I’m not talking about reviews or even the development bubbles … I’m talking about the game world itself. Do the console wars ever vary? Does Sega ever beat Nintendo? Does the Gameboy ever become the “mature” system while Playstation is only for pre-teens? Can you ever make a Sports RPG or Evolution Action game without it tanking before you even hit go?
My questions stem from the fact that early on I was succeeding by basically just copying real life … put Pokemon on the Gameboy, SimCity on SNES and/or PC, Need for Speed and some CoD on the Playstation … but now I’m trying to be original … to invent crazy ideas and games in my head … but they all fail even if they’re not THAT outlandish.
In addition, the seemingly non-random console wars (but to be honest, I haven’t played enough to see if the exact usage percentages are fixed or somewhat random) make it so that I effectively know what consoles to avoid. I want to be surprised … to be like a real company who has to gamble on who will win. Will my investment in the Game Gear pay off or will I save money by getting bang for my buck for only buying a Gameboy licence?
I dunno, maybe I ask too much or I’m just doing other stuff wrong, but I feel like the above are sorely lacking.
So far the games seems to be predefined, G64 will always fail, and DreamVast will have a sad ending, while gameling and playsystem will always have someting like success.
The only randomless is final PC share, and your own console share. At least it is playerd dependend. And it is some aproach, its for sure some solution. From the other side, i see a point in making it a little more random, so every walkthought will be not exacly the same.
The other thing is that it should be more avaiable to make weird combos. It could not sell well, but it would be a good game, with the exeption of some topics will just not be for yougsters.
I have the idea of instead of market share introduce something like player base, and console sold units on market. And it would be semi random for example: the exact year would wary, in each game by few years. Each console will have a life span, when first it will increase the numbers sold, then decaying. Mostly since there will be a better version up.
Also the action of the player could affect the market. If we really focus on one device and flood market with 9+ games on it, it should increase in popularity at least a little.
The game history is a nice touch, because it mirrors reality so well, you can use it to help remember actual events about to occur ingame (yay I always wanted precog). But more helpfully, this gives you an opportunity to take advantage of the market before and after consoles become available. Market share jumps considerably when a device is pulled from market, and just after launch is a great time to start dev for a new console before market share gets eroded. For first time players, its a good history lesson, for seasoned players, its set challenges that can strategise for and use to help you progress.
