My 2 cents (Opinions and suggestions)

Game Dev Tycoon ideas
#1

Hey,

First of all, I really enjoy the game so don’t read the following as me slagging the game.

I got the game recently and have played it quite a bit and felt strongly about a few things that just felt like they are “missing” or in my opinion design “flaws”. Sharing is caring so I thought i’d share them. I looked about the forums to avoid double postings etc but couldn’t really find anything about my main issues, I apologize if they already are out there and I just missed them.

Here’s a short list which I will describe in a bit more detail below:

1. World interaction and effects
2. Information, information, information
3. Dynamic history
4. Market research / Market granularity
5. Hardware based Tech

1 - World interaction and effects

The main lack I felt was any real interaction with the World, by that I mean factors that would shape your decision making more than just chance and trends. I really Think there should be a Magazine or other media source that comes out monthly or at least quarterly that tells about the business as a whole, what other companies are making etc. Instead of just having universal trends you have to decide if the timing really is right for Another Ninja/Action game when Company X just released one etc. This can of course be implemented in several ways depending on desired results, ideally it would be a setting when you start a game what kind of complexity you want. This is of course no minor change but a fundamental change for the game itself. Also there could be events related to some random great defining games that have come out or at least new genres as they are discovered or maybe “you” discover them.

2 - Information, information, information

I found early on that information that I had gathered was not very accessible or have I missed something completely. By that I mean I would like to be able to browse what I have learned Before starting to develop a new game. For instance exactly what i’ve learned through my reports and what I know about the systems etc. I wouldn’t mind a bit of embellishment here regarding the systems etc, flesh it all out a bit. Basically more details on every aspect of the game more or less. This is a bit of a buckshot suggestions but it would make for a massive post to list all my individual suggestions on this topic. There are literally a Ton of lists and charts and whatnots that would be really helpful and absolutely crucial if post 1 was in effect.

3 - Dynamic history

I felt that the system history was a bit “boring” because it was a bit too true to history. Some systems that you knew to have a short Life span you might as well just ignore because there is no way regardless basically you can make Money of that license compared to sticking to the ones that you know will last. This argument of course ties into my first post, if in effect could change the history of the systems. Maybe That one system didn’t die because of the great games that actually made it to that system or at least it stayed alive for longer. Once again this would of course requite Post 1 to exist.

4 - Market research / Market granularity

This suggestions I’m not entirely sure on myself but it’s a subset of what you gain from “Game reports” ie what systems goes well with what in terms of age Groups etc. Is the new mbox sellng best in certain aspects. In order for this to be anything but pointless though it would likely require a restructure of the Market Share system where it wouldn’t just be a % for the market as a whole but rather for a subset of the market, not to micromanaged though but a bit more granularity than just one % for the whole. Just that maybe adventure gamers prefer system x or system y etc.

5 - Hardware based Tech

I would prefer if some of the Tech upgrades where tied to the system instead of researchable Tech. It did feel kind of silly to release my first stereo game on the mbox. I like the whole decision procrastination that is research, the entire game is basically about priorities and decisions. I just felt that the different systems didn’t really matter. Yes there is a difference which games works best on what system as far as I understand it but it would be nice if some of those things didn’t need to be researched but rather available or not depending on the system you are making the game for. So for example you could choose just stereo or dolby digital for the mbox, cost for the title would of course change accordingly but it just feels like some of the research Techs should be moved out of the research tree and into this system instead, it would make for better variation in the decision making and also ties into my second and third topics above.

In conclusion

There are a bunch of other things that just crossed my mind but I thought i’d stick to the most practically oriented and things that I found to be most interesting or lacking the most. The game is great though but I Think it definately would grow with some more complexity. It doesn’t have to aspire to be the new Capitalism X or anything like that, I prefer it to be semi complicated and easy to play rather than super realistic and tons of Micro-management. I also agree with what many others in the forums have said about other suggestion by other people, some suggestions really should be selectable depending on what game experience you want, this also holds true for my suggestions.

Well, these are my impressions and initial thoughts, what do you guys Think?

1 Like
#2

I think that this is a very long post.

#3

Cool Ideas Should Be Cool to see them ingame

#4

[quote=“Shikyo, post:1, topic:9907”]
3 - Dynamic history

I felt that the system history was a bit “boring” because it was a bit too true to history. Some systems that you knew to have a short Life span you might as well just ignore because there is no way regardless basically you can make Money of that license compared to sticking to the ones that you know will last. This argument of course ties into my first post, if in effect could change the history of the systems. Maybe That one system didn’t die because of the great games that actually made it to that system or at least it stayed alive for longer. Once again this would of course requite Post 1 to exist.
[/quote]This is something I’ve been thinking of too, but actually implementing it in a satisfying way into the main game would be very difficult. The reason is that the success and failure of certain consoles isn’t random, but the result of a complex web of choices by that company, their competitors as well as overall trends in the world. There’s no real scenario that I can imagine where the N64 would have beaten the Playstation without completely changing the nature of the console and Nintendo’s overall business outlook. Likewise the PS2’s rise to supremacy in the market was all but inevitable, if only for its DVD technology; this in turn means that the Dreamcast was more or less destined to fail. Making the history of these consoles truly dynamic would require injecting a great deal of speculative fiction into the game.

the alternative, of course, is just to make them random and ignore whether or not their failures and successes make any sense whatsoever, which would be fine from a gameplay perspective, but if the goal of these ideas is to enhance the game world itself, then it’s counterproductive.

I’ve sort of imagined two ways to handle this:

Scenario Mode: This mode simply quarantines these speculative histories into their own campaigns, so that Greenheart can just write their own alternate routes. Call one “Vena Does What Ninvendon’t” where Ninvento never broke up with Vonny and the future of the industry becomes a cold war between Ninvento and Vena instead of Vonny wiping the floor with everyone. The scenario has you needing to pick one side and support it exclusively. Call another mode “Master Race” where you are a console dev in a market completely dominated by the PC.

Piecemeal History: A much more speculative idea, this serves as a console randomizer with one degree of separation. Instead of randomizing the performance of each console, instead the game randomizes the background information on the console and the game world. So in one game Ninvento releases a T64 with a disc drive, and in another the PlaySystem 2 doesn’t have a DVD player which allows the Dreamvast to survive, and in another, mBox never gets their Halo equivalent and the console flops horribly, allowing the Game Sphere to survive. This way the success or failure of each console isn’t completely random, but can be traced back to actual business decisions.

#5

I Think it all depends, I agree with you in many ways that some systems may be destined to never live for long but ultimately I Think it is Always decided by “chance” rather than quality. The Commodore could have lasted the ages and many other companies could have as well had they not failed from a business perspective and in gaming that very much ties into the Products being made for a system. The Dreamcast could have survived I Think, compare it to the 360 which Went for HD dvd instead of blu-ray. The PS2 is standing on the shoulder of the success that was PS1 and that success once again lies in the slew of good titles for the platform, in most cases the software dictates the hardware survivor.

All my suggestions really tie together with one another and have a bit of a dependency between some of them to work at all. I don’t know how dynamic or not the systems are from a timeline perspective. Yóu could also go as you say completely chaos thery on the whole thing but that would make for a different game, but it is a bit like Civilization where you can go for a complete random World or simulate Earth in regards to continents etc.

My main Point that I would want though still is Point 1, which makes it much less of a modern age solitaire.

#6

Also on a personal side note I would have enjoyed having arcade/coin up systems in there. Many great games started in the arcades and definately so historically where the arcades where the showground for new stuff.

#7

I think there’ a difference between “chance” and “total randomness” though. Quality doesn’t always dictate the winner; if it did the PS2 with its inferior hardware would have been beaten by the Gamecube and xBox; the same could probably be said for the original Playstation, though the gulf in features between it and the N64 is so divergent that it’s kind of hard to compare them. The winner in the industry is determined by several interlocking factors:

Timing: It’s not always the earliest console that takes the cake, but it sure helps. By the time the Gamecube and xBox came out, the Playstation 2 had such an absolute stranglehold on the gaming industry that it would be impossible to dethrone. By the same token the 360’s head start on the PS3 in the HD gaming era gave it a strong early lead that the PS3 only caught up to late in its life. On the other hand, it’s a gambit that can have negative payouts. Case in point, the WiiU, which had a two year head-start on its competition, but potentially at the cost of being unfinished and a poor line-up of games until literally two years after its launch.

Trends: Trends comes in two forms: successful prediction and novelty. Sony was betting that DVDs would be the next big thing and therefore built the PS2 with a DVD player for the joint purpose of enhancing the machine’s value as well as creating a market for their own technology. It paid off perfectly, and a lot of people bought a PS2 because it was the cheapest way to get a DVD player when it came out. Sony did the same thing with the PS3 and Blu-Ray, and Microsoft tried to counter it with their HD-DVDs. We all know what happened, and the result, again, is that for a long time the PS3 was probably the best Blu-Ray player you could get for its value. It didn’t necessarily help it out that much, but it did help Sony since it made Blu-Ray the dominant HD disc medium. Nintendo pulled this off too with the Wii, but in a different way. The trend they captured was more of a novelty. People who never played games were suddenly interested in their console. Parents and grandparents, who never would have picked-up a PS2 or Gamecube controller, were suddenly able to play games with their kids or even on their own.

Business Strategy: Let’s look at why the Dreamcast failed. It had a headstart on the PS2, had popular games and when it came out it was the most powerful console on the market (it may even have had better hardware than the PS2, or at least different hardware. The GPU was notoriously powerful, but the console may not have had the CPU power to play a game like Grand Theft Auto 3). But it was the follow-up to a very poorly received console (two if you count the 32X), had miserable copy protection so its games were widely pirated and probably tried to jump on the online bandwagon before it was ready to actually take off. Once the PS2 came out and all of the developers jumped on it, the Dreamcast was left in the lurch with only a small core of developers to support it, and that just wasn’t enough. It was a cult success, but the industry has no place for that kind of business model.

There’s always a very clear cause and effect chain for why various hardware and software outings in the industry succeed or fail. These events could be randomized in GDT (infact there’s a mod right now that’s working on exactly that), but it wouldn’t make for a particularly cohesive experience. So it really depends on whether you care about that sort of thing.

It also doesn’t really matter-- which console succeeds or fails doesn’t really affect your company. You can publish on whatever platform you want, whenever you want. If the fate of these platforms is randomized, then it needs to have some sort of consequence on your company.

#8

There’s an underlying assumption here that consoles drive game sales, which is backwards - games drive console sales. And that is missing from the game.

#9

It’s a feedback loop that begins with the console though. The capabilities of the console determine what kind of games can be made on it, which in turn determine how many consoles are sold, which in turn determines whether or not developers want to invest their time and money in it. If software drives console sales then no consoles would ever take off because most have really terrible launch line-ups. You need to have the right hardware to attract developers. That’s why the Xbone and PS4 are effectively x86 computers with Microsoft and Sony branding, and (part of the reason) why the WiiU is suffering so badly.

That’s mostly immaterial to the game though, since until late in the game you have almost nothing to do with the hardware side of the industry. Where it is relevant is building cause behind platform success or failure, which is interesting to me.

#10

I think features not being tied into consoles is also a huge thing that’s missing here. Can one even get 3D graphics on a TES? Surround sound support?

To be clear - I think that it could be a great indirect driver here. If you’re making games on the old hardware, they won’t be as good as games on the new hardware. And if games aren’t as good, they won’t sell as many copies. And then they won’t sell as many consoles.

It does start with the console but as a consumer, you look at a console and say, “What games can I buy for this?” Whereas, if you’re a developer, you say, “What games can I make on this?” And the console has to attract the developer in order to attract the consumer.

#11

@BigPigeon
Once again I agree in most parts at least with your analysis. My sentence there was quickly formulated and inherently flawed. Most in part because I wasn’t clear. By chance I meant by the games that were actually developed for the platform and diversity etc, I personally felt that the Xbox platform was one of the first platforms that started to gear towards a more mature audience. Reality aside though the object of the discussion I started was the gameplay and experience in GDT.

I strongly feel that GDT is a strong skeleton that really needs some flesh to it to be intereresting beyond a more novelty stage. As it stands now it kinda reminds of old classics like the C64 game “It’s only Rock’n’roll” in which you had to manage a band and create really weird songs and go on tours etc and make Money to get better stuff loop de loop. Played that game alot and GDT plays on the same basic experience albeit in a very modernized fashion. The relative simplicity and complexity of GDT is appealling to me personally but I can’t; right now anyway, see the real staying Power of GDT. It feels like there’s a little too little variation for that. If the World in which one played would have more dynamic elements and effects from other companies etc I Think that would go along way.

I am very fond of analogies and here I would make one comparing how Civilization V plays out if you are doing a full from scratch game compared to a set scenario. I feel like GDT is a scenario, you can do things slightly differently and play about with combinations of genres etc that are more or less whimsical but ultimately you are following a pretty narrow road which you travel alone. The challenge isn’t really about adapting your strategy which is a road I would have preferred personally.

That being said though I strongly feel like GDT gave me my money’s Worth and I enjoy playing it. It just could be so much better and richer and I really hope that a GDT 2 does come out along the line and satisfies just that, a richer and fuller experience with more headaches than GDT provides.

And as they say in the game “Greenheart games, Game Developer Tycoon is a promising title and I will monitor your future for other interesting releases. Well done!”