I’ll start by saying that you managed to create a game that forced me back into the early years of tycoons when I would waste hours and hours at an end just to make that new office, railway or port.
First two times I played bankruptcy slowly creped on me and the level of ‘frustration’ was clearly over 9000. Your game is the first one in the last 6-7 years that actually forced me to burn through a night just to see it through and make those bucks. I literally played more than 9 hours straight into the night.
As I am now going for that 84th year, I came across a lot of issues, most of which have already been discussed on the forums and I will not go into bugs. I am sure you will eventually fix them all.
I want to focus on my ideas and hopefully help you improve this game beyond its current state. It is quite the diamond in the ruff but, as of now, the game has still a long way to go before saying that it is ‘complete’.
So, let’s do it!
- Fans – Working with them
1.1 Communities:
- it would be nice if you could sponsor communities or even fund/create them yourself; at first, just general, large communities that will support your company as a whole
- as time progresses, the communities will start to diversify based on your titles; you would gain more support per title/franchise and you will sell more games based on how large/well put together are your respective communities
- the downside would be creating a poor game for the franchise that will take its toll on your fans number -> the respective community would lower
1.2 Several Types of Fans
- this comes hand in hand with the communities
- create 3 types of fans: casual, dedicated, hardcore
- the hardcore fans are the hardest ones to get but bring in the most revenue (+++++ average) and help promoting your title/franchise – you could have general hardcore fans and franchise hardcore fans
- the downside would be that they would also be the easiest type of fans to lose if you frack things up with a particular title/franchise – the threshold could be based on an average grade that you will receive per title + overall quality (see the Media section – we will discuss things there)
- the dedicated fans bring in ++ average income per title/franchise, are not so picky about your work and will give you a slack from now on then; are a bit harder to lose than the hardcore ones
- the casual fans bring in average income per title/franchise and they do not give a rat’s ass about you as a person/company; yes, they will be upset if you frack it up several times in a row but, usually, they will stick with you
1.3 Fan Grading
- this would be a separate grading system that will discuss your overall game quality from the perspective of the player and not the media ‘whore’ system
- from the point of view of the hardcore fans, this is the most important grade – they will usually ignore the media grades if your game is good enough
- for the dedicated fans, there will be a certain balance between fan grading and media grading, with a strong emphasis on fan grading
- for the casual fans, the media grading will be a bit more important than the fan grading
1.4 HR/PR and fans
- make them important aspects of your business
- HR -> some of your hardcore fans might actually have skills – see what you could do with them
- PR -> extremely important – building communities
2, Media – Owning a piece of the ‘whore’
2.1. Buying reviews
- you should have the possibility of influencing the grades by investing money in the respective companies
- this would influence your casual fans but will not be so important for the hardcore/dedicated fans as they do not care so much about the media reviews
2.2 Having your own media company
- start small, with a site; from there, you could invest more and more money and eventually create a consortium that will promote other games (get money from other gaming companies for promoting their own games) and make a god out of you through the means of social brain-washing;
- based on how much money you have, you could do a bunch of stuff (too many details – no point in wasting space) – depending on what you do, your hardcore fans and dedicated ones will not like it and you could trigger a chain reaction that will end up in you losing most of your hardcore and dedicated fan groups but you will win a lot of casual fans
2.3 Sabotaging the competition
- you have a media empire at your disposal – as with 2.2, this could have serious repercussions with your fan base
- Actual Design
3.1 In-Depth Design
- as of now, I do not feel that I am actually in control when designing my game; sure, you have a few options but you could do so much more with it
- add a lot more options and steps – add more random events for the design process – people getting sick, social interactions between employees, ‘karma’, breakthroughs
- add testing periods, feedback from the communities – see point 1 -> your hardcore fans and dedicated ones (to a certain degree) could actually help you more than your in-house testers
3.2 Psychologists
- add them –they are an important part of the design process – making games addictive is important BUT this could have serious downsides with your hardcore/dedicated fans (to a certain degree) – it would bring in more casual fans
- Online World
4.1 Creating your company’s persona
- as with 2, this would be an important part of your process
- you must have a strong presence online as you eventually get to the online world and its birth
4.2 Make more with ‘GRID’
- I feel that this is lacking -> you could invest/develop it into the strongest platform out there and this would help with your fan bases
I had much more ideas but some got lost on the way. I also need my coffee. Will add things as I remember them.
I really want for this game to grow and reach its potential. For now, it’s just sand that is waiting to become a pearl.
one of the best one’s ive seen