Own games can't make money

[tj71587]

Hey there! I'm playing on very hard. I have over 300 million dollars in 2010, but ever since the early game, my games don't sell. I make games that are regularly over 80 or 90. I'm currently doing AA on my own and it's costs around 15-18 million. I only sell about 8-10 millions worth of game. I do AA contracts and make 3 million and AAA contracts and make 20 million. Also, my IP is worth 80 million dollars, so I don't think it's bad IP. What am I missing?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

300 millions in 2010 is almost enough to stay afloat, but a sign that you are, indeed, getting too little money from your games.

You may be spending too much when creating the game, which will reduce the profit. One of the things that can cause this is taking too long to create a game - at most three months should be spent in one single game, ideally starting and finishing the game within one month and still getting 98% is how you completely dominate the game (in any difficulty.)

Contracts can keep you afloat, but they're a one-time money influx (it's possible to play the whole game only doing contract work,) whereas your own games give you money every week while they're on sale, so unless you're wasting too much money, making your own games will be the most profitable in the long run.

As a sidenote, an IP's value seems to be based on units sold. A mediocre IP started in 1976 can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, while still barely giving profit - or even losing you money.

[tj71587]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

300 millions in 2010 is almost enough to stay afloat, but a sign that you are, indeed, getting too little money from your games.

You may be spending too much when creating the game, which will reduce the profit. One of the things that can cause this is taking too long to create a game - at most three months should be spent in one single game, ideally starting and finishing the game within one month and still getting 98% is how you completely dominate the game (in any difficulty.)

Contracts can keep you afloat, but they're a one-time money influx (it's possible to play the whole game only doing contract work,) whereas your own games give you money every week while they're on sale, so unless you're wasting too much money, making your own games will be the most profitable in the long run.

As a sidenote, an IP's value seems to be based on units sold. A mediocre IP started in 1976 can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, while still barely giving profit - or even losing you money.

So, more developers would bring down the cost of a game just because of time even if overall expense is the same?

[7eveneleven11]

Do you have a look at market oversaturation of the genres?

This cuts down sales remarkably.

[tj71587]

Originally posted by 7eveneleven11:

Do you have a look at market oversaturation of the genres?

This cuts down sales remarkably.

I've been avoiding those, but thanks for the suggestion!

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Yes, the more people you have in the development room, the faster your game can be released. The more people in QA, the faster bugs will get fixed, the faster your game can be released. And if you are using improvements (not needed if enough stat points are being thrown at the game,) you want to have more people in the rooms doing the improvements, so they can be done faster.

It's not just "developers" as they're not the only ones giving your game stats (one of the most important things for your review score,) and programmers work at the same exact speed when it comes to developing games.

I tend to have a triple-digit number of development-adjacent employees by 1990, if not earlier. Figured out many months ago that throwing more people at problems does eventually stop them from being problems.

Also, oversaturation only matters under some circumstances:

- Weak IPs in mid/late game. These already cut down sales, so stacking saturation over it may cause net losses.
- "Tough" competition. In the other two settings saturation is way weaker and easily compensated via quick game releases.
- Slow/far apart game releases (which are more dangerous if compounded with the previous points,) which make it so anything that makes you lose sales will be a threat.

And more importantly, releasing a lot of games of the same genre can force the RNG to choose your genre, completely negating saturation, as trends are a direct counter to it.

[tj71587]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Yes, the more people you have in the development room, the faster your game can be released. The more people in QA, the faster bugs will get fixed, the faster your game can be released. And if you are using improvements (not needed if enough stat points are being thrown at the game,) you want to have more people in the rooms doing the improvements, so they can be done faster.

It's not just "developers" as they're not the only ones giving your game stats (one of the most important things for your review score,) and programmers work at the same exact speed when it comes to developing games.

I tend to have a triple-digit number of development-adjacent employees by 1990, if not earlier. Figured out many months ago that throwing more people at problems does eventually stop them from being problems.

Also, oversaturation only matters under some circumstances:

- Weak IPs in mid/late game. These already cut down sales, so stacking saturation over it may cause net losses.
- "Tough" competition. In the other two settings saturation is way weaker and easily compensated via quick game releases.
- Slow/far apart game releases (which are more dangerous if compounded with the previous points,) which make it so anything that makes you lose sales will be a threat.

And more importantly, releasing a lot of games of the same genre can force the RNG to choose your genre, completely negating saturation, as trends are a direct counter to it.

Oh, I thought slower development would cost the exact same and release the same game but just taking longer. Interesting. I'll be starting from scratch later and trying it! Thank you!

[7eveneleven11]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

And more importantly, releasing a lot of games of the same genre can force the RNG to choose your genre, completely negating saturation, as trends are a direct counter to it.

The problem for me, with that is the following:

if you release an RPG, for example, and another one while that one is still one the market and running well, you cut down you own sales. The sales for the first RPG are going down in that moment, you realese the next one, even on low competition. That is the reason, why I ususally tend to mix the genres up, but sometimes, I am making exceptions if it fits into my own plan.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

More important than individual games is the IP's strength and experience, both of which "cut down" potential sales if they're low - IP strength gives a buff to your present and future sales, and experience will (specially in Very Hard and Legendary) affect your review score, with the difference between 80% and 90% being huge in those difficulties, and the difference between 90% and 95% being important enough for you to want to get those five stars to everything as soon as you can.

So releasing a lot of games of the same genre and topic will allow you to get more experience, which will let you get to 98% easier, which will increase your sales. And again, unless you're playing in "tough" competition (why?) then the debuff isn't noticeable, as long as you're not going for realism (again, why?) and releasing one game per year, regardless of development time. (Edit: Rhetorical "whys?" I know why people does either. I just have a less "Dark Souls" approach to gaming and find pointless time-wasting mechanics and play styles to be... Pointless.)

The "cut down" sales from repeat genres/topics are countered by IP growth, studio growth, and easier high review rates.

I'm not saying you can't play and succeed with "every genre ever" since I do that from time to time (otherwise, having more than thirty genres would be pretty silly,) but you're actually increasing difficulty that way, specially in the two highest settings.

I can tear through Legendary even when I'm using the vanilla files, while ignoring the "saturation" mechanics. It may be my obnoxiously high release speed, or how I cut corners by skipping the Tutorial Sliders, or how I use rooms and corridors that won't win any The Sims award but increase efficiency with only a small cost of space... Or a combination of all of those things.

Originally posted by tj71587:

Oh, I thought slower development would cost the exact same and release the same game but just taking longer. Interesting. I'll be starting from scratch later and trying it! Thank you!

Here's what happens when a new month rolls in: Your employee's salaries are added again to development costs. This can actually turn a game that would profit into a game that will end up in the negatives, and can even hurt your contract-making. If a contract game takes more than one month to make, you're getting less of a bonus for it. Or paying to make a game for someone else (but the experience farming is still good.)

The only bad thing about having a lot of employees? It seems to increase the cost of improvements. But since when you have enough employees you won't need improvements at all, then to me that's the moot-est of moot points.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Originally posted by tj71587:

Oh, I thought slower development would cost the exact same and release the same game but just taking longer. Interesting. I'll be starting from scratch later and trying it! Thank you!

Here's what happens when a new month rolls in: Your employee's salaries are added again to development costs. This can actually turn a game that would profit into a game that will end up in the negatives, and can even hurt your contract-making. If a contract game takes more than one month to make, you're getting less of a bonus for it. Or paying to make a game for someone else (but the experience farming is still good.)

This is irrelevant; you pay your employees the same salary regardless of whether or not their time gets billed to a project, so the only thing that actually changes when pushing a game out the door before or after a month rolls over is the degree to which employee salaries are a 'hidden' cost on a given game's score card.

The real advantage of pushing games out the door faster is that, all else being equal, shorter development cycles mean you have more games on the market at a given time, which means you make more sales per month and thus have higher gross revenues and total profits.

[tj71587]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

More important than individual games is the IP's strength and experience, both of which "cut down" potential sales if they're low - IP strength gives a buff to your present and future sales, and experience will (specially in Very Hard and Legendary) affect your review score, with the difference between 80% and 90% being huge in those difficulties, and the difference between 90% and 95% being important enough for you to want to get those five stars to everything as soon as you can.

So releasing a lot of games of the same genre and topic will allow you to get more experience, which will let you get to 98% easier, which will increase your sales. And again, unless you're playing in "tough" competition (why?) then the debuff isn't noticeable, as long as you're not going for realism (again, why?) and releasing one game per year, regardless of development time. (Edit: Rhetorical "whys?" I know why people does either. I just have a less "Dark Souls" approach to gaming and find pointless time-wasting mechanics and play styles to be... Pointless.)

The "cut down" sales from repeat genres/topics are countered by IP growth, studio growth, and easier high review rates.

I'm not saying you can't play and succeed with "every genre ever" since I do that from time to time (otherwise, having more than thirty genres would be pretty silly,) but you're actually increasing difficulty that way, specially in the two highest settings.

I can tear through Legendary even when I'm using the vanilla files, while ignoring the "saturation" mechanics. It may be my obnoxiously high release speed, or how I cut corners by skipping the Tutorial Sliders, or how I use rooms and corridors that won't win any The Sims award but increase efficiency with only a small cost of space... Or a combination of all of those things.

Originally posted by tj71587:

Oh, I thought slower development would cost the exact same and release the same game but just taking longer. Interesting. I'll be starting from scratch later and trying it! Thank you!

Here's what happens when a new month rolls in: Your employee's salaries are added again to development costs. This can actually turn a game that would profit into a game that will end up in the negatives, and can even hurt your contract-making. If a contract game takes more than one month to make, you're getting less of a bonus for it. Or paying to make a game for someone else (but the experience farming is still good.)

The only bad thing about having a lot of employees? It seems to increase the cost of improvements. But since when you have enough employees you won't need improvements at all, then to me that's the moot-est of moot points.

This was it. I am playing on tough, but even so, having 60 people between game devs, test, sound and graphics has been nothing but profitable, despite only having a couple of hits. Thanks for the help!