Buying up all the other studios

[ChristinaSF]

So, had a fun situation happen in my most recent playrhrough----had more cash than I knew what to immediately do with, so I started buying up the other studios. I was a bit surprised to find out that nothing stops you from buying *them all* if you have the cash, but this doesn't allow me to control their operations or poach their people--it just gives me a cut of their revenue.

What would be neat is if this mechanic could be altered a bit so:

1) You can;'t own a controlling interest in more than (2-3?) studios at once;

2) When you buy a rival you have the option to take over the contracts of their employees and actors (if you decline, they go back into the hire pool).

3) Maybe even let you buy the IP (movies/tv shows) of the acquired studio or sell them off?

Just a thought! Thanks for making a great game!

[BB.Stoney]

I like where you are headed with some of this. I like that the game has this component.

I find stock markets to be a hard thing to manage in games. They are either simplistic and pointless, or very complex and sometimes annoying for that. They are hard to build so that they really work.

I am early in my playtime, and I already have two thoughts to add:

-- Stocks should probably not enter the game before the mid '40s. Just for the sake of helping with some of the balance issues. Players seeking a "long game" will appreciate it, I think. The When the devs figure out how to dry up some of the easy money in the early years, it will be unlikely you can put money into stocks anyway. And while I am thinking about it -- is there a market crash at the end of the '20s? A depression in play for the 30's?

-- If the game continues to track value for the AI companies, there should be no reason not to allow purchases of actual numbers of shares vs. some pre-determined percentage of the available shares. There should be enough in play to make it hard to just "buy up" another studio. This should be hard.


One last thought -- given the other issues in balance and smoothing out a long term perspective, the stock market is a back-burner issue. If the devs move it's start to the late '40s, or even the '50s and get back to it when they can, that should be fine.

Good thoughts, Christina. Hope they listen when the time comes.

[Crazy Cat 84]

The game does let you hire actors, directors and producers from the rival studios. But it would be cool if you could buy and sell the IP rights for stuff and was hinted at in of the in-game events were a rival studio offers to buy the rights of one of your movies to make a sequel TV series.