what am I doing wrong? + various questions

[jack_the_beast]

Hi, I'm liking the game so far, (has too much trail and error but I can live with that), although I don't really understand how to get out of my current situation:

I'm on the third level (ps3/360 era) about 2M in the bank after a slow but steady decline from 20M, unable to release games that are gets more than 7.5 rating (but I often produce 5 ratings) that barely pay for themselves, old engine and unable to research new features as I don't generate enough RPs. I have 3 employees (1 designer specialist, 1 tech focus low level, 1 almost tech specialist), newly opened but shut down research department (the tutorial made it seemed like it would take care of research by itself).
Any advice on how to invert the trend and start making money again?
I would like to avoid looking at the charts I've seem posted in the guides sections

Also some generic questions:
-should I stick to 3-4 combinations of genre/topics (that I research very well) to produce games or make more of them?
-how assigning one employee or another to a certain task during development impacts the game?
-how engine features impact the game? should I treat them logically (eg. branching dialogues should be useless in a sport game)?
-why is there an option to "trash game" after development? what should I base this decision on?
-publisher don't seem to help a lot with sales, what should I use them to?

Thanks :)

[Sledjer]

Well this is a very late reply so its probably no longer relevant but I'll at least try and address some of the issues.

First off you have too few employees. Better to be at max employees as soon as you can afford it. Assuming you are making large games, your employees were probably all overworked.

Genre combinations: Better to stick to a few topics and specialize genre. Different topics work with different genres, pick the genres you want and go with topics that match them. If you don't want to use spreadsheets, make sure you run game reports for every game. It will give you hints.

It's only really worth it to research topics if you can research a good topics that pair with almost anything like sci-fi, fantasy, or medieval.

Assign employees to tasks that fit their stat distribution, so you want a design employee on story or dialogue and a technology one on engine or ai.

Features boost whatever part they are on, but only put enough features such that you don't see a percentage by the feature, or the percentage is very high like 95%. There is a max number of features you can put based on game size and time spent on that element

Ive never trashed a game and I don't think it makes much sense to do so.

Publishers are good for boosting the number of fans you have. Use them when you are still growing, but eventually you will grow enough they become useless. Publisher contracts aren't worth it if the contract is for a bad combo so if all possible contracts are bad combos just make a game without a contract and check afterwards to see if the list of contracts reset.

[jack_the_beast]

Originally posted by Sledjer:

Well this is a very late reply so its probably no longer relevant but I'll at least try and address some of the issues.

First off you have too few employees. Better to be at max employees as soon as you can afford it. Assuming you are making large games, your employees were probably all overworked.

Genre combinations: Better to stick to a few topics and specialize genre. Different topics work with different genres, pick the genres you want and go with topics that match them. If you don't want to use spreadsheets, make sure you run game reports for every game. It will give you hints.

It's only really worth it to research topics if you can research a good topics that pair with almost anything like sci-fi, fantasy, or medieval.

Assign employees to tasks that fit their stat distribution, so you want a design employee on story or dialogue and a technology one on engine or ai.

Features boost whatever part they are on, but only put enough features such that you don't see a percentage by the feature, or the percentage is very high like 95%. There is a max number of features you can put based on game size and time spent on that element

Ive never trashed a game and I don't think it makes much sense to do so.

Publishers are good for boosting the number of fans you have. Use them when you are still growing, but eventually you will grow enough they become useless. Publisher contracts aren't worth it if the contract is for a bad combo so if all possible contracts are bad combos just make a game without a contract and check afterwards to see if the list of contracts reset.

thank you for the reply. I was producing medium games, I'd say I was doing all of what you said but no luck. My employees were well rested and I always assigned them according to their skill. after playing some more I was just surviving being unable to produce any relevant money. then I kind of lost interest in the game as I wasn't able to do much more and starting from scratch would be too much considering the repetitive gameplay mechanics.

If you have any additional idea, please bring them forward and maybe I'll try. thanks :)

[Sledjer]

Well, I would say that as far as ratings go, there are really 3 big things to keep in mind. First, if the quality of your games stays constant, your ratings will decline. I recommend training after every game you make, unless you can't afford it or you don't have enough time to do it and start a new game before G3.

Also, you should really consider specializing your studio. For games to get top ratings, they need a good ratio of tech to design based on the genre. Action, Simulation, and Strategy games all need mostly tech, while Adventure, Casual, and RPG all need mostly design. Best to focus on mostly one or the other. This is where using the spreadsheets or doing the post-game reports comes in. Post game reports give hints at what works well, which carry over between playthroughs.

You'll eventually figure out which parts of the game don't matter depending on which types of genres you specialize in. To specialize, you should hire employees that are skilled in the parts of the game that matter for the genres you are going to make. Also, only bother researching and including in your game engine features that are for parts of the game that matter for the genres you will make.

Also, to get top ratings, you need to have complete matching with great pairings across the board for genre, topic, target audience, and console. You will get bad ratings if you make the same genre and topic combination too soon after already doing it, but there is no problem with doing the same genre as long as you switch topics. What this means in practice is that you want to pick a console to make games for, choose a genre that works well with it, and then choose a topic that matches the genre and whatever target audience uses the console.

As far as choosing a console goes, as hinted at before, all consoles have a set of genres (or only one or even none) that work well with them, as well as a target audience that works with it. If you are still at the stage where you need publishers, you generally don't get to choose console so just pick a genre/topic or pick a contract that already has one and its a good pairing. Once you can self publish, pick the top selling console unless it's bad for other reasons, though G64 isn't worth it so when just starting you should just make for PC. Some consoles are actually pretty bad even if they are best sellers, because they don't have a genre that works well with them. (some consoles only work with casual or only work with action in which case they are bad if you haven't specialized in design or tech respectively) Also mobile consoles have game size limitations so don't bother with them if you are making large or AAA games.

I recommend getting really familiar with the genres and target audience that work well with PC, because it's the only console that will never go away. There will be times that no console works well with your specialization, or it has a target audience that you don't have a good topic/genre pairing for in which case you can always use PC as a fallback. If you don't have a topic/genre pairing that works with PC from the start of the game, I recommend either restarting or researching topics that do work with it. This is also why sci-fi and fantasy are great topics. They work with most genres and target audiences.

As far as game flow goes, I recommend waiting until you have about 5 million cash before getting to the new office. If its too late for that, be very cautious and be slow about hiring until you have that. Once you get to the new office, I recommend immediately hiring all 4 employees you can. If you are going design focused, you want 2 design specialist, 1 tech specialist, and 1 balanced. If you are going tech focused, get 2 tech specialists and 1 design specialist. After hiring new employees your productivity will go way down for a little bit, so make a couple throwaway small games that will get awful ratings and sell poorly, but afterwords your new employees will be fully productive.

Then, you should research medium games and use publisher contracts for good (or at least okay) medium game combos. If all contracts are for genres you aren't specialized in or are bad combos, make small games until they reset. Eventually you'll get a notification you have enough fans to self publish medium games (100k fans IIRC), at which point you'll never do a publisher contract again. Just self publish medium games until you get the notification for large games etc. Once you are at the self publishing stage, you should mostly make sequels for great combo games you've already made, though you always want to be using a better game engine than the game you are making the sequel of. If you can't make a new game engine, just make non-sequel games. Hopefully you have enough good topics that you can make a several sequels before needing a new game engine.

[jack_the_beast]

wow thanks for the lenghty response. again it seems like i've done everything you suggested except focusing really hard on few genres. may I'll try another run in some time