How games are scored

Game Dev Tycoon
#1

I would like to start off by saying that I loved the game for the most part. It is like Game Dev Story but with more depth. I just hate how games are scored. The game penalizes you for putting too many points in certain aspects of the game for certain topics. For example, putting too many points in story telling, in an action game, will kill your review scores, no matter how good the game comes out. Right now my personal best game, in terms of design points and technology, scored a 1.5 average score. I should be able to put whatever I want into my games, as long as certain criteria are met for that genre. The -, or minuses in your system should just be removed. No RPG gamer is going to complain about a game because the engine is too good. They should complain if the story is not good enough, and this should be reflected in reviews. Every aspect of game development can help a game get better. The number of things that you successfully implement in your game should give it a better score. Seriously though, I’m just shocked that I was finally able to make a game that had everything I wanted in it, have the game set records for design and technology, and have it get a 1.5. This makes no sense at all. I shouldn’t have to read a wiki every time I want to release a game, and I shouldn’t have to conform to ideal slider sets to get a decent score, and have the game sell. I made it to year 30, but never got to develop my own console, because of the random flops that would occur, keeping me from making money quickly.

You need to find another way to make a game fail. It should be based on the ideas that they try to implement, and whether or not they were implemented successfully. You can never have too good AI. Having a self learning AI in any game would make it better, and it would NEVER be a detriment.

Thank you for your hard work. I cannot wait for the sequel… make sure we can view competing companies in it. And make a section of the game about IP development. Making a diverse and beloved IP like Mario should make you rich in a Game Dev Sim. And you should be able to do scenarios where you get to play as a classic company (start off with more money, maybe an IP or two, and a console devolpment team).

#2

The rating system is bad. For example if you have all workers with 900 skills in tech and design you will gain lower scores than if you had for example 600 design and 200 tech. Reason is you need certain Tech/Design ratios for good scores. I learned this much later after already upgrading all my workers. I didn’t know the game punishes you for upgrading workers.

Also, the game rates you not only on the game but also on your last games. For example. If you make a game, say it would score 9. Now, if your last two games were already ranked high, it will penalize you for it. Instead of a 9 you will now get a 7 not based on the game you made but based on the game being not as good as your previous game. There are many factors in the rating system that are dumb and even frustrating. I have read the review algorithm and it’s a pure mess.

#3

To some extent I know what you mean. When you look at the optimal slider diagrams on the wiki, it really takes away a lot of the creativity that you put into developing the game. That being said, the example you used - RPGs - the sliders for that do make a lot of sense. An RPG gamer is going to complain when a developer spent time on an engine for high-action when the extent of story development is lessened - I know I would. Pushing up the sliders for engine development isn’t harming it, it’s the time that part of development is taking from an RPG’s key aspects that is harming the scores. I tend not to look at the sliders, and more at the time ratio bar underneath, since that seems more practical. Again, I would be upset to know a dev crew spent weeks of time on an engine when their story suffers because of it.

And as for the first example - about story telling in an action game, recieving bombing reviews: how do you know said action game was good? Like I said before, the time ratio is the main feature, the sliders are just how you prioritise it. Taking time away from developing gameplay and AI for the game at the cost of extra script-writing and scene setting isn’t a priority a dev crew would really want (and when I talk about time, just think how many weeks/months often go by during the transition phase of game development - irl that would mean months of action game devs writing scripts and without touching engine design). I’d like to let developers mess around with story telling in an action game, often they’re really well done, but make no mistake I’m there to push myself and the console to a limit I wouldn’t get in an RPG. If you wanted more freedom, take dual genres (most of my successes long term are all dual), that way you can focus on comprimising between the Technical side and Design side. Finally, adding the engine mechanics (by this I’m not talking about the slider, I mean the features you research like Self-learning AI), they’ve never negatively effected me (except for costs). Not saying I put them all in every time, but by Stage 3 where you get the most useful ones, then… yeah, I am adding them to most of my games since they’re features you’d find in any AAA game. They’re not the main aspect of recieving reviews so don’t worry about them.

But this all makes it seem like I totally disagree with you, which I don’t. The review system is capable of manipulation, but like you I personally don’t want to have to sit at a wiki to predetermine my score and so like you, once you know the optimal settings you feel restricted by creativity vs success. I guess you would say it’s like a real life decisison, do I stick to my creative integrety and face probable obsucrity and failure? Or do I sell out, give the masses what they think they want and be rich playing in the system?

I do hope they look more into some of the other features you mentioned, but for me the sliders/time feature for game dev is as good as I could’ve asked. Can it be advanced like you said, sure, but it works well enough for the most part.

#4

I think a good alternative would be a time management system where you can determine how long your team spends working on a specific part of the game and the amount of tech and design earned during that time determines the quality of that aspect of the game. This would lead to even more strategic use of Boosts while allowing you to make the kind of games you want.This time management system could be an option you take instead of the normal management system when choosing genre and size of a game.

#5

Like I said in my other post, there is a time management feature (though it’s very restrictive and isn’t explained in game to any detail). You get given three big sliders and immediately your gaming instincts piece together the direct relationship between the slider and your game’s outcome. In fact, that isn’t so. The bar underneath tells you how much time the crew will spend on that aspect. The more you move the slider, the more/less time is then allocated. It’s not too far from guessing the game’s effectiveness from slider position, but it is to an extent doing what you described, and that feature is what the boosts are implemented for.

#6

The systems you implement in your game should be the determining factor, not how much time you put into some obscure category. Uncharted (an action game) has a great story, Advanced cutscenes, and realistic body language, if the story was also interactive, it would be even better. It doesn’t matter what genre the game is, better story telling, will make the game better. Better AI, will make the game better. There should be platueas to hit in certain categories for certain genres, RPG’s need to have a quality story, as far as points are concerned, to earn a good rating, but penalizing a game for having EXTRA features is just inane. A higher number of total points in technology and/or design should make the game better.

So basically, if you meet certain genre based levels of development points in certain categories, anything else put into the game is a positive, no matter what it is. All the negatives should just be taken out all together… unless its a casual game, in which case anything innovative should be spat upon by reviewers.

#7

Well, I have to hand it to you there, owning the most parts of an engine should counteract most of the negative aspects. That being said, my measly two cents to put up against this are: A) that would break the game harder than MMOs already have, and B) throwing every design aspect into a game has never been successfully done irl.

First point is, by researching systems, you only have to take that one cost hit in order to implement them into an engine. Once you have enough to cover every genre, it completely takes away any effort into topic/genre even creativity over the name. You just click the same buttons and watch the money come rolling in because “this new game has everything!”. The difference between this and the slider system, the slider system doesn’t straight up tell the player how to win. However, buying the engine parts would. Once you have even mid-tier engine parts it would mean you’ve won. Game over. You cannot fail because the games you’re making have everything in it at no real cost (other than the inital monetary cost to make the engine).

Second point which kinda links is to relate it to rl, exactly what greenhearts wanted to do in the first place. Name one game that you view as being utterly perfect, that isn’t subjective to the context of genre, time of release, state of the industry, market opinion etc. There isn’t any. There are excpetionally well made games, thousands of them, but none of them have ‘it all’, and those that have tried often fell short. Take Bioshock Infinite, you can’t deny that game is as critically aclaimed as it is because A) it was advertised well for the current state of the gaming culture, B) it had a fantastic story and design, C) it was standing on the shoulders of Bioshock (and by association System Shock 2), D) FPS sell like crazy (I could go on but you get the picture). That being said, so much effort was put into Elizabeth’s AI, and the asetetic detail, and the easter eggs that the action mechanics of the shooting, and the spongy enemies on difficulty settings were sub-par. If you try to perfect every aspect you’d never get the game done, and its my opinion that this was the mentality that greenhearts wanted to get across when they made this system.

Thoughts?

#8

My proposed alternative:
rating = rand(0, 10);

Who is with me?

#9

There should be an intimacy between the main character of each game made, and the designer of the game. What story is being told, and in what manner? There can be brevity and depth to the information being relayed, and the characters portrayed, progressively developing while the player completes the game. The systems are the potential, that must be used to wire in some depth to the story being told. A game can just be silly repetitions too. The more powerful hardware allows for more diversity. The people on the cutting edge, the SquareSofts, the Lionheads, will use this to make the make products that haven’t been seen before, or since, by combining the diversity allowed by new hardware, and applying depth, character presentation and development.

The game itself is a brand.
(Final Fantasy 7)
The IP the game belongs to is a brand.
(Madden)
Each character that gets significant development or repetition in a game, is a brand.
(Mario)(Auron)(Yuna)(Jack of Blades)

Brands sell units. Brands are marketed to potential consumers to sell units. Brands can be ignored and leave sales on the table, or relied upon entirely to sell a yearly update. Games are about progressing brands along a path.

Brands have visible attributes that can be displayed, strengthened and weakened, by PERFORMANCE, AFFECTING SALES, in the long term (future installments within the IP).

{IP = Character(s) + GAME(s) + World(s)}

Each one is a brand, which moves units based on it’s strength alone, if marketed well.
Each brand is the some of its parts.
Each game is made up of it’s systems, and the implementation of characters into those systems. A creative staff member, who loves those characters, and knows those systems, can implement them to help make a great game.
Characters relate to the audience while they play, or they do not.
This determines determines how effective the brand was, or how well it sold.
Each brand within and including an IP can be marketed to drive sales.
Marketing is just turning public attention to a PERCEIVED strength.
Only the past can be marketed for a game that has not been released.
New IP’s have no established strength to fall back on, but the brand strength of the ENGINE of the GAME.
Building up Brand strength without quality game releases is expensive, and needs to be harder if the brand strength has deteriorated.
Character brand strength grows after people have played the game.
ENGINES usually change each GAME.

Mature audiences are harder to market to, because they desire more depth, and depth is expensive in marketing.

Each brand should be able to be designed by the player, and implemented into an individual GAME, or project.

This is crazy… making a game that plays like you are making games… so fun
That should be one of the attributes for the designers and programmers, love for the project that they are creating.

I can’t believe I spent that much time…

Fable to me is the perfect game. Molyneaux just kept putting in more cool stuff until he ran out of money. The world was rich. I killed Whisper, my friend. I wanted to kill Jack of Blades. I had a house. I collected rent from entire villages. I boxed the local scallywags for money. I put on Jack’s mask.

I played BioShock once. But shooting games make me ill. I liked the tone though.

#10

Intimacy between the main character and the dev would only be effective if story-telling was the main focus of a game. Not entirely neccassary for every game. Like you said, they can be silly repititons too depending on what the consumer would want to buy. Basically, no arguments with you there.

True enough, selling a brand is a huge part of the rl gaming industry - one of the many reasons why the likes of FFXIII’s franchise wasn’t so well recieved was because it was delivered as part of 'FF’s brand but failed to strike a chord with what the majority of their key demographic desired nor appreciated.

But again, how would you implement this into GDT without breaking it? or rebuilding it from the ground up? In order for branding to successfully target a key demographic, there’d have to variables in reviewing/development system that takes aspects of the game into account in terms of the ficticious audience who’d later pay for it. Going back to FF, there’s plenty in that franchise as a whole that went dud because they branched off too much from the franchise (virtually everything surrounding FF7’s franchise has mixed reviews, as well as the installments to the likes of 10, 12 and 13 - what you or I may feel about them doesn’t really matter, they were cause for controversey).

The game would work well with the branding feature, but only to an extent. Does GDT with a branding mechanic for the player include the implementation that the brand suffers from diminishing returns then? If not then like I said it’s still game breaking once you’ve made a successful brand. Improve engine, make new sequel, rinse and repeat. Now if it did have use of diminishing returns, or a mechanic that means creative experimentation may have adverse effects on established IPs (again look at how well FFXIII went down with alot core fans) then I’d say it’s a far more effective game mechanic than anything else I’d think of.

The possiblity of shooting yourself in the foot by fiddling around with an IP, or that the market becomes too sick of seeing you return to the same IP (I’d go so far as to say FF as a series is close to being retired for a few years at least, the way the market and audience demands are going) is a really good risk factor in what you make. But to go back to your OP, how would this be calculated into reviews.

We could go round in circles about this forever it seems, but it does pain me to say that I think both of us would be asking a bit too much of greenhearts to have implemented so many more variables than they already have, into a light-hearted game that costs £6.

True, Fable had so much you could do, but when I meant ‘have it all’ I didn’t really mean a game that uses every feature it could fit into the game, I meant the game that could universally entertain regardless of what you wanted to do. Fable, as great as it is (and other epic titles like it) can be negatively recieved for the very reason people like you and I love it for, the scope and content. I know a lot of people who’d be more put off by sheer size and scope of content, they see it as too much of a time investment for them to truly enjoy it. For you, it could very well be the personal perfect game (and it’s definitely high on my list), but it’s not out and out perfect if you get what I mean. As for my preference, I’d say either Deus Ex, but again this isn’t on amount of content, this is on what blend of content and design appealed to me the most. For that matter include MGS as one of my favourite IPs too.

And yeah, FPS’s are prone to doing that to a lot of people since, like I said, their combat mechanics often are catered to console controllers over a mouse and keyboard, thereby slowing the gameplay, slowing the frames, and at times making a nausiating mix for players. The plot and design for the first and third one though, man are they good.

#11

I still have BioShock, maybe I’ll give it another play. I couldn’t play it simply because I’m sick of shooting things in games… and I believe that games can allow players to do so much more than kill.

Mario’s focus is not story telling, but there is an intimacy between that character and his designers.

I think there should be only 2 demographics to sell to in each game category, Core and Casual. So there would be a certain number of Core RPG gamers to sell to. I think there is too much emphasis on review scores. Review scores only reflect the quality of the product, which would affect the aggregate brand strength. But a weak link to a strong brand could sell as many units as a strong first entry into an IP.

There would have to be expectations for each brand… which could be hurt by releasing too many spin offs. Conversely the law of diminishing returns would apply to releasing similar games with the same brands, over a short period of time. There could be 5 Mario games on the market, but they could all sell well if they did different things.

Diminishing returns do not apply to the casual market. A casual RPG fan could become a core fan if he loves a game in that category.

There should be benefits and trade offs to catering to the core and casual markets. Loyalty vs size.
expectations vs easy money appreciation of depth vs appreciation of mindless repetition

The goal of a brand would be to strengthen and diversify it.

The challenge to doing this should come from having a specialized studio. Each studio belonging to your company should know how to make one or two types of games really well.

The challenge to making a game comes from connecting depth to systems in a way that works well. How do you convey depth using the systems at your disposal.
Maybe a minigame of some sort, could simulate this challenge.

#12

Also, these are ideas that would require time and money to implement… but there is no reason that GDT couldn’t be as successful as say, Tropico (meaning that there is a potential return on these investments). In fact I think the idea of running your own game design company is appealing to all people who love video games, so it could be as successful as the Sims some day. But to get there, Green Heart Games needs to push the envelope on what has been done in simulation games before. For now, they must do what they can. If the IP becomes more financially successful, they will be able to try doing more things that haven’t been done before.