User Reviews (and Sales) ?

[nosedigger]

After so many play-throughs, I still do not understand how is this value calculated ?
I thought the sales should be straightforward, with Press Reviews having the most important impact, but it's not that case.

So, some games have high user review, some less, for an example Arcade cabinets tend to get a lot of user reviews, but they stay really long on market. MMO and F2P should also have high user reviews.

But the sales I just cant get a hang on even approximately guess. I had games getting 91% selling total of 50 mil $ in early 80s, or I could have Survival made for online PC+Mac, and with user base of 180 million, it sold 10 million copies, where I had AAA Sport game, with customer base of 400 mil users, rating of 95% and selling only 3 mil of copies.

I figure, the user reviews and some other factor must be affecting games, so please if anyone has knowledge to share, here is the place

EDIT:
Im mainly interested in understanding how User Reviews are generated, and what is affecting the sales of the game the most (on release). Features with 5* generate more points, I do understand how to get to 95+% in final Review, so what I need to do to get 100% User Review for a Game.
Low saturated topic/genres +
High number of fans/high reputation +
Removal of yellow point Features that have the game's genre in red +
anything else ?

(Im playing on Hard)

[Kyouko Tsukino]

One thing I discovered early into the game about features: Any "missing" ones will be hitting your review score. I didn't ever bother moving to a higher game size until I have enough features to fill that bigger size, which is how I gradually figured out the whole "use the highest features first" thing.

Games don't have extended lifetime the bigger their size, but other things do affect that. They have a natural (and unstoppable) sales decay curve which is affected by their initial quality, trends and things like whether they won an award (with "Game of the Year" giving the biggest boost, but it's still a small boost.) Their price also affects their shelf life, when self-publishing, with the advantage that you can choose when to take a game out of the market, instead of being left to the whim of NPCs (who may wait until it only sells 1 copy per week, or decide "a thousand copies is too low kill that game now!") Fans don't seem to extend lifetime either, my games last the same whether I have a hundred thousand or ten million fans at a given point of the game.

From what I've seen, a non-MMO game will die out between 40 and 100 weeks from launch, regardless of its size - bigger games may seem to last longer, but that may be a consequence of the initial sales number being larger in later decades.

And if you're making a lot of games, you can also use an old trick that can also break the game: Self-publish at the maximum price possible, so you get more profit per week, at the cost of a reduced shelf life. Most games will "die out" at 40-45 weeks this way, but that will also lower the number of production rooms you need to keep up with your games (although with the "zerg rush" method there's no keeping up outside of Marathon speed and the highest "increased production speed" sandbox option.) So yes, I usually want my games to die quickly - there's always going to be more games coming to replace them anyways.

My standard playstyle is to make one game every one or two months (with as much of that lapse of time spent actually developing/polishing said game,) only buy the platforms that are worth a damn, research only the topics and genres I'll use, know the sliders (easier to do if you stick to one "combo" per genre,) completely disregard trends (if your games are good enough and frequent enough, you'll be making trends anways) and break through the debuff to IP growth from releasing sequels/spinoffs too close to each other by releasing so many games of each IP that it will grow fast anyways.

However, I "cripple" myself in other ways, by not doing things I find boring, which in the end helps me focus on development. I don't do consoles anymore, I don't port to anything (even remaster) I don't create MMOs, and I don't train employees - outside of pumping them up for console making there's no need to waste money training anyone, if you're keeping them busy they'll get better over time, and if they haven't, later on, you can just fire the useless ones and hire people of higher skill. I also don't build a support office. The number of fans I would lose from "neglecting" to hear their complaints are drowned under the many times higher number of fans I gain from having a dozen games out. And I tend to not build marketing either. An IP strong enough with games good enough will quickly have sequels/spin-offs start at 60 hype. That will give them enough of a boost to make even tiny little B+ games profit in the 2000s.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Didn't see the edit, but here's what I saw from testing (mine and from other players.)

A game will sell less copies the higher you price it. However, high prices mean more money per week, which at times may be good - you can't pay for that brand new engine tech with "sales" after all, you need the actual money, and selling low may leave you with (comparatively) little actual money.

The 'sweet spot' for the sales versus profit formula is around the $30-$39 range. I've used $39 a lot and it's good enough to keep me ahead of the tech crawl, but often I'll return to "being Ubisoft" and price everything the highest possible just so I can bleed those dumb fans out of money. :D

Auto-pricing uses a weird method and I don't really use it much, as I've seen its boost to sales is not worth the money you'll be losing on average as compared to the $30-$39 range.

I also don't use auto production much, not the "new" method, because it's set to do the oldest game first, then spread out, and if you have several disconnected production rooms, full automation may make enough copies for two weeks in every production room you have so you end up with twenty weeks worth of stock for one game, and no stock for anything else. I automate the "old" way, which is a bit annoying, by setting each room to take care of one game automatically.

[Chenza]

I think he wants details on why. Things like experience. Stars in the different tech, number of fans and the other things that make games sell.
Fans is probably the biggest factor. Followed closely by experience. Fans are YOUR fans. the people buying your games. you could have PC/Mac and possibly 180 million users. but if you don't have fans then you are not going to sell games (this explains the likely issue you had only getting 3 million units sold in this situation) Experience in different techs, topic's, and so on. Everything that has stars next to them when you are making a game. If they are not maxed out you loose review/sales. I hope this helps explain it.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

IP and studio strength are more important than experience. A game with relatively low stars (scoring lower than usual) can still sell relatively high compared to other games of the same review range - as long as you have enough fans and are targeting platforms with the most active users - if your studio and IP strength are high enough, while a game with perfect experience of a weak IP will sell less copies than others of the same review range. And games from a strong IP and studio will also attract more fans per week.

I've seen "enough fans" be just as underestimated as "enough workforce." If you have less than 100k fans by 1985, you could be in trouble. I tend to hit 50k fans before 1980, it's easier to do nowadays thanks to the freeware option. Most budget game types are weak as far as profit goes* compared to new games, so I use most of my 'old' games to boost my fan count, which will help future games sell more.

* They sell less copies and have lower profit, quite a double whammy. Only exception would be game bundles (which requires you to release the games as budget first, so they're a long-term thing) or GOTY (of which you'll have at best one per year, for obvious reasons.)

[nosedigger]

@Chenza
It's fine, I am getting valuable info. Although, it took me few posts to know what and how to ask, but I got there. I think this was the feeling of other players reading my posts on Software Inc., where I have optimal strategy and would provide all the info through it xD

Ok, this paints a much cleared picture now. No support for fans nor shop is fine I guess, if you are churning out products to have positive fan number in the end. IP merch is basically extra cash, but it takes space and require training, without which I could make.

Interestingly, with no marketing, you are not using +3% from the Press Review ? A lot of in-game time I spend on doing Demo, Press and Overhype, so I do not need to think about it afterwards, but no marketing, running pure on the sequel hype should be viable. I would at least hire few of them, just for that 3% bonus, but if you are hitting 98% without it, then I guess you actually do not need it.

In some of the YT videos, I saw that strategy with maxing the price and contents, but I didnt fiddled with it too much. My knowledge of the product's lifespan was not that precise, to be able to compare the results.

Maybe the "low" marketing and high price are actually a good thing, since the game's lifespan is shorter, meaning faster sequels for IP boost. But the no training is quite interesting, since it takes a lot of micro. So you are basically just throwing people in teams and polishing the game to the max.

As for hardware, arcade, MMO, F2P etc., they are just a way to add some replay-ability. If you are playing the standard way, hardware should be the most profitable thing (or is it f2p/mmo?). It's not crucial, and the profit can be easily toppled with high number of products. Dunno, I played all the variations, but it's just the question of what is your goal - simple beating the game, or actually trying to see how many units can you sell, market share or something else.

Discount games is something I have never done, and it's just more hassle when you are releasing all of the 19 genres. I've seen that YT video of broken MGT2 where the player does not create a single game, but rather buys IP and releases budget games and packs to earn billions. I guess in the end it is the question of emmersion - do you want to focus on a few IPs and maximize profits, do you want to have the best selling console of all times, do you want to sell game and addon packs etc.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

The thing about Overhype is that it's a coin toss that can't be affected by anything at all, and it costs a lot of money at the time where you would need the bonus sales from overhype. By the time I would consider spending money in overhype worth it on average, I'm way past the point where I need to bump up sales to survive. As I noted before, 60 hype is a good enough boost to sales IMO. It would be like using a rocket launcher to kill a radroach in Fallout. "Overhype" and "overkill" share half their letters, amusingly.

As for the rest of the special marketing, the 3% review increase is only useful if you don't hit 96% and above often, it will never turn a 96%, 97% or 98% into a 99% or 100%, and the difference between 95% and 98% is not a deal-breaker for me.

There's also the issue of space. Sure in the Warehouse space may not be an issue, but I got used to playing in the European Manor just for the challenge it brings, and any room that I didn't find good use for was simply not researched or built - because space was a commodity I didn't want to waste. And in the Warehouse, saving the space it would take to hire ten or twenty market guys means being able to use that space to get ten or twenty more development-adjacent people, which means better games - or building a few more production rooms.

As for price and content (items) in production... That's a silly thing unless done only with the Collector's Edition of a game. Adding content will (slightly) increase sales, but not lifetime (placebo can be an evil monster in this game,) but it has no effect on the "normal" release of a game, and adding items to either the normal or Deluxe editions will actually lower the sales of the Collector's Edition, which you don't want to happen (as it's the most expensive one, so more potential profit there.)

I counter "no training" by hiring people in batches. For example, in my current run I hit 1985, so I looked at my team, and anyone who was not at least at 40 in their main skill got sacked and replaced by newcomers who could (thanks to a studio rating of 4) be at 50 or 60 skill already, and cost only slightly more money. The "bad mood" debuff (which I frankly don't remember if it's active below legendary) can be weathered with a combination of a probably excessive number of lounges full of arcades (did you know you can put 7 arcades in a 3x3 lounge? That's 7 people serviced at a time) and motivation recovery set to 80 so they're never low to begin with.

About the "sidequest" ways to make money (MMO, consoles, and so on,) I partially don't use them because they make mid/end game way too easy. Heck, porting from arcades can make early game a joke, too. Arcades sell well enough on their own, and the reduced production cost and increased production speed make it easier to hit high review ratings, and get a bit more profit too.

As for alternative ways to play, I've tried a lot of them. Here's ways to play the game that I've tested and found possible (but "possible" and "fun" are not inclusive, depending on mindset, and some of these ways I didn't find fun.)

- Only doing contract games and contract work.
- Only doing contract work (not contract games.)
- "Only" doing arcades. This is tricky and requires you to know the sliders so you don't need QA until a few years down the line, and past the 2000s the arcades take a nosedive in profit-making abilities (just like in real life, really,) so you can't get to endgame doing only arcades, but you can switch to making arcades and then porting them to PC and still survive.
- Doing absolutely nothing at all. No, seriously. Your CEO doesn't spend money, doesn't quit, and so, if you don't buy anything that would drain your money, you can very literally stay around until the 2030s. Basically, "Idle Game World" where you don't even click on anything and numbers don't go up (well, your numbers at least.)

And yes, in the end the way to play is a choice the player can make. I know how to break the game with MMOs, but find MMOs to be a "too late" thing, by the time they show up I'm already a billionaire and bored enough that the micromanagement they bring along is not welcome. Consoles... Were added way too early in development thanks to the usual loud and shortsighted who wanted "consoles nao!" and suffer from a lack of balance I find annoying. Sure I can mod to balance things (done that a lot actually) but in the end even with those changes I still prefer not to make consoles at all. Budget games are... Pocket change, frankly, and require having extra production rooms to take care of the production - the "loop" of the animation in production rooms is the same for 100 copies or for 2000+, so I'd rather use it for the games that sell 2000+ copies - specially since those 2000 sell for much more money each.

And modding is one of the reasons I stayed with this game. I know some people enjoy the "developer's vision" but I'm a player who'll only play the game "the way it was intended" once, and if I don't like that, I'll mod the crap out of what I don't like. Bethesda games don't have tutorial dungeons when I play them. This game may have 35 "genres," or 1000+ topics, or 700+ platforms, or 12 tech levels, or 1200 IPs, or all of those combined, depending on what I want to do. Heck, once I did a modification with less genres (twelve) because I find a lot of the "genres" of modern gaming to be just derivatives of other genres (I liked "Battle Royale" better when it was called "Shooter," and I liked that one better when it was called "Action.")

[nosedigger]

Software Inc. has the "best" market simulator out there, and I think that's the reason I sinked thousands of hours in it, instead of MGT2. I do not like how fixed the market in the MGT2 is, trying to make a dent into hardcoded values of consoles and handheld market %. On the other hand, sequels in Software Inc. tend to do worse than the initial release (I noticed the tendency after the Impossible diff update), so it can be frustrating some times to have market shrinking over the years, because of poor PC OS and Console sequels (one of the main reasons I'm always making my own).

So +3% from Press Review actually do not bump 90% high releases ? Well that sux big time. I do realize the 100% should be rarity, but this thing clearly shows the unfinished design here, which is a bit disappointing.

As for MMO and F2P, it's just laughable comparing it to AI in this game. I do not start on them until PS2 is out, so I have max market (including my own consoles), and I would easily get several 100k of active users, where the AI would be in the range of 20-30k total. So yeah, the competition is really lacking in this department. On thing that I love in the Software Inc. is that I can design software and then give it to Subsidiaries to be made exactly like that, but here, I cant make my Subs do MMO or F2P, or any other game, which would be an awesome addition.

As for modding, I do not see mods for the game files, you are doing it on your local only ?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

99% and 100% are determined by random chance, for games that already hit 98%. So the 3% increase will do nothing for that, the last point at which you can benefit fully from it is if your game would be 95%.

Modding exists, the "guides" section here has several mods, and the Nexus has some too. As for me, I've used parts of other mods and some other data from the internet to add genres, platforms, NPCs, IPs and many other things. And I also fixed the huge "elephant in the room" that is the PC - showing up in the eighties with the tech level of a 2030 platform - because that's logical and not strange at all - instead of doing what other platforms do and start off small and tech-compliant and have new 'versions' appear as time goes by (I also did that with the Mac, which at least has 'primitive' versions, but those stop when the "Mac" shows up too.)

I also managed to both "fix" the major screw-up (IMO) of having handheld devices lag behind by just having screens release along with "coolant" parts and have the same stats. I also have a good hundred handheld platforms spread in time, which makes that part of the market less barren (although most handheld devices were, to say it nicely, low-selling garbage.

I've found a lot of the 'fun facts' from modding. Like how the "screenshots" really work. They will appear depending on your game's graphics stat, with the spread determined by the number of screenshots the genre has. The more screenshots, the less points needed for the screenshot to change to the next one in the folder.

[Chenza]

@nosedigger There's several of us that have been here since beta with thousands of hours in this game (myself included). Kyouko has done things to brake this games in more ways then i could even come up with. there advise is always spot on i just think there was something lost in what you were asking. No worries, no biggie. Any other questions please don't hesitate to ask.
@Kyouko I don't even consider IP and studio strength that much of a thing. but I play with one or two IP's at most and constantly do contract work, make contract games every other game i make just to bring all those things (along with tech's) up as fast as i can. I guess after years I've forgotten why i do the things i do. I just know to do it. lol

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Oh, I had forgotten about that because I've been doing "one IP per genre" runs for a while now, to add a bit of grind to the start of the game. Using a single IP may be the ultimate way to "break" the game.

You can have a 5-star IP by 1982 if you make games quickly enough. No, don't bother waiting until they go out of the market. The sales of new games more than make up for the loss of sales in older games. A strong IP earlier into the game will bring more fans, sell more copies of anything you publish for it, and can tank through any 'debuff' mechanic the game may have. Getting to that point is a good example why I keep saying some of the mechanics are not as harsh as they may seem. There is a supposed debuff to IP growth if you release a sequel less than twelve months after its prequel, or if you release a spin-off less than six months before the last spin-off. But you can just release spin-offs and sequels and sequels of spin-offs forever, the growth to 5.0 IP won't take that long, and once your IP reaches that, the only way it could go down is if you don't use the IP for a stupidly long time.

So yeah, my most game-breaking runs involve "Druidia Kart" and "Druidia Fighters" and "Druidia Football." Other people worry about well-thought names and creating background stories for them (or "creating" stories by using AI, usually because writing and thinking are not their fortes,) me I just use a small set of game names and rarely bother being "original" about it. Electronic Arts has it right after all, why go with "Extremely Contrived Game Title With Many Words" when "Football Game '98" works?

"But what about the charts?" some may ask. My only answer is DILLIGAD. ;)

[nosedigger]

@Chenza
You were right, there are some unaswered questions, but I quickly abandoned them because of huge influx of other information. The lingering question of User Reviews - how are they gathered, and what is their impact on the sales, to be precise. In the last run, it happened again, the best two games were MMO, which had 600 positive and 0 negative results, and that's it. I just do not understand why that keeps happening over and over.

@Kyouko
Single IP with Spinoffs is a thing I figured out as soon as I started with the merch, really early on, but switching back to the multi IPs a month ago, with the intention of making one IP to be all exclusive to my consoles/hh (which never happened, because once the HH has finally gathered enough users, the new one be rolling off).

As for Game's Screenshot, I also figured out it has to do something with the grapchics, but wasnt sure if it was points or the Graph studio features implemented. Which is next question:
So you are churning out games, with lower game size, but filled with the most expensive features, but what are you doing with the sound/graphics/motion features ? How big are those teams comparing it to the main development team ?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

So to answer that one question that's been lingering, user reviews are something that may be up to RNG, it does not seem to have an obvious reason behind the numbers. I don't really understand the code (I've looked, and to me it's "Advanced Klingon") But "user reviews" are also something I haven't noticed the actual effect of. As long as my games hit 90%+ Press Review ratings, they'll give me good profit, and that's the important thing for me.

My ratio of employees, taken roughly, would be 50% head count of QA and graphics compared to Development, and 50% head count of QA/Graphics for Sound, and around half of that for MoCap.

This is due to Sound and MoCap getting a lot more "work" done per person than other rooms, as a way to balance out the obnoxiously large workstations. I personally would have liked to see some workstations' size reduced - there's really no need to have some animation of a toon pretending to do karate moves forever, or at least, there's no need for a workstation that is 10x the size of the toon and its animation. Anyhow, it sort of works out, if you know you don't need that many of them, MoCap will not be eating up 50% of your build area.

So anyways, if I have around 100 people in Development at some point, I'll have ~50 in QA, ~50 in Graphics, ~25 in Sound, and somewhere between 10 and 15 in MoCap. For late game (2010+) If playing the Warehouse or Bunker, I'll sometimes have around 200 development employees, and the rest will scale up to follow the ratios I want to keep, but I don't go beyond that because I know my computer can't handle much more than 600 toons total. If you don't know how to fit "that many" people in the Warehouse (or even the Bunker) you have a lot of dead space in your rooms and/or corridors wider than 1 square.

[JD_Mortal]

Under the belly of the beast, I am sure there is just a random pool of "users", who have various desires to be met.

Like the following...

User: #000000001
- Age: Teen
- Uses platforms: NES, PC, Arcade, MMO
- Likes: Action, Racing, Strategy/Platform, Skill/Puzzle
- Loves: Skill, Fighting, RPG/Action
- MinBuy/MaxBuy: $12/$28
- Languages: French, Spanish, Chinese

So, if you happen to make an "RPG/Action" game, for $15, on the NES, for Teens, with French language... then that user will give you a generous score for "perfection". As opposed to a normal score for a "Racing" game, selling for $25, which you made as an MMO game, for All-Ages, in English language. (Love vs Like vs "Not made for my demographic age" vs "I can't translate this well")

I'd assume that the "gaming population" in the beginning is just smaller and has a wider set of "likes". In time, as the user-base grows, each new individual has less likes and obtains loves/likes from the games current stack of "trending", as "followers". (Or each person starts counting as multiple people. I'm sure they are not actually simulating billions of individuals. Odds may be a more realistic method used here, as opposed to real "individualism". 20% like RPG. 40% like Action. Children like horses, toys, cars, dragons... Teens like dating, race-cars, stock-cars, monsters, demons, orcs, castles...)

They may even have something like a demand for target things... Possibly with a "hate/like/love" level.

High graphics development levels/points, High graphics included options, Voice acting, 3D tech, Retro, Sequels, Horses, Candy, Castles, Cars, Boxing... etc...

It is easy to get high "development scores", but a high score on a game that no-one wants, or on a platform that no-one uses, will result in few fans, few "loved it" reviews and fewer sales.

Then again, the game could totally just be making-up love/like, based off generic ODDS of statistics. (As opposed to having a real simulated fan-base.)

At the end of the day, you need to use that information to determine if various "types" of things you added, were worth the investment. Developing on that system, in that language, for that age, with that Genre and those topics... Did not do well, or they did exceptionally better than normal. (You can make the world's best, most expensive, "Ultimate Chess Game", but it will never be as popular and desired as the world's worst, and cheapest, "Roblox MMO".)

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Occam's Razor tells me that's way too contrived to have made it into the code. Here's actual things that actually happen, from what may now be thousands of hours spent just playing with the game* instead of playing the game:

Languages actively fraction your sales. A game in one language will sell a fraction of what a game in multiple languages would, so you want to add all languages to any game you release and would profit directly from its sales (this also includes contract games after you have your own engine.) No, I don't know why there's many languages and the option to only use some, considering how relatively little money they add to the game's cost, except "realism."

Same as I don't know why the lower part of the last page of the development screen even exists - cutting down costs will cut down your sales, so you'll effectively pay less for getting less income, which may actually leave you with negative profit.

The "odds" are all in full display:

- A topic will sell more the less games with the same topics exist at the time for the platform(s) in question. This can be alleviated - but never fully countered - by "trends." And of course, a topic that's disliked will affect your sales negatively, although it being a topic that's not been used much lately (for your platform(s) of choice) will alleviate that.
- A genre obeys mostly the same rules. The more games with the same main genre as yours for your platform(s) of choice, the more your sales will be affected. Trending can help or harm, as with topics.
- Fans have "genres" that seem to do absolutely nothing but be one of many mostly cosmetic values in the game. Your fans act as a multiplier to sales, the more fans you have, the more copies you'll sell, capped by the total active users of the platform(s) chosen. So no, no selling ten million copies of a game for the Tapple I. Apparently, gamers in MGT2 are unrealistically wise, and won't buy the same game twice for silly reasons.
- Exclusivity will barely increase sales, and add a laughable amount of new active users to a platform. This seems to scale with age and not platform's active users, so you could have a "flop" platform get thrice its normal active users... But it would still die relatively shortly after its predetermined 'death' date.
- Special room improvements are useless at first - you don't need them until the eighties, and I can still score 98%+ in 1985 without building a graphics or sound studio just by having "way too many" employees involved in development.

There's far less mysticism about the game if you take your time and test what breaks what.

* This involves things like using the save file system to actually make the same game under (mostly) the same game conditions, several times in a row, and try different things each time to see what changes.

[B0RIS]

Originally posted by nosedigger:

EDIT: How do you price your releases, in this tactics ? I either do 19$ with colored manual, sticker and poster, or I set it to auto-price. Didn't have time to fully test which brings in what more. 19$ should be optimal price for the number of units, but I do not know if auto-price is "optimal" for profit. I'm using it in a combo, since the auto-price sells way less copies, and with 10+ printing releases at the same time, it's better to have less units to print.

Hello, just randomly dropping in to say I think your prices are WAY too low and that's why you might be struggling

My game right now, on Legendary is on 1992. I sell B+ games for 29.99 and A games for 39.99 and they do well enough to make a profit, even while selling my console at a loss.

Didnt even realize there was auto-pricing but it sounds very wrong. Even budget games I sell for 11.99 which I had to lower from the default. Perhaps you figured it out by now but if not, try rasing prices. GL