QA employees

[𝕮𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖋]

Should I use game designers in QA room for gameplay improvement or just game testers

[Wenju]

Just game testers. Look careful, when you look at the employees in the room, it will tell you what skills are used in that room.
Few rooms use more then 1 skill. So you can hyperfocus.

[𝕮𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖋]

Thank you. Yeah, I saw that the room requires testers, I just recently saw on the stream that some people suggested using designers, so I decided to clarify

[Kyouko Tsukino]

For some unknown reason, game designers used to work faster in that room. It was most likely a bug which should have been fixed at some point.

The problem is, what's used to determine the quality of the work done is the main skill for the room (Game Testing in this case) and Game Designers are trash at it like all other jobs except Game Testers, so you'll end up with a room that can debug a game slightly faster, but does a horrible job at adding stats to your game, which is the main function of the room.

Edit: I don't know if the issue with Game Design determining work speed in the QA room was fixed, because I don't use Game Designers in the QA room, for the reason stated above. When it comes to employee skills, anyone who says "use whoever wherever" or "using unskilled people in a room is worthwhile" is simply being a professional rectal ventriloquist.

That said, I don't use music/graphics employees in the Development room. Their contribution to games in that room is marginal, and in early game they'll make it harder to get Control/Technical points, which is the only stat that doesn't get any "specialized room" until 1992.

[kevingrant121]

Do you use any programmers in the development room, or just developers (once you have motion capture)?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Depends on how quickly I can gather enough 50+ developers, since up to that point I'll be using only one of them (my CEO, who can start at 65 skill and have the "star" perk, making her a free Legendary Developer.)

But usually I will try to get a full developer team in the development room once MoCap is up and running, since my usual "special" genres (RPG and Skill in vanilla,) have Gameplay as one of their priorities.

Some people would argue that doing so will slow down the making of engines, but since I only use create and use one engine through the whole game, my usual 1990+ team of a hundred developers can get it updated faster than you could say "code monkey."

[kevingrant121]

Thanks. I read a lot of your posts, and can't seem to get anywhere near the success you have. Playing through my first successful legendary game, and it was well into the 2000s before I was a 5 star developer...

[Kyouko Tsukino]

A lot of people like to play the game slowly - I don't mean "Marathon speed" but releasing one game a year for the sake of "realism." That will cripple their studio score. Making one 98% game per month will skyrocket your studio score, and focusing on one IP can get your IP to 5.0 quite fast. Making one game every two or three months can also get you there fast, and it's also easier to keep up past the 2000s (in that era I usually switch from a once-a-month to once-every-three months development routine, to prepare for the move to AA games in 2010.)

Edit: Also, my first successful Legendary game was one where I hadn't yet figured out a lot of the small details that let me cut corners, like swallowing my pride and making Skill my special genre just so I can keep throwing Tetris clones at people without any complaints from the fans. I used to get my studio to 5.0 by the nineties, but that was before I started using my "throw more people at problems" method of hiring employees. I also hadn't memorized all the sliders needed to 'speedrun' the early grind.

[kevingrant121]

For example I couldn't make a game above 75% for quite some time. I also only made it by playing in the warehouse. I can never make enough money to buy more buildings in other maps. Can't figure out how to make good games early when all you have is a dev room (even with the correct sliders).

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Correct sliders are only a part of what makes a good game. I tend to mention "experience" too - the 'stars' besides every element of a game. They're very important in Legendary, as any part of your game that has less than two stars will be counting against your review score, and they'll also affect your work speed. And if you have too few employees working at the game, it will be getting less stats, which are also important (you may need around 90 of every stat in 1976 to get 98%+, and the requirements go up every year.)

Besides that, Warehouse is my favorite map, but I can play Legendary in any map - adaptation and focus can make even the Manor map relatively 'easy.' I mostly like that Warehouse allows for no-nonsense grid-like building setups. Not having to waste money in real estate is just a bonus. If any other map was 100% "all squares" I would play it a lot too, but there's always some curve or weird-shaped building messing things up.

[kevingrant121]

It just seems to take me forever to get the money for the other rooms. Whats the secret to good games when you only have the dev room?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

- Use Skill or Puzzle at first, with one them being your special genre (3% review score bonus, plus fans will never get bored of your games of your special genre) and look for topics that fit both (Animals or Building Blocks, for example,) then use contract games to train them. You don't need to get QA until 1980+ if you already know the sliders, so that's 200k you can use for other things.

- Use contract games to get experience, not to get money. I'll make a "Racing/Skill" contract games if it helps me get a lot of experience stars, so my actual games will be as good as they can be.

- Don't waste money in "prettying up" your office, or make rooms much bigger than they need to be. A room for five people can fit five desks, a water/coffee dispenser (you don't need both) a medkit, a trash can, a radio and enough rugs and heaters to keep both the heat and quality filters dark green. Just play around a bit with building in sandbox and you'll figure out ways to build your offices in a way that minimizes space while not sacrificing anything needed* inside them.

- Similarly, a 3x3 lounge can serve up to ten people (fitting up to 6 arcade machines inside) if built right, a 3x5 bathroom also "fits" ten people (three stalls, three sinks, three hand driers.) Corridors have no reason to be wider than 2 blocks, which helps reduce the amount of crap you have to put in them to make them dark green in the quality/heat filters.

- Pay attention to how your employee settings work too. Putting the Crunch time too "low" will negatively affect your work speed (I never set it below 75% and my standard is 80%) and putting motivation recovery anywhere but at 80% is not only pointless, but riskier the closer to the left side of that slider you go.

- More employees mean more work speed, meaning you can get more things done in a shorter time. Some people don't believe this, but having twenty development employees in 1977 (all programmers except your Game Designer CEO, unless you can't find enough programmers, but even then, try to hire programmers) can let you steamroll the early game by letting you release one game per month with at least 80% quality.

- Don't hire employees with flaws or employees with too many perks early on, and stay clear from "Legendary" employees. Also avoid situational/"crowd" perks. To elaborate: there are perks that may sound awesome but need the whole room to have them in order to have any effect. One employee not minding the cold means nothing if you have a room with nineteen other employees who are freezing their butts off, hate you for it, and refuse to work quickly. The worst offender for "crowd perks" is the one about not caring about equipment quality, since "updating" furniture is one of the least expensive and less frequent issues you'll encounter (once a decade in some rooms, once every several decades in others,) and that perk will do absolutely nothing except inflate your employee's salary until 1985.

- Playing with the "bottom" sliders (the percentile ones) can let you make up for a lack of graphics/sound employees, early on you don't need that many graphics/sound points: you can get 90% with just 80 graphics/sound points as long as control and gameplay are both above 150.

Anyhow, to sum things up: I play in a somewhat risky way (hiring 'too many' employees,) I play focused (two genres, two topics, one IP, full speed ahead,) and I don't sacrifice efficiency for the sake of things like "roleplaying" or "realism." I do however sacrifice some profit for the sake of not micromanaging more than needed. I don't even see employees as "people," I tend to call them "toons" "goons" or "monkeys" but what I think of when I see one of them slaving away at a work station is: "That tool is doing its job." In fact I fire people without blinking if I see someone that's significantly better at what they do in the Job Listing screen. That programmer I hired in 1976 and went all the way up to 38 programming on their own by working their butts off for my sake? Well, I just saw a potential new employee who has 58 programming and a perk that makes them work faster, so all I have to tell the old programmer is "good riddance."

* A good tip for games like MGT 2 (eco sims) is to make sure you can tell "need" from "want," and only go for "want" when you have covered all your "needs" and are making more money than you're spending. A trash can, medkit, water fountain and radio in every work room? Needed for efficiency and speed (less walking equals more working.) Two tables, a cabinet and every bit of wall covered with paintings? You may want them, but you most definitely don't need them.

[kevingrant121]

Thank you for all the tips, I will try them out on a new run. Just want to take my current one to 2050 for the accomplishment.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

How to get the 2050 achievement:

- Start a game in Very Fast speed without any randomness so no pop-ups interrupt the timer.
- Don't build a thing. Don't hire anyone.
- Leave the game running until it's 2050.
- Profit! (Except no, since you made zero profit.)

Your CEO does not need to have anything at all built, and doesn't have a salary, so you'll be using exactly zero dollars per month.

Edit: Not saying it's a fun or even a sensible way to 'play' the game, but it's still the easiest way to get that achievement. ;)