First of all, hello. I’ve just finished the game (37 million points), and I can say it was a refreshing and addictive experience.
However, I think something was missing from the game: press relationship.
The problem in this game you don’t have any relationship with the press (except with marketing, and that’s very small). What would be cool is to have a better management for the press, more communication with them.
The first good feature I’d see is previews. After phase 2 of the development, we could send a preview build to the press that could evaluate the game, and they give some impressions (and therefore, that could bring up/down the Hype counter). That would teach people to make better games with the sliders and the themes. That would also give an idea of what to do during phase 3, and whether or not trash the game if it’s not viable.
Another feature, pretty funny and risky, is just paying the press so they can give awesome scores, even if the game is bad (the more you pay - up to 3M per magazine - the higher the score). However, this would be risky: if you do it too frequently, you could lose a big number of fans, as they realize the game isn’t as good as the press said it, and some press guys would finally say out loud that you’re paying them to give good scores, and that would bring your studio into very bad reputation with low scores and low sales even if the games are good.
I also think marketing isn’t that good. It’s a bit hidden, and the results are not so efficient. I’d balance it by doing 50K-500K-5M-25M campaigns, with instant +10/+100/+500/+1000 hype (starting from 0, if you already have 1000 hype you wouldn’t get that much of a boost from a 25M campaign).
Also, I’d love to see more appreciations and different magazine names. They’re kinda repetitive after some time!
Finally, I’d love to see something not that related to the press, but from the fans. We all know the so-called “fan service”. There should be some feature during G3/Own Conference where you could ask your fans what kind of game they expect next, and which features they’d like to see. That would create a real relationship between the company you’re managing, and your fans.
So, that’s my ideas for today. I’ll probably put another if they come through my head!