Something that might help the game be more intuitive is for the game to ask the player to pick which development stage they consider most important at the start of the game. Save this bias to the Founder and then warp the genre expectations somewhat to accommodate it. A company whose founder has a strong vision can make any focus benefit any kind of game. It’s nowhere written in stone that adventure games must never include AI companions, or that action games have to have a braindead story. The game pretty much enforces those things right now.
The advice “remember your chosen design bias” would make a pithy general suggestion to help people when they’re having trouble. This might even reduce the wikifactor of the game, since the exact design ratios of every genre would vary from game to game.
If I were implementing this, I’d implement it as a choice between three random dev stages whenever you make a new company. One of the dev stages would be guaranteed to be a design stage, one would be guaranteed to be a tech stage, and the last would be entirely random.
(I wasn’t confident about posting this suggestion. Someone more experienced than I am can probably tell me why it’s a bad idea. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.)
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I like this idea.
I’d personally go with choosing your favorite Design AND Tech biases (one of each) to be more important to your review scores than usual. However, I’d also add a third bias at random. This third bias should be hidden from the player at the start of the game - this way, you need to experiment to find out what it is, and you can’t use cookie cutter sliders for every game in the same genre.
This third bias might change during the game through events, based on trends. For example:
"Gamers these days seem to care more about Level Design than ever before. Action games demand the environment be used for combat. RPGs are sick of generic dungeons/towers/castles over and over again. "
Then bias #3 would become level design until the next event. This would make training your weaknesses worthwhile so you aren’t doomed if a category your team sucks at becomes the industry standard.
Critics should mention your biases in their reviews, and reward/punish you for them:
Good review: Smart Games is known for their AI. Now I know why!
Bad Review: Smart Games is known for their AI… usually.
Bias #3 should work differently of course:
Good Review: The industry demands high-quality graphics, and this game delivers!
Bad Review: In this day and age… who still uses 3D graphics v1?!
And of course, the strange combinations trend should reverse the whole thing - you should AVOID the three biases.
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The other thing you could do is make an exp bar for each of the 6 genres. Every time you make a game for a genre, the exp you gain from that title (modified by any bonuses you qualify for) would apply to that genre skill, possibly leveling it up the same way you would level up AI or Level Design.
The benefit of getting levels in genres is that each level would increase the slider flexibility for the whole genre. So let’s say I’m level 5 at making adventure games. Normally, I get a nasty penalty if I set my AI slider above 40%. But because I’m level 5, I can go as high as 50% without anyone complaining. This is because my character is (through extensive practice) good at this genre and made a name for themselves. As such, they can play with the fundamental formula of these kinds of games and still get away with it.
The more you practice a single genre, the more flexible you’d be within that genre, but that also means you’d be less flexible with all the others. (since all that exp flowing into one genre isn’t flowing into any of the others, leaving them at very low levels of expertise.)
Multi-genre games would average your skill levels between the two genres for determining total flexibility, with the primary genre’s level having twice the impact as the secondary. Making multi-genre games would also give exp to both genre skills, with the secondary only getting half of what the primary gets.
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