I played the game for a bit a few months back and I’m glad the new release is a lot better - the rebalancing really helped to make this game really addicting!
Here are a few things that could be done better - be it bugs, improvements or ideas:
- Expansion packs and multi-genres - I came across this problem multiple times - I wanted to develop an expansion to an action-rpg MMO and it only allowed me to do an action expansion, not letting me select the second genre.
- Expansion packs and multiplatform releases - I was able to create expansion packs for different consoles, but the first console always remains fixed, I’m not sure if that’s an intended behaviour or not.
- Good game combinations - Right now when selecting various systems or game combinations we can see what age group the game will be appealing to. However, I would like to see some indication whether a topic-genre combination would be good / great as well. Perhaps this could be done with some background change on the topic / genre - good combinations would be light green, great would be solid green, bad would be red and so forth. Alternatively, it would be cool to be able to develop a big spreadsheet in-game that would be showing all the known combinations.
- Story text - the story in the game is amusing, but clicking all those “OKs” gets grating after awhile, especially having read everything before. I would like to have some option to make all text appear on screen at once, as well as to be able to disable story messages that are not important (like Nintendo-Sony conference thing, that one is a particularly big and pointless set of blocks of texts that happen one after another that is grating).
- Interviews - similar to the above, I would like to be able to streamline those. If I gave an interview on a given topic once with a good answer, I would like to be able to have some option of “use past experience” to one-click accept an interview, give good answer and ignore the positive response.
- Some more historical game mode - sure, it is great to think of oneself as someone from the 80s developing a ton of good games for Nintendo and what have you, but at the same time I would love to be able to be like Nintendo - start the game a bit earlier and having to develop my own hardware right there and then to release my games on. It could start as a console with one built-in game, later developing some tech to swap games and so forth. Being able to compete on the hardware market early on would be great, while still giving the player options to use third party hardware and just develop games.
- Impact on consoles - I understand that the story is fixed at the moment, but I think it would be great to be able to affect how various hardware performs on the market - “Developed a smashing hit game exclusively on Dreamcast that sold 10M units? Sega doesn’t go out of business and develops new hardware.”. This could be some separate game mode, but I think that option would be interesting in itself.
- Some cooler options for GRID - I like the idea behind the GRID research and I hope to see it being expanded upon. If it was given more impact, perhaps like a console, with some stats running on what games are being sold there, encouraging other companies to use the system to generate revenue and so forth. It could be an interesting option to be able to become Valve with this thing :).
- Perpetual MMO game - As I see it now, the maintenance cost of MMO games rise forever at about a constant rate, which means that eventually any MMO will become unsustainable. However, I would like to be able to research some technology that would allow the maintenance cost to stabilize or rise slower and slower (perhaps rising in sqrt(x), rather than x, or even 2^-x) with some ongoing subscription model, essentially giving a self-sustaining game like WoW or EVE. Perhaps it would only be attainable with some high-end research like self-learning AI, procedural world generation, virtual economy as well as some high game score, but I would like to see that option being attainable.
- Character improvement based on their work, rather than just training - the game progresses quite fast, I find myself not having much time to train my workers between making games and trying to make ends meet. I think it would be valuable to be able for the workers to better themselves as they develop games - say if a worker is assigned to work on AI in the game, their Tech skill should be increasing and the like. After all, hands-on work on some complex game elements should let people better themselves even without doing some extra training.
- Releasing a game - I find it a bit annoying that when I am ready to release a game and am in the motion of clicking the button, someone suddenly develops a new bug for the game and I don’t have an option to change my decision and remove that bug before launch. I would like to be able to opt to launch a game only once all the bugs are out.
- Game cult following - Having a devoted fanbase, I would like to be able to have my old games reach some sort of underground cult classic titles - say I made a game early, my fans made some knockoff games that I just let them enjoy, they asked me for the code to the game and so forth, I would like to be able to know that such-and-such game has a fanbase that would welcome a sequel.
- MMO sequels - I wanted to develop an MMO sequel, but wasn’t able to find it in the options for developing sequels - is that an intended behaviour?
- Being able to scrap a game - during the game there was some hype for odd games, so I made a music strategy to capitalise on that. The hype ended before I released my game, it got a review score of 1 and then was on sales for awhile. I wanted to can the game right after release not to lose fans, but I couldn’t find an option to do so. It would be a welcome option to say, pay some amount of money to recall all copies of a game and burn them not to hurt one’s reputation.
- Game engine features - sometimes when I am developing a game engine I end up putting some useless features in it that are superseded by other features also in it. I would like to have an option to see that some features are obsolete - perhaps changing their colour to reflect that? Say, 2d Graphics v5 would be green when selected, v4 would be blue and the like.
So that’s about all I can think of at the moment. Thanks for making this game awesome and I hope to see it getting better and better over time.
