On the addition of jobs and an expanded point system:
I think it’d be cool if you would make there be actual jobs for your employees(sort of like Story does, but better). Like, you can still develop a functioning game with just a coder and a graphic designer or whatever, but you could implement additional score points(music points, creativity points, story points, character points, lore points, level design points, graphic points, mod support points, etc) to calculate into the quality of the game as well as scores. This could include everybody from a sound engineer to a person who specializes in character models, to a dedicated QA guy, to actual writers to directors and producers. Also taking from Story, you could possibly hire out to have a more experienced person fill a position, or maybe if you don’t even have a person to do that position.
On patching, expansion packs, DLC, MMOs, and longevity of games:
I liked the idea behind patching out bugs that were undiscovered, but I’d love to see such an event be taken to the next level. You could issue out patches that wouldn’t necessarily cost you money, but it could still generate research points and improve the quality of the game(perhaps leading to longevity in a title[Diablo 2 comes to mind] or hyping up a sequel). Alternatively this method could do the whole “rebalancing, adding new content, etc” and this could gain you fans and possibly change the rating of the game from “retrospective reviewers”. Additionally, you should be able to make expansion packs for every game you make and as the years progress have the option of riddling it with DLC and/or DRM to see how fans react to the games. You could even manually control what type of content the DLC has(story, new characters, more items, skins, full campaigns, etc) as well as a pricing scale for the DLC. Hell, I think adding a pricing and multiplat support system should be a no-brainer. If I want to make a cheap, small game and release it for PC and then turn around a release a huge game for Ninvento’s whatever, it shouldn’t be forced to be at the same price. MMOs in general should have more options like “free to play”, “free to play with microtransactions”, etc.
On Studios, Staff Limits, Publishers, and Opening New Branches:
As far as the studios go, I’d like there to be a bigger distance between the indie, small, and large studios. The indie section could easily have up to 4 or 5 employees under your wing, taking care of just small titles at varying rates. Once you move onto bigger titles, you can have bigger staffs and more specialists. You could eventually end up at the AAA level with some 150 people on your staff working on a huge scale game. Additionally, I think the ability to become a publisher would be fun, or possibly an alternate campaign as a publisher. Basically you could tell every team under your publishing wing what they need to make and send them at it, all the while getting paid publisher rates. Even if you’re just a big enough studio you should be able to open up a second studio(read: Dice/Dice LA, Bioware Montreal/Bioware Austin). You could still actively run both studios by visiting them and helping them out or stay at one main studio, hire a director/manager for the branch, and then only have to deal with the decisions you’d have to make going into the actual development screen(sliders, which parts of the engine to implement, etc).
**On fan interactivity: **
Two more thoughts come to mind. First, I’d like to see some more fan interaction. For instance you could be something of a JRPG developer who makes games for a niche audience but still makes money off of merchandise(figurines, posters, etc) that cater to that niche. This wouldn’t work for a developer who has too large of a fanbase/doesn’t make the right kind of games. Alternatively you could be the Modern Military Shooter kind of guy and sell a game that heavily revolves around online play and sell them map packs or extra guns as DLC. Both are ways of making sure your product is profitable and developing a completely different kind of fanbase.
On better research/engine allowances, personalizing the game you make, adding subgenres, and generally reworking the development cycle:
Lastly, and most importantly, I’d like to see the actual game creation process go a lot more indepth. Sure you have things like “better dialogue” and “better AI” and a few more intricate things such as “self-learning AI” and “interactive storytelling”. The kind of thing I’m thinking of, however, would be to do things like, if it’s an RPG(for example) you could do things such as under Level Design give it X amount of dungeons with X amount of detail/polish/whatever. When it comes to the music, you could select a different style of music You could do all of this for every facet of the game development process and just throw everybody at their respective jobs. So when you’ve got a publisher, you get a specific amount of time until you have to release the game in whatever state it’s in(this also makes patches a much more viable concept). But when you’re in self-publishing mode you can just keep going until you’ve finished what you set out to do. And when they finish their predetermined work, they can polish it for extra points. And when everybody’s job is done, you could have the QA employee I mentioned previously work on bugs while everybody else just hones their given areas of work. In addition to the general workflow of the gamemaking process, it would be huge if you could simply allow subgenres. Oh, it’s an action game. But is it a hacknslash like Diablo? Is it cuhrayzee game like Devil May Cry? It’s a Strategy game, but is it a 4X game like Master of Orion/Civilization? Or is it real time strategy like Starcraft? RPGs could be cRPGs like Planescape: Torment/Baulder’s Gate or they could be JRPGs like the SMT series/Final Fantasy. These, of course, could allow for new quality combinations across platforms/target audiences/topics, generally adding a ton more depth to the game.
In closing:
I know that not much of this would be easy to implement and may be more of a Medium Game compared to the Small Game that the original title was, but if all of this were to be properly implemented, you could have a serious Game of the Year type thing on your hands.
I’ll sign off by saying I know some of this may have come off as criticism about your game, but it is merely constructive criticism as a means of planting seeds for an even greater second outing. I loved Game Dev Tycoon and have unashamedly put over 300 hours into it since its release, making it far and away my most played game of the year and among my most played ever. Thank you for making such a great game and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
