What do stars and hearts do?

[Strifeboy]

I see them all over the place for different things, no idea what they do, same with publishers and developers.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

They affect your game review scores, and your sales.

The more stars a thing is, the better. Five star licenses will generate a lot more sales, five star publishers capture the largest audiences.

For all the bits and bobs that go into a game, the stars represent 'experience' and each missing star takes away a little of your final review score.

That's why the advice is to churn through contract games in the early game, build up a lot of stars in your game features, platforms, engine features, and then when you publish your own you won't be penalised so heavily for missing them.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Get five hearts with a publisher, which you can do by completing contracts and by giving them your games to publish, and they will offer you an exclusive contract. More $$ per game and a nice signing bonus as well. You want to go for this.

[Strifeboy]

Sweet thanks man, what about platforms? Like you have 4 and 2 are 5 star and 2 are 0 stars does it effect sales or review?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Any stars missing will affect your reviews - and review score affects sales directly. The effect is harsher on higher difficulties, to the point releasing any game of your own in Legendary with too many items with two or less stars is just asking for a flop. In difficulties below medium, the effect is minimal, but still there, and paired up with other things a new player may not know, they could cause a nice fat bankruptcy.

As for hearts, it's better to aim for the big names - the five-star publishers. In an NPC's case, the "stars" mean something else - it's both tied to their own market share and the potential quality of their games. So a publisher with a higher star rating will give you a smaller sign-up fee and will give you less money per game, but those small losses are balanced and (IMO) outdone by the number of sales you'll get from a 5-star publisher, even compared to a 4-star one.

[Strifeboy]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Any stars missing will affect your reviews - and review score affects sales directly. The effect is harsher on higher difficulties, to the point releasing any game of your own in Legendary with too many items with two or less stars is just asking for a flop. In difficulties below medium, the effect is minimal, but still there, and paired up with other things a new player may not know, they could cause a nice fat bankruptcy.

As for hearts, it's better to aim for the big names - the five-star publishers. In an NPC's case, the "stars" mean something else - it's both tied to their own market share and the potential quality of their games. So a publisher with a higher star rating will give you a smaller sign-up fee and will give you less money per game, but those small losses are balanced and (IMO) outdone by the number of sales you'll get from a 5-star publisher, even compared to a 4-star one.

Noice thanks, Couldn't find much info on this, thanks for the tips.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Almost every guide I've seen is either a "sliders guide" (sliders being around 10% of what makes a good game,) or a guide with things you can learn by looking at the text files. And the few that aren't are extremely pinpoint guides on playing a minmax playstyle (nothing wrong with minmaxing, but it's not something a beginner will be able to do, or even know what the person writing is talking about.)

Heck, a lot of the success you can have in very early game is dependent on RNG. Starting in Legendary, and you get three buggy programmers, Racing as your main genre, and no vehicle-related topic as your starter topics? Better restart, because you're already looking at spending at least 40k more dollars than needed, and waiting for less self-destructive employees, before you can even start making money off contracts.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Yeah someone really needs to write up a beginners guide or something