I always go bankrupt! My games just keep on costing more to develop than their returns. Also, most of my games get terrible ratings. What should I do?
Head to the GDT Wiki and check out some of the tips for making great games. Good luck!
If you pirated the game, the developers (awesomely) made it so that pirates will pirate the games you are making in the game because developers hate pirates 
I know 
I did buy it though. It had nothing to do with piracy.
I am doing better now. I had overinvested and didn’t quite understand how the game score algorithm worked.
I have the same problem. Always go bankrupt. I know how the genres work and I usually manage to make like 2 million within my first 5 games, but once I move and around when the gameboy comes out I die off. I manage to get decent games with 8 or 8.5 ratings but they barely make profit. Also it always says something like the game doesn’t get the success it deserves but I can’t do anything to change that. Funny is also if I make a small game I easily get high ratings but once I make a medium game from a publisher I get like 4 and 5s. No idea why. The game really needs to tell you why and how you fail. The furthest I game in like 5 full playthroughs was only shorter after the Playstation released. Always go broke despite good games. Costs like half a million to make a game including salaries etc and I make maybe 250-300k despite great ratings and on the most popular devices.
Same problem here as well.
Went to the GDT wiki…use the tips about perfect combinations…still struggle during the PS1 era of gaming…
Ugh.
Maybe I’ll just stay in the damn garage.
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I am having the same issue.
Around the time of the Playstation and Dreamcast era I am struggling to make any money. I am making games with 8.5 and above ratings and they struggle to get 30k sales on release day.
Plus my stupid developers have never heard of a nice 10-30% increase in Salary when they promote, some want 80-130% increase.
Something makes me think there is a bug happening with Sales. I am not losing Sales to piracy and I bought my game this morning, so its not the pirated copy of GDT if anyone is thinking that.
I have been to the Wiki and had a look at the tips too.
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I had an issue as well, even with the help the wiki provides. I discovered essentially around the PS1 era you gotta go full tilt towards Publisher support for a good many years as quick as possible until you build a large enough fan base to make your own mid sized games.
Doesn’t help that most of the publisher contracts are for stupid game combinations that result in horribad scores.
Really feel the game is unbalanced…(and doesn’t explain the mechanics enough.)
I think I figured it out (I just got to the third stage). The trick is to expand EXTREMELY slowly. Keep making as many small games as possible in rapid succession. Don’t hire your first employee until you have 4-5K. Then, keep making and releasing as many games as possible with new topics every time, or at least new combos.
I have the same problem. I can’t even complete the publisher games with decent ratings. I’ve had no problems with pirates so far. Y20. Every time I make a game for a publisher(following the wiki) I just get terrible ratings. I’m better off making my own game but I don’t really make any money. The game feels very confusing at times since you really have no idea what is going on behind the curtains. You make great games then all of the sudden you’re making terrible ones? It feels very inconsistent. Again I want to point out I’m using the wiki! I’m sure there is a way… I just can’t figure it out.
-edit- At Y23 I made a massive hit that pulled in over 44M. Totally out of the blue. Made a lot of average games until that moment. Game just confuses me.
Is this how developers feel?
Publishers asking them to make games with impossible combinations.
Randomly making a hit game without having any idea what caused the trend.
Desperately trying to exploit franchise titles for profit.
lol hindsight much
Well, that’s neither right nor a logical conclusion.
Oh, I got that. Very ham fisted.
I was so lucky to have “Capecom” offer an any/any deal that had decently low royalties (but fairly high buy-in). That was one of my only publishing deals because of how restrictive the others were.
Wait till you have about 10m to leave the garage would be my advice. Costs really start to go up. Then get onto making medium and large games with publishers.
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It would certainly be an amazing simulation to cause the same bewilderment and confusion in a player as actual game developers experience when dealing with Publishers.
Though, from a gameplay standpoint, it’s quite frustrating to have to rely on publishers yet they only offer crap combinations that rarely ever score above a 5. I’ve had 1 publisher deal score 9s & 10s and it was a tried and true combo that just happened to pop up during a trend towards it and it was a game my company was good at making already.
That’s a lot of coincidences all happening at once to get good scores.
Hey guys, the game is tough (I started this thread!) but I think I have figured out a good way to make it work. I have 80m right now and just moved into the third office. My games with a score of 6 now consistently earn me in the tens of millions. I posted my thoughts on this reddit thread:
Let me know if the suggestions work for you!
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I left at 2m and it was the worst decision I made. I had a hit, and got about 10m, and overspent on new developers and research. Almost went bankrupt a few times, had to fire everyone and scale back development costs to almost nothing. But I managed to squeeze through it by basically starting from scratch (low ratings, low volume) and going up.
Using publishing deals really helped me out, especially right after moving to level 2. The number of sold units rises dramatically, even with low ratings. The problem with medium games is the initial cost - it’s almost impossible to produce a game under 700k, returns need to be a mil and a half, preferably 2, to have any use of a sale. The problem is the hit and miss factor of game production. I get the most luck with RPG’s, but basically using the same time allocation, with a couple of games in the middle to avoid repetition, never produce the same results - which is fun, but I would still like more obvious factors to it.