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Game Dev Story |OT| of energy drinks and booth babes. Now for Android! (iOS/And)

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
How exactly do I ensure I get hits? I developed for the Game Kid and PS for ages and never managed to get scores higher than low 20s.
 

D-Pad

Member
Getting an iTouch for this game-- I don't need to pay any subscription fees do I? Just buy the iTouch, and then pay for the game and that's it? That's how I'm interpreting the info I'm getting.

I need this game. It's been so long since I played a good micro-management game, let alone one that's about making video games!:D
 

Pikelet

Member
D-Pad said:
Getting an iTouch for this game-- I don't need to pay any subscription fees do I? Just buy the iTouch, and then pay for the game and that's it? That's how I'm interpreting the info I'm getting.

I need this game. It's been so long since I played a good micro-management game, let alone one that's about making video games!:D


Yeah thats right, but man you must be made of money. I mean, the game is fun but it is in no way worth it to buy the hardware just to play it.
 

LCfiner

Member
Emerson said:
How exactly do I ensure I get hits? I developed for the Game Kid and PS for ages and never managed to get scores higher than low 20s.


you need the fun level to be over 100.

if you have to, pay an outside consultant with scenario of over 200 to start things off. also, it’s not a bad idea to buy the “FunBoost” item from the salesman. in a pinch, you can use it to add some extra fun point. I can get between 15 and 35 extra points when I use it. (uses 30 or 40 research points)

if the game gets reviewed well due to the Fun level and has a good combo of theme and genre, you’ll get hall of fame reviews and major sales.

then, if you choose a sequel, you automatically get bonus fun points just starting development, giving you a better chance of repeating success.

essentially, if you want major cash in this game, play it relatively safe. for shits and giggles, you can try some robot dating sims or ninja crosswords or whatever, but those will not lead you out of niche status.
 

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
So prioritize the Fun rating? That could be where I went wrong. I tried to keep all the values relatively even. Most of my games shipped with ~40 points in all the categories.
 

john tv

Member
Does the genre itself have that much of an influence? I made a convenience store music game (Conbini Rock) that sold 14 million copies ;p

My last three games have sold over 30 million each, and I've swept the awards three years running. Can't stop playing. :D
 

LCfiner

Member
Emerson said:
So prioritize the Fun rating? That could be where I went wrong. I tried to keep all the values relatively even. Most of my games shipped with ~40 points in all the categories.


yeah, that should do it. early on, when money and talent is tight, focus on fun.

then steadily move onto pushing gfx and creativity and sound past 100 as you get better talent and more cash.
 
john tv said:
Does the genre itself have that much of an influence? I made a convenience store music game (Conbini Rock) that sold 14 million copies ;p

My last three games have sold over 30 million each, and I've swept the awards three years running. Can't stop playing. :D

WHAT THE HELL BUNGIE...TELL US YOUR SECRETS!
 

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
Thanks for the guidance. A last question: how do people unlock genres like Online RPG and stuff? I get Types through training and have seen some new genres randomly, but not many.
 

Tobor

Member
Pikelet said:
Yeah thats right, but man you must be made of money. I mean, the game is fun but it is in no way worth it to buy the hardware just to play it.
True, but there's plenty more great games he can check out once he's pulled the trigger. Every system has that one game that forces your hand.
 

Jonnyram

Member
Emerson said:
Thanks for the guidance. A last question: how do people unlock genres like Online RPG and stuff? I get Types through training and have seen some new genres randomly, but not many.
They unlock in a lot of different ways, I think. From training, or just making games in other genres, to types of advertising you use. You have to try out most stuff to unlock them all.
 

LCfiner

Member
Emerson said:
Thanks for the guidance. A last question: how do people unlock genres like Online RPG and stuff? I get Types through training and have seen some new genres randomly, but not many.


Online RPG comes way late in the game, anyway.

generally, you need to level up and train people in different positions.

you get different genre unlocks from Sound Engineers or Producers or Directors, etc.

I wish I paid attention to who unlocked what and at what skill level it happened :lol
 

D-Pad

Member
Pikelet said:
Yeah thats right, but man you must be made of money. I mean, the game is fun but it is in no way worth it to buy the hardware just to play it.

:lol Not right away, of course. Gonna wait a bit and see if the PC version gets localized, but I've been waiting to replace my dying Zune for a while now.

Also, I lost my Sim City 3000 disk and RCT 1 & 2 don't work on my PC so what am I to do??
 

neojubei

Will drop pants for Sony.
Wow this sim game is addictive, my company just moved into a new bigger office and my action RPG "Googled Earth" sold over 1 million units. sweet!
 

sdornan

Member
I really want to play the sequel to this game, translated of course. Game gets too easy, and thus boring, once you hit the 16-bit era. I would expect the sequel to be better balanced.
 
The one thing i wish is that this game would let you do ports :lol
If I am rich enough to afford a licence on all systems, why would i not want to port my games everywhere?

LCfiner said:
Online RPG comes way late in the game, anyway.
I am going to guess it's more random, or maybe there are weird conditions for unlock, because i unlocked online rpg pretty early (snes era, if i remember correctly. i am at iteration 6 of my mmorpg and the game box is just about to come out).
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
criesofthepast said:
I kind of want to make a sequel to this game myself. I (as well as a lot of us in this thread) have so many ideas on making this the best game ever. It's a great game as is but room for improvement is huge.

I do iphone development so maybe I'll write down some ideas and see if it's something I'd like to do early next year (currently working on something else).

But I hope the developer does make a sequel or update soon.

Dude, if you do iPhone development, make the same game but about movie production. It basically writes itself, and I bet it would be a big hit. If you want to make money you can outright copy it and just make it about movies. That's how Gameloft makes money anyway (they copy all Blizzard games).

Edit: Btw I only recently discovered how to discover new game genres. You need to train your staff in all things. So get your coder to go to a concert, etc. Make them do EVERYTHING. I got Mahjong, I got Volleyball, I got Junior High and High School, Soccer, etc. It feels like it never ends! I keep finding more and more (I'm playing past year 20 btw). But I forget how to get new game types?

Oh and ALL the games I make now are #1 and HOF. I could keep making sequels but I'm having fun making mostly new games, with a sequel here and there. My top selling game was Grand Turismo (motorcar or some such and simulator). 19m copies!

Oh and if you make a Popstar game, make sure you outsource the sound to the Musician girl with the red cap and the glasses. She's like some Shakira girl or something.

Anyone knows if the Oil Tycoon guy is worth hiring? What is he for, making a lot of money? I hired Mister X to replace Newb Oberton, he's pretty good. I didn't hire Miyamoto though, he didn't seem that good.

I'm making pretty much only PS3 and Wee games now. I guess the next step would be to make my own console but I can't find a hardware dude.

And I unlocked Online RPG on the DS. So it really has to do with training (probably netsurfing or some such).
 

john tv

Member
Ether_Snake said:
Oh and ALL the games I make now are #1 and HOF. I could keep making sequels but I'm having fun making mostly new games, with a sequel here and there. My top selling game was Grand Turismo (motorcar or some such and simulator). 19m copies!
Haha. "Grand Trismo" was one of my first games, but that was before we got big. It was either PC or MSX (or whatever the MSX is called in this, I forget), and it only sold 92,338 copies. :)
 
This isn't bragging, but I'm having a hard time believing you guys aren't regularly selling 25M+ units of your games. I'm on my second play through now, but I was getting 24M+ regularly after Year 13-14 on my first play through.

You guys have to be more ruthless with firing people at first. Only when you get somebody good do you start piling the training on. And yeah, outsourcing rocks.

I have no idea how to get a hardware engineer though. Dude never showed up in hiring. I'm going to figure it out this time though.
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
You can try to make someone change job I think, probably if they have a lot of training. Not sure.
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
Pristine_Condition said:
This isn't bragging, but I'm having a hard time believing you guys aren't regularly selling 25M+ units of your games. I'm on my second play through now, but I was getting 24M+ regularly after Year 13-14 on my first play through.

You guys have to be more ruthless with firing people at first. Only when you get somebody good do you start piling the training on. And yeah, outsourcing rocks.

I have no idea how to get a hardware engineer though. Dude never showed up in hiring. I'm going to figure it out this time though.
I guess that's my problem, haven't fired people. :p Second playthrough will be better.
 

john tv

Member
Pristine_Condition said:
This isn't bragging, but I'm having a hard time believing you guys aren't regularly selling 25M+ units of your games. I'm on my second play through now, but I was getting 24M+ regularly after Year 13-14 on my first play through.

You guys have to be more ruthless with firing people at first. Only when you get somebody good do you start piling the training on. And yeah, outsourcing rocks.

I have no idea how to get a hardware engineer though. Dude never showed up in hiring. I'm going to figure it out this time though.
I'm doing extremely well right now too (30M+ per title at this point), but I do wonder if you can do this every time or what? I've pretty much got a formula down now that works on almost every game. The only time I run into problems is when power outages occur, or someone else releases a similar game before mine is out. I also did a shit-ton of sequels (probably 4 or 5 for every 1 original IP) and stuck to platforms that did well in the real world (in other words no NEC consoles, no Virtual Boy, no Sega hardware because they always tanked in Japan). :) I advertise on the moon for every game, I outsource a lot of stuff to the most expensive contractors, never use the same people on two titles in a row, I hire new people every 4 or 5 games, etc. etc.

Looking forward to doing a second run-through to see how things change.
 
Pristine_Condition said:
I have no idea how to get a hardware engineer though. Dude never showed up in hiring. I'm going to figure it out this time though.

You have to level 5 every skill on 1 employee. So buy up those career change cards.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
the game gets pretty much super-easy after the beginning. so much so that it's basically sandbox mode. stopped counting my GOTYs and money (trillion?). my only major gripe with the game -- i wish the very early difficulty where you have to make some tough decisions scaled throughout
 

john tv

Member
AstroLad said:
the game gets pretty much super-easy after the beginning. so much so that it's basically sandbox mode. stopped counting my GOTYs and money (trillion?). my only major gripe with the game -- i wish the very early difficulty where you have to make some tough decisions scaled throughout
That's why I wish you could do multiple projects at once - more room for problems, more stuff to manage - could make the game get super interesting!
 
I'm getting 30,000,000+ sales now for every game. :/

Use a hollywood agent to hire a bunch of hackers and make them all level 5 and you are pretty much set. I also do the "anime" $70,000 training because it raises every stat and is the best bang for the buck.

Ether_Snake said:
Dude, if you do iPhone development, make the same game but about movie production. It basically writes itself, and I bet it would be a big hit. If you want to make money you can outright copy it and just make it about movies. That's how Gameloft makes money anyway (they copy all Blizzard games).
Good idea.
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
criesofthepast said:
I'm getting 30,000,000+ sales now for every game. :/

Use a hollywood agent to hire a bunch of hackers and make them all level 5 and you are pretty much set. I also do the "anime" $70,000 training because it raises every stat and is the best bang for the buck.
But if you do other types of training you unlock other types of games that you can make, so you may want to start changing up the way you train if you want more genres.
 
Fantastical said:
But if you do other types of training you unlock other types of games that you can make, so you may want to start changing up the way you train if you want more genres.
Shit didn't know that! I need more genres. And I should probably real the manual too.
 

Fantastical

Death Prophet
criesofthepast said:
Shit didn't know that! I need more genres. And I should probably real the manual too.
Don't worry, I didn't know either until I read it on GAF. I wish the game's tutorial introduced the smaller features of this game. I mean, I understand most of the game, but I feel that casual players might not.

EDIT: What am I saying, the game has no tutorial.
 
developing your own console takes a ton of time. wondering if it was worth it. i went straight from the ps era to developing a 64 bits blu drive console. those fuckers better get second jobs to buy my beautiful jeannestation.
 

Future

Member
Fantastical said:
Don't worry, I didn't know either until I read it on GAF. I wish the game's tutorial introduced the smaller features of this game. I mean, I understand most of the game, but I feel that casual players might not.

EDIT: What am I saying, the game has no tutorial.

Yeah I happened to figure it out myself. I actually like that you dont know exactly how to expand your genres, because once you see it happen...it actually makes sense.

Got to my 20th year. Game entered easy mode once I got my staff up to par. After that you could easily just do sequels from then on out and get almost perfect scores. Hell even new games get almost perfect scores every time. Didnt need to outsource anymore, could afford the most expensive advertising, afford to develop for any console, etc. Made my own console and then made 5 AAA titles right up to the end of the 20th year.

Game was really good, but it definitely suffers from what most rpgs suffer: Once your stats get to a certain point you know longer need to strategize and the game plays itself. Still a fun ride though and well worth the $4. When you start to see your scores finally improving, or when you buy your first major console license, or hire your first director...man those moments felt good, heh. In a sequel they would just need to make sure that stats werent everything, and that you still needed to make real decisions in order to succeed. Even if you are rich you should be able to lose your fortune with repeated bad decisions.
 
AstroLad said:
the game gets pretty much super-easy after the beginning. so much so that it's basically sandbox mode. stopped counting my GOTYs and money (trillion?). my only major gripe with the game -- i wish the very early difficulty where you have to make some tough decisions scaled throughout

HAve you noticed guys hitting the wall late in games, like hackers who were lighting up huge numbers in development become really ineffective (like single digits) suddenly?

I wonder if that means I need to give them a different job type...or maybe I'm on the wrong console platform...
 

Nocebo

Member
Wow this looks like fun! I don't have an idevice though. I'm going to try and play the japanese sequel as I'm studying japanese a bit anyway. Is anyone else playing the japanese pc version?
 

john tv

Member
Pristine_Condition said:
HAve you noticed guys hitting the wall late in games, like hackers who were lighting up huge numbers in development become really ineffective (like single digits) suddenly?

I wonder if that means I need to give them a different job type...or maybe I'm on the wrong console platform...
I don't fully understand hacker stats - they don't always make sense. One of my hackers has crazy stats, yet if I give him one of the boosts or have him do graphics or music, even with the high stats, he barely delivers.
 

Toki767

Member
john tv said:
I don't fully understand hacker stats - they don't always make sense. One of my hackers has crazy stats, yet if I give him one of the boosts or have him do graphics or music, even with the high stats, he barely delivers.
I feel the same way. Stupid Walt Sidney. :lol
 

chespace

It's not actually trolling if you don't admit it
How do you do sequels in this game?

There are no option choices for it other than "New Game" and "Contract".

Highest selling game so far is my fantasy RPG "Drop of God" on PlayStatus at 2.5 million units.

Kind of screwed up a lot in the beginning so this is my test run. Year 16 and barely able to crank out the AAA titles.
 
chespace said:
How do you do sequels in this game?

There are no option choices for it other than "New Game" and "Contract".

Highest selling game so far is my fantasy RPG "Drop of God" on PlayStatus at 2.5 million units.

Kind of screwed up a lot in the beginning so this is my test run. Year 16 and barely able to crank out the AAA titles.
you need a hall of fame game.
 

Enco

Member
Game looks great but the presentation is really putting me off.

It looks like a poor port with so much wasted space. Might cave in and buy it still. We'll see.
 

john tv

Member
chespace said:
How do you do sequels in this game?

There are no option choices for it other than "New Game" and "Contract".

Highest selling game so far is my fantasy RPG "Drop of God" on PlayStatus at 2.5 million units.

Kind of screwed up a lot in the beginning so this is my test run. Year 16 and barely able to crank out the AAA titles.
You need 32 (?) points or higher review scores to get into the hall of fame.

Would be awesome in the sequel if you could pay Famit...err, Game Guy magazine for high scores, just like in real life. :)
 

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
This game was pretty easy. First playthrough, and by the end, I was making games that sell 40+ million. My highest selling game was We Fitter which sold 54 million copies. Go figure. My 2nd best selling game is an online RPG called Wowie which sold 49+million, and 3rd best selling is an action spy game called Metal Cell, which sold also around 49million.

It was pretty funny that there are more games sold than there are consoles. My console, ps360, only has 19+ million sales and yet the games have no problem selling 40+ million near the end :lol

The key to the game is to build up a cache of hall of fame games (like 5 or 6) and then switch between them. Sequels start off with some base fun, so they pretty much guarantee good reviews which makes it easier to garner sales, and eventually, you'll max out genre and type of game, which allows to you to churn out hit after hit.

One tip is to hire aggressively, especially after you move for the last time, and to train your employees after you develop every game. Try to keep 2 personnel to perform every task so that you can rotate between them with every game. There are 3 hackers available at the last stage of the game. Get them as quickly as you can.
 

beat

Member
johnsmith said:
Get someone to level 5 in every job and you'll unlock the hardware engineer job.
This is really the only reason I hired Mr X: he started at level 5 on his first job already, shortening the process a bit.

Fixed2BeBroken said:
it's impossible it seems to be a multi-platform developer unless you win that grand prize award and get a million dollars. In fact, has anyone won the grand prize yet?
Yeah, the first time I won the grand prize is when I realized all the money in the game was displayed in thousands, as in I had (say) $2500K" in the bank, so an extra million wasn't a huge deal.

LCfiner said:
also, it's not a bad idea to buy the "FunBoost" item from the salesman. in a pinch, you can use it to add some extra fun point. I can get between 15 and 35 extra points when I use it. (uses 30 or 40 research points)
In a pinch? I just use the boosts _all the time_.

I established like 3 or 4 franchises because that way I could cycle the sequels without just pumping them out nonstop. Felt more sustainable that way. It didn't actually work out perfectly - some sequels had sales 50% below their predecessors, for some unknown reason. Still good, but not take-over-the-world money.

BTW, is it just me, or are FPSes not AAA material in this game?
 
i didn't knew you had to level up someone all 5 for the hardware engineer.

there are some that only have 3 or 4 options, do those also count?
 

SmokyDave

Member
I spent so much of my weekend playing this. Every time I went to the bar on Saturday night, I'd spend 5 minutes playing it before bringing the drinks back. One of my friends found me hiding in a toilet cubicle because I'd just figured out how to develop a console so I wanted to keep an eye on it. Lunchtime Sunday a friend called me out for spending all day texting on my phone. I was playing Game Dev Story.

At the end of all this though, Smoky Studios has $850 million in the bank, 35 HoF games (including 2 40/40's) won GoTY 3 times, and my biggest seller, Clungeon, moved over 50 million units.

Time to start a new studio, methinks.
 

Shaneus

Member
Year 10, Craptivision has just released the Lazarus and the first game is being worked on, with two Hackers, two Directors, a Hardware engineer and some other people. Life's pretty good :lol
 
Bought the game yesterday. Still in year 3, but having a great time!

Think I'm going to restart all over because I wasn't sure what I was doing when I started lol
 

RedShift

Member
SmokyDave said:
At the end of all this though, Smoky Studios has $850 million in the bank, 35 HoF games (including 2 40/40's) won GoTY 3 times, and my biggest seller, Clungeon, moved over 50 million units.

gallery_simon_jay_590.jpg

?
 

SmokyDave

Member
RedShift said:
http://www.bbcamerica.com/media/392/gallery_simon_jay_590.jpg[IMG]
?[/QUOTE]
Clungeon was the fourth game in my very popular series of dungeon crawlers set inside vaginas...

Dungeon Minge (10 mil sales)
Mingeon (30 mil)
Dungeon Clunge (20 mil)
Clungeon (50+ Mil, GoTY)

All of my game titles contained slang for male or female genitalia. I'm 30 years old, man :(
 
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