Once everyone has their efficiency bar up to full, I like to fire off a round of research training before making my first game.
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Early in the game, while in the garage before making your first custom engine, make one game with an extremely bad topic/genre combination. Don’t do this with your very first game or you might go bankrupt. Make it for the PC to minimize your costs.
The game will likely get crap reviews, but you’ll still get much needed experience for making it. At this stage of the game, the garbage sales and the loss of a few fans won’t hurt you.
Why go through the trouble?
Later in the game, once you’re in the 2nd office and have a new game engine, if the “Strange Combinations” Trend ever fires, make a sequel to your strange game. The bonus from making a proper sequel combined with the bonus for following the ‘strange trend’ properly should actually cause the game to do well, and do better than a brand new game with a strange combo would. You can continue doing this with more sequels if the trend fires again (Just make sure you’re on a new engine between sequels). You can turn the game series into your company’s pet black sheep IP and actually have it do well. Just make sure you ONLY make a sequel when the ‘strange combination’ trend is active, and if you think you can finish the game in time to release it before the trend ends.
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Tip:
When developing games in the garage, always use a brand new topic with each game. When you’ve used your 4 starters, research a new topic for each new game until you get your smash hit. Not only will this give you an important bonus to your xp gain for each title you produce, it will give you a snapshot of future topics that will be available to you. Based on the available topics, this can help you decide what genre you ultimately want to focus on when you get out of the garage and get ready to decide what kind of employees to hire.
Seeing Hospital/Virtual Pet/Airplane/Evolution as your next four will probably mean that focusing on simulation games will be very beneficial for you, for example.
Researching Racing also unlocks the steering wheel, allowing you to add it to a future engine.
It can also help guide decisions as to what platforms you might want to start developing for and how early (if at all) you want to invest in the casual genre once it unlocks.
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When you are in the garage stage, it is important to make a variety of games of different genres. Or, if you are planning on focusing on one or two specific genres later in the game, make games of that genre in the garage. They will be important later.
The moment the “Sequels” research becomes available in stage 2, research it. It is, IMO,THE most powerful thing you can use in the game and can double the life of your engines.
Here is how you properly use sequels.
For demonstration purposes, I’m going to explain it assuming you have JUST researched a brand new engine and have included all the features researched thus far into it.
Using your new engine, create a brand new, non-sequel game. Ideally use a brand new category with a ‘good’ topic/genre combination, ideally with a genre your team is familiar with, and good at making. Make the ONLY new thing about your engine be the upgrade to the graphics. Leave ALL the other new bells and whistles of your engine unused (if you had features that were used by an older engine, keep using those).
If you did your sliders right, your new game should be a hit, if not at least a very well scored 8.0+ game.
Afterwards… make another game. This time make a sequel. Remember those games I told you to make back in the garage era? This is where they become important. They are sequel fodder. Using the EXACT same engine, with the EXACT same features as your last game, and the EXACT same slider positions and genre… make your sequel.
You’ll find that, despite the fact that you failed to innovate at all from your previous game, this game will do just as well. This is because of the ‘proper sequel’ bonus. Your score is boosted by 20% for sequels that are made from games that had an older engine and that were more than 40 weeks ago. Your garage-era PC and G64 titles are perfect for that.
Now…simply make another NEW non-sequel game, turning on a few more of your engine’s features this time. This game should be a hit too. After that, follow up with another sequel using the same features/sliders.
I’ve been able to chain 8 back to back 8.5+ games this way off a SINGLE engine before I ran out of new features to turn on and had to make a new engine.
Once you make a new engine, all those games you made previously (both the sequels and the originals) are now fodder for sequels for the new engine.
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When making Medium games in stage 2, you only need 3 people (Yourself + 2 employees). Any more than that is a waste of money.
Ideally, you want level 2 employees when you hire them, level 3s if you get lucky enough to get one as an applicant. Level 1s are just way too low skilled to be worth the time. You also want to be picky about not just the design/tech skills of your two employees, but also the speed and research. Ideally you want them both to be higher than 250. If they are over 300, you have a winner. Research is especially important as these employees will determine how many research bubbles you get from them, and having a healthy supply is critical to doing plenty of training and researching plenty of new engine features.
Hire both employees at the same time to minimize the effect of the group efficiency decrease. Don’t make your first game with them until after everyone has fully recovered their efficiency. Because the first game made by a brand new employee will have a penalty applied… I actually recommend starting out with a self-published small game as your team’s first title. It probably won’t do that well, but because it is a small game, it won’t cost much and won’t have much of an impact on your fans. The other use for this small game is to see the kind of ratio of design/tech bubbles that your new team will be putting out. This can give you an idea of what genres your team will be good at. For example, if the small game puts out twice as many tech bubbles as design, you might want to focus on action games. If the ratio is closer to being even, but still favors tech, you’ll want to stick to simulation and strategy games, as they are less demanding about having a steep tech focus…yet are still tech oriented. The same is true for a team built for design-focused genres, with adventure games being ideal for teams that put out tons more design points than tech, and casual/rpgs being better for teams that have a more even ratio.
Once you reach 250k fans, you are ready to start making large games and ready to move into the next office. However, you won’t be offered the option to move to the next office until you have 3 employees. Just spend 20k to hire some random level 1 derp to meet the requirement. Once you move to your next office, fire the level 1 derp and start hiring to fill the rest of your seats all at once. The reason why you want to wait to be in the next office to hire the rest of your team proper is that you get a MUCH better quality of candidates in your applications when you are in the 3rd stage. Level 3s are common, and you might even get a level 4 or 5 with some insanely high stats. Once you’ve filled your team of 6 (and everyone’s rock bottom efficiency has recovered to full) You are ready to start making large games. (You don’t NEED 7 people to do large games, but at this point you should have enough money for the extra headcount and it will make your transition to AAA games very easy).
If you didn’t spend much time/research points/money in training your original two employees, go ahead and fire them and replace them with fresh employees that have higher base skills. This will actually save you money because your original two employees are likely a high level now and thus will be drawing a high salary, yet will lack the dev/tech/speed/research skills of the high level new hire. If you did keep up with training your initial two employees, you can keep them around, as they should have enough skills to keep up with the higher level new hires.
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I’m still kicking numbers around in my head and am not certain, but it appears that developing for particular platforms reduces market share for unused platforms. For example, if I completely ignore the G64 and develop solely for PC, the PC’s market share rises (well, “falls more slowly” might be more accurate) than it does if I develop several games for G64. This seems to pay some dividends later when you can aim for the Mature audiences. On the other hand, developing for the G64, because it starts with a significantly larger market share, allows you to have a slightly larger fan base by the time you get out of the garage. It’s a trade-off, but it seems that keeping the PC’s market share higher seems to pay larger dividends in the long run. Could be wrong, but that’s how the situation looks at the moment.
Tip:
At a loss for good game names? Put a short character name in an early game and adopt them as your company mascot, akin to Mario and Sonic.
For any future games made with the original’s topic and/or target audience, include your mascot’s name in the title.
For example:
Establishing Game:
Young + Virtual Pet + Simulation: “My Milo”
Follow ups:
Young + Pirate + Adventure: "Milo: Puppy Pirate"
Young + School + RPG: "Milo: Kindergarten"
Young + Racing + Casnual: “Milo: Grand Prix”
Tip: When you have existing employees and are ready to hire more, wait for your existing employees to want to go on vacation. Then hire your new employee(s). This will drop your existing employees’ efficiency bars to hit rock bottom. Then send them on vacation. The vacation time will not only restore the efficiency lost due to needing a vacation, but also the efficiency loss due to new team members; they’ll come back fully rested and able. This lets you do training with them until the rest of the team has returned to full.
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If you hire two balanced employees in stage 2, you gain a huge amount of slider flexibility. If you make each person responsible for all three aspects in each stage, you can freely adjust the sliders in any stage without worrying about unbalancing the workloads.
This allows you to continue developing a wide variety of genres successfully. (I’d still avoid action and adventure games as they require more extreme levels of focus on tech or design)
Put your more design-focused employee in stage one, the more tech focused one in stage two, and have your character handle stage 3.
This is an extremely useful trick for the publisher phase of the game, as publishers can demand a wide variety of genres as part of their contracts.
Over time, you can focus-train your employees to make your company more design focused or tech focused.
When you hire your first employees pay more attention to they research ability. They’ll be around for a long time and that research will add up over time. Your later hires will come after a lot of research is already done so you won’t get much from them in research.
Also since research is also used for training taking a character with extra research will allow you to improve their other stats later.
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Guide to your first two employees.
Once you reach the first office and are ready to start making medium games, you need to hire your first two employees. I say “first two” because at this point in the game, two employees is the ONLY logical choice. One employee is not enough to help you make medium games properly, and three employees is too much and will likely bankrupt you. You can stay with just these two employees until you are ready to start making large games (250k fans or more)
At this stage of the game, the most logical amount to pay for your employee search is 80k. 80k will give you access to three potential candidates. While the 80k won’t boost the quality of the employees much, we aren’t looking for super high level employees at this point. You can easily afford 80k after your 2 million + smash hit game. The next logical stage up is 440k, which will easily bankrupt you so don’t bother.
What type of employees you want depends on what genres you want to be good at.
As a reminder:
Complex Algorithms: Tech focused employee
Game Demos: Design/Tech balanced employee
Showreels: Design focused employee.
Based on the genre(s) I want to be good at, I hire as follows.
Action: Complex Algorithms x2
Strategy and/or Simulation: Complex Algorithms X1, Game Demos X1
RPG: Game Demos X2 (slanted to design a little bit)
Casual and/or Adventure: Showreels X1, Game Demos X1
Flexible: Complex Algorithm X1, Showreels X1 OR Game Demos X2 (Slanted to tech a little bit)
Why do I need to stack my team so heavily with Complex Algorithms for my tech genres? Because the game is naturally slated to favor design. If you have a perfectly neutral team, you’ll generate 1.25 design bubbles for every tech bubble. Thus to properly hit the bubble ratio desired by the tech focused games, we need to more heavily stack our deck in favor of tech.
Employee Level:
This is a debated topic, but I’m going to give you my personal advice: Level 2 is the best. Level 1 doesn’t bring nearly enough skill points to the table and it will take a LOT of training before you get their skills up, which can cause problems when you want to turn them into specialists later in the game. Level 3 brings TOO many skill points, and will most likely cause you to way-over shoot your target game score early on, making the mid-game harder than it needs to be. They are also rarer and can throw off your bubble balance too easily.
Speed:
Unlike the tech/design skills, the speed skill is not tied to employee level. Ideally, we want employees that start with a LOW speed (under 200). That’s right, low. By starting with a low speed, you make speed trainings more powerful, thus allowing you to use them to make meaningful increases in your game quality than they would if you had employees who started with a high speed stat to begin with. Having a low speed won’t hurt their abilities to become specialists later on.
Research: Like speed, this skill isn’t tied to the employee’s starting level. Unlike speed, we want this to be as HIGH as possible. 200+ at a minimum. The higher this starts naturally, the more research bubbles you’ll be getting out of the employee over time. Since having a high research skill to start with won’t cause any of their other starting stats to suffer, there is no downsides to getting employees with a high naturally starting research skill.
Be picky, but not TOO picky: Getting these first two employees right is important, but not to the point of bankrupting yourself. If you have no good candidates in your first employee search, don’t be afraid to X out the box and try your search again. You’ll be out the 80k, but it is worth it if you can get a better employee in the next group of three. That being said, don’t hold out for the absolute PERFECT employee or you’ll end up wasting a lot of money. A possible (albeit cheap) tactic is to save your game before starting your employee search. If your searches turn up with no good employees, reload to try your search again, so you aren’t out the 80k.
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hey, i just wondering about the engines and sequels.
as you said:
can i do the rest of the sequels and when i finished the sequels turn on another new feature from the same engine and repeat the process, or every time i do new sequel from a game it must be a new and improved engine?
Thank you
It needs to be a brand new engine. Even if your sequel is using an engine feature that was turned off in the original, the game won’t recognize it as a technical improvement.
so… i have another doubt right now.
I explain detailed:
i am on the garage or in the office better.
i make 2 games: final fantasy and… star Ocean.
i do an engineX with graphics2 and sound2, do a new game named TV Show with new combo with the engineX turning on graphics2, and do a sequel for final fantasy with the same engineX and graphics2 on.
¿can i do star ocean sequel with the same engineX having only graphics2 or do i have to make a new engineZ to get bonus on star ocean sequel?
And another tihng:
¿it is worth to make an engine with lots of features for bonus of technical improvements on “brand new games” and Specific engines less powerfull just to update the sequels (obviously improving the features from the last sequel of that serie)? ¿or will this not get bonus because the sequels are less powerfull than the “brand new games”?
I don’t quite understand your first question… and I sort of understand your 2nd. Let me give you my advice on sequels.
What I normally do with sequels is a two-game step-up.
So I make a game with a new topic that is original and not a sequel.
Then, using the exact same engine, engine components, employees and sliders, I make a sequel to a game that has the same genre as the original.
After this 2nd game is made, I work on improving my game making abilities. I give all my employees training. If I have turned on all the available features of my current engine, I’ll research and make a new engine. (If I haven’t turned on all the features yet, I can re-use the same engine for my next two games, turning on more features rather than researching a whole new engine).
In order for a sequel to get the bonus, it needs to be made 40+ weeks after the original, and with a new engine. It is the name of the engine that is important for this distinction, not which features the new and old engine uses. If you are looking for games to make into sequels, there is no shame in using your old garage-era titles as sequel fodder, as you always be on a newer engine by the time you can make sequels.
Got a bad crop of publisher contracts and don’t want to wait 6 months for them to refresh? Save your game, then load from it. Loading your game will cause the publisher contracts to re-randomize, potentially giving you a better offer. This can be called “Gamey” but sometimes you really are at a loss for something to do if all four offers are junk.
On the flip side, if you find a really good contract (Any topic, Any genre, any platform… or a platform you like anyway with a good royalty rate) After finishing a game under that contract, immediately check the contracts page again…there is a chance that they haven’t had their 6-month refresh yet. This will allow you to make a 2nd game with the same contract. This shouldn’t be done with contracts that demand a specific topic + genre combo as making two games in a row with the same exact combo gives you a BIG penalty.
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When using ( abusing ) the sequel bonus there is always a chance some trend pops up, going along with your current game Topic/Genre/Audience.
Meaning you will recieve another bonus on top of your sequel bonus.
This will cause problems for your next game(s), As you have to use either too many Engine Features or Staff Training in order to make the next game have a good score aswell.
To counter this, use bugs to lower your Game Score ( do not confuse with review score )
This i a tricky method which does not be taken lightly, there is however a simple calculation to know how much bugs you can leave in the game,
Taken from the wiki, since it a good explaination.
Bug_Ratio = 1 - 0,008 for every (Design + Tech / 100) Bugs
The best way to calculate this is to divide your sum of Design and Tech by 20, and assume that you lose 1% of Game Score for quarter that many bugs.
For example, if your Design + Tech = 200, then 200/20 = 10 and 10/4 = 2.5, so every 2.5 bugs reduce your Game Score by 1%. All calculations here are not truncated, so, in the previous example 4 bugs would be exactly 1.6% off your Game Score.