Game Dev Tycoon General Feedback & Suggestions Rolling Thread 1

Thanks for the feedback everyone! :smile:

I hope there’s option to buy licenses of Game Engines from the company that create Game Engines :smile:

(Dull title, sorry :stuck_out_tongue: )

Two ideas that popped into my head…

  1. Allow a game to be developed for more than one platform at a time.
    The development cost would be more than developing for each console individually i.e. developing a game for PC and G64 might cost 50k.
    This extra amount of money could be for porting to another console or the extra labour for developing two pieces of code at the same time.
    Porting would be cheaper but would produce an inferior copy, whereas developing two pieces of code at the same time would take longer and cost more, but the two pieces of code should be as good as each other, also allowing you to edit the code slightly to take advantage of the increased graphical power of one console or the motion controls of another… (anyone want to expand on what the extra money could be for?)

  2. Allowing your company to sign deals with hardware makers to develop games for their consoles (like Game Freak for Nintendo). The deals could be based over a few years and the deals could force you to develop for the company who contracted you only or you could still be free to develop for other consoles, depending on what was in the contract you signed.

Thoughts?

Atleast the part with Multi-console releases is a great idea. I support this.

Great ideas but to improve on your second idea, I think that asking other companies to make a console for you could work. Or you can share development on games.

Reading what Brandon in his 4th suggestion has to say in this post Many new Unique and Interesting Ideas is sort of what i was trying to say with my second idea, but i think his idea would be a lot more interesting to play with

Hey guys, here are some ideas I thought would be very nice to have in game. First off, expand the story as much as possible. More buildings, more employees, let us go global. Give feed back, I’d love to hear!

###1 Multiplayer. Play with, and against friends. Create lobbies, set parameters, and select modes:
-Versus 1v1(Standard death match.)
-Teams 2+v2+(2+ players per team)
-Cooperative mode(Everyone vs the NPC, difficulty increases with number of players.)

###2 Modes. Let me pick which mode I play in.
-Story Mode (default game, single player)
-Big Business Mode (Start farther ahead in the game, 1 million dollars, however the NPC is more advanced.)
-Time Crunch(Sped up x2, x5, x10)
-Marathon(Slowed x2, x5, x10)

###3 Chapter Select, where in the game you start. (Success not guaranteed)
-Chapter 1: Garage
-Chapter 2: Office
-Chapter 3: Building Complex
-Chapter 4: Corporate Office
-Chapter 5: Enterprise

###4 Partnerships & Reputations
-Allow you to attempt to team up with another company (NPC)
-Your reputation is based on success, ie fans, money, game history
-You may attempt to reach out to a company, and they may reach out to you.

  • Discounts/Free when using their console
    -You both win/suffer together
    -Using other consoles lowers your reputation
    -If your partner fails you may fail too, so pick wisely
    -Declining/Accepting certain partnerships will earn you friends and enemies

###5 Employee levels
-Add managers to help contain other employees
-Add CTO, CFO, etc. All cost money but can advise you very well.
-Board of directors, etc. All help you expand, and manage.

###6 Pay random people to test games, get better feed back before releasing a game.
-Let people tell you what they’re feeling
-More response from the media

###7 Start a foundation for gaming
-Upon reaching high success you can create a gaming union, somewhat like G3 but you’re in control.
-Bring in large revenue, attract fans, help develop new games.

###8 Next gen gaming
-Go to futuristic technologies, expand much more than before on your own console

###9 More customization in game making
-New bars to adjust:
-1: Game length/playtime
-2:Difficulty/Skill needed
-3:Previous knowledge of other games needed
-4:Hardcore investment in playing

###10 Fees/Misc
-Monthly fee or not
-Major DLCs
-Backwards compatability
-Pay to Win

Feedback:

  1. Why would you bother adding Multiplayer to a game where it got developed on a software that I can doubt run a multiplayer server.

  2. That would be a great addition, would add few more days playability to the game.

  3. Could be nice, but in my opinion, thats already there.

  4. This would be very good, but instead of teaming up at the start of your career, wait until level two and then you can have those options, that would be really nice.

  5. This would be a great idea, this would let the realistic side of the game flourish, brilliant.

  • Not really much else to say, but all these besides #1 is brilliant ideas.

One thing that has continually popped into my head every time I got to a new generation of consoles was that it’d be cool if I could start in that era. Currently the game starts somewhere in an era equivalent to the 1980s, simulating the life of companies like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft (if you don’t go bankrupt).

What I’d like to see is the ability to start in different decades, so that one can become a company like id Software in the 90s or an indie game developer in the 00s or 10s. This would allow the basic gameplay (making small games, limited genres, etc.) to take place in a completely new landscape and thus make the game feel like new again.

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thought i would have seen the sega Saturn or sega cd in the system line up but that got me thinking how about your games could be a success on a system that it might keep the console going or destroy the other (like create your own history)
plus the story line could be brought back even further like the atari stage or bit later like the sinclear spectrum era with tapes

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with that in mind, you’d probably want the Odyssey or Odyssey 2 systems, Intelevision, Colecovision, and all the other competitors (yes there were more) for Atari.

that would mean you would be starting in the 70’s instead of the 80’s, and text-based games would rule the market for a long while (For the PC anyway). 2-d graphics would be ‘invented’ sometime after the 5th year, I suppose?

Well I figure they didn’t add the very short-lived systems (like the 32x, virtual boy, turbo grphix 16, tiger electronics, game and watch) for obvious reasons (lasting less than a year, not having a large market share, time constraints on making the game, etc)

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It would be cool if there was an expansion or new game about Mods that could work with the games you made in Game Dev Tycoon just name it Mod Dev Tycoon or something.

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  • Advanced Market Research: A player driven research access tool to help startup “developers” better understand what their best fail-safe combos are for topic/genre (diminishing returns expected of course); what platform trends are most appealing to the a certain target audience; What percentage of that target audience is actively contributing to the gaming market;
  • Mechanic: Utilize a sliding Budget Expense bar (similar to the head hunting mechanic) with RP factored in at perhaps 1RP/10K invested. This might also tie to the “Researchers” ability score. The better the score, the more info they will return for game development consideration.

Edited 6-5-13”: The idea here is to try to help make this game as wiki-free as possible thereby increasing the fun-factor with less hit & miss for the casual gamer market

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You really need to make this game vastly less arbitrary. There need to be much better indications of what you’re doing wrong or right and what choices and courses of action will help or hinder a product.

Right now it seems like every game I launch I’m literally just rolling dice to see if it’s a success or failure and that’s not fun.

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It’s all in the manual (ie. the wiki) so the game’s workings are not a complete mystery, but some of that stuff should definitely be in the game itself. I felt Minecraft suffers from the same problem. Compared to Terraria it’s virtually information free. The MC wiki is virtually necessary to even play the game. GDT is better in this regard than MC, but it could definitely be a bit clearer.

I think this game is overall THE NEXT HIT GAME

I would like to have two Features:
1.A Scenario Mode, you will get no Achievements in this Mode.
You can select in which year, with which employees, with how many fans,cash,games etc. you start and you can save the Scenarios as a file to send other people.
2. Please add some Game Consoles, for example the Atari 2600, or even some flopped consoles like the Virtual Boy or the Atari Jaguar.
I would also like to have the Gameboy Color and Advance instead of only the Gameboy(Gameling)
Fliwatt

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hi, i hope there will be a sequel to gdt, i love this game so much

some suggestions

  • competition between yours and other companies, maybe even in multiplayer like most other games of this genre do have (pizza syndicate, the guild, etc…)

  • more detail and complexity without overloading the interface, i like the way you basically only have one screen for all actions (except the 2 labs)

    • more actions including the fans, found a forum for the community to get feedback like "we want more rpg/action combies or we heavily want a sequel for this game, or we missing this feature in this game etc…

    • more actions for the labs, maybe develop your own controller’s for the console, like for the wii, each game has a different controller if you want xD

    • more random events, especially interviews, interviews on the conventions with a “choose option” like praise the new engine, or the sequel has more features, we improved the sound, etc… -> will result in additional hype, or not if you say e.g. we added immersive story telling to an action title -> hype goes down and losing fans

    • atm grid is kind of sad, you research it and all you get to see is monthly income, you could do events on this distribution platform and research better versions of grid, like improved interface responding on the community feedback, research greenlight to support indie dev studios =)
      releasing demos of the game you currently developing, etc…

    • once your company is big enough, other dev studios come to you and ask for publisher support, you’re helping other companies by publishing their games, do marketing and so on

    • i wish the time allocation sliders would save, so i made a game with slider … and it was good, next time make a game with the same genre/genre-combie the game uses the same sliders for each genre automatically or it could ask me if want to use the best result i had discovered for this genre so far,
      for the immerse you could make this feature researchable in one of the labs and call it “community feedback - genre’s in depth” for example, when you research it you have the ability, or make it an expensive training course for your main character (manager)

    • different game modes, like scenario 25,30,35 years, and freegame with start parameters like the time, money to start with, fans, which level and for scenario the events are scripted, like atm, and for the free game events are random, random platforms, good/bad topic/genre combies are random, so the game would show more replayability

    • more detail on the development costs, expansions and game consoles should show up in the game history or get an own history where we can look up what we’ve done so far, and series should fit together in a tooltip, (mouseover sequel 3 says in tooltip “2nd sequel, 1st was y8m5, original was y4m7”) something like this,
      i had the problem as my game history increases and i had several series i’m always forgetting which titles already had a sequel and how many of them…

    • more feedback on the review score especially for a bad review, like the sound was bad for this genre, etc…,
      so basically improving the gaming experience for newbees, not everyone want’s to use spreadsheets and hanging 6 hours on the wiki to understand how the game does work like i did

    • multi topic, and multiple development of games, i mean as soon as i’m going te be a big company, i should feel like one ,big publishers like ea have 2 or 3 projects at the same time, maybe you could add a 2nd layer for the developers under the main studio with 6 more employees, and maybe a line producer or a manager that keeps track of their progress, in level 2 and in level 3 maybe a 3rd above
      also multi platform releases, which increases the dev time depending on the game size after the debug phase, maybe a question “do you want to release to other platforms as well?”, you mark the platforms and the porting starts

    • some of the combies for platform/engine including features are stupid, e.g. 3d graphics, stereoscopic 3d, stereo/mono sound, etc… for gameboy (gameling) makes no sense, these options shouldn’t be available for gameling, and the same for the other platforms, in addition the release announcements could give more infos on this, e.g.
      "ninvendo announces his new handheld gameling with spectacular new improved 2d graphics and basic sounds. replying on the question why there is no support for mono sounds like on g64, the anwser is “the gaming community isn’t ready for this yet xD”
      (i love the the irony in the game like if you’re bankrupt it says ea bought your company and the licenses for all your successful games^^)

    • an online upload for your highscore in different categories, like scenario 25,30,35 and free game so we could try beat the score from other players

    • bigger difference between the sizes of the game, small 6-9months, medium 12-18m, large 18-24m and triple a up to 36 months maybe, i mean developing a triple a title with only 7 people in under a year, seems a bit weird, more employees working on the project could also increase the dev time

    • mmo’s need an overhaul, i don’t mean the bug which is already mentioned in other threads, the statistic should be more sophisticated, e.g. initial release -> 25 cash per license, and then monthly cost of 15 cash, the same when take an mmo off the market, it should say " 1,5m players are sad", not 150m cause of the expansions and the monthly cost for each player all added together

    • also releasing a title for a platform should depend on their market share, my own console is on top in about 18m after release, if i’m developing good games for this console with 20.5% market share the console should sell better and result in adding more fans, also more influence to the other platforms as well, i like the sega genesis, when i’m releasing top titles for this platform the nes should lose and has to say goodbye
      (this could also be part of the different modes, more impact in freegame mode and strict scripted history/events for scenario)

    • my own convention should also make PR for my console and for grid not only for the games i’m releasing

  • modding support would be awesome, it’s that one thing that keeps a game alive for over a decade, the community for games like thief/thief 2, aoe series and so on is still present after more then 10 years, maybe an editor for custom platforms, competetive companies and scenarios including events

    • i got another idea for especially newbees, there could be something like a cheat-mode where you can see an indicator for the D:T ratio for the genre during development, this would be optional, or it could only show the first time you try a new genre/genre-combie, so that we have an info what ratio is good for the genre, and if it’s not we decide to scrap the work , this could also be part of the tutorial or a locked feature which has to be unlocked per training course for the main character or as a research for one of the labs, also the idea for a notice on the sliders, that say “more or less important” for the genre is really good imo

so that are my suggestions so far, some of them are already posted by others, i know, but for the completeness i wanted to make a bigger post for the features i decided i want to have

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Platformers should be a game type available to the player from the beginning.

Starting with the Super TES and with every new platform released afterwards… offer the player the option into an exclusivity contract for that system. If the player accepts, they may ONLY create games for that system as long as the contract is in place.

Accepting would provide the player with several benefits:

  1. The license would be given to the player for free to develop on that system.
  2. A one time cash bonus would be given to the player (tied to the year, larger bonuses for later years)
  3. Free advertising on each game made for the platform
  4. ALL publisher deals offered would only be from the primary company (Vony, Ninvento etc) and would only be on the system you have your contract for. (The royalty %, desired game score, target audience, topics and genres would still be random as normal)

Players may also make self published games, but must make them on the platform on which they have a contract.

There are three ways to end an exclusivity contract.

  1. The player may terminate it early, but must pay a HEAVY penalty to do so. The penalty would be tied to the year and would always take a massive chunk out of a player’s finances.

  2. The player may remain on it until the console is taken off the market naturally. This will free them from the contract without any penalty at all.

  3. If the same company comes out with a newer platform they will offer the player a chance to upgrade. If they accept, they get another bonus and their old contract is cancelled and replaced with a new contract for the new platform. So if I had a contract with Vega for the Master V and the Oasis comes out, I could get my contract swapped over to the Oasis and start developing games on that.

The main benefits to exclusivity deals are the bonus payments (good to save yourself from bankruptcy) and the free hype. It also makes publisher contracts more predictable, as you know what system you’ll be developing them for.

The downsides are that it can lock you into a system after that system has lost significant market share but still sticks around for awhile before being taken off the market.