Staff ruin me.

[amphetamisty]

Whenever I get to the point of hiring staff, everything goes downhill. I'm not sure how to efficiently use staff and the whoe training thing. Any tips on how to use staff effectively would be appreciated.

Edit: Also, I struggle with medium games. Any help there would be great too :D

[Professor Hardknocks]

1. Staff, when hired, need to immediately without hesitation undergo "Staff Welcome Training" under Training Menu. Also, every time you hire staff, your "company" will make bad games for a bit, until the staffers are "used to working together". This is also true in the bigger building with 6 seats. Hiring those extra 2 really does cause a small bit of ineffeciency.

2. You want to have balanced employees. I like picking employees who are all around 200 tech/design, with highest possible research. When I train, I like to start with "Research" then I train the option that gives Design and Tech ++. I think it is called "Game Dev Gems" under G3, I don't remember the book equivilent. After these 2 sessions, I send them back to the next game.

3. Your up-front goal is a big climb to 700 Design/Tech.

Medium Games:

1. Use publishers until you get 100k fans, then make your own games. Publishers give you less money but they will automaticly sell like 20 million copies and get you some 20k-60k fans per game if you release an 8.0+ game.

I also wrote a guide for this game not too long ago that you might find helpful.

Good luck!

[EveryoneLovesPirates]

I usually hire one staff as soon as I get out of the Garage ($1M). You really need at least one, so don't put it off, but I could make it to the last office with only 1 staff if the game would let me.

I'm not sure what you're doing wrong exactly, but I found I don't have to sink a lot into training at the beginning, so if you're having trouble right away, save your reasearch points and money for something else. New staff bring down the productivity of the existing team, so give them the welcome training and do some consulting jobs (easy ones, they won't help much at first) to kill time and let their bar go up. Staff become more effective after a few games, so give them time and don't over commit.

Make sure you're hiring decent staff too. Try to get someone around your numbers and probably somewhat balanced (despite specialization later, you still need at least 300 in the other group). Try to get a lvl 3 employee with decent speed and research too (research is alawys lacking in the beginning, but doesn't directly help while making games). Don't be afraid to not hire and search again no one is decent.

If you're having review problems after getting staff, make sure your design and tech number for your games are more or less steadily improving. If they aren't (stick with the same type of game, action, sim, whatever you're good at until you can consistantly get good scores), it's probably time to start training. One of you should start focusing on design and the other on tech (specialization is good later). However, especially at the beginning, be sure to develop for a new topic every time so you get the bonus xp. Sometimes I'll release an action romance game just for the xp boost (or just trash it after development). Leveling characters that way will allow you to hold off on training for quite a while to be honest. BTW, it's ok to overwork staff on a medium game (try to spread it around so it's like 150% each), but be sure to give them vacations to recover (and anytime their bar begins to drop).

If you're just not making enough money, you probably need to get a publisher. I try to avoid them in general, but it just takes way too long to build a fan base without them. 3-4 publisher jobs is probably all you need throughout the entire game though. They really help with money too, I always make money even if I get penalized for bad reviews (though the fan hit hurts, so just do ones with low requirements at first). Also, always be developing a game unless you need to train or research until you have plenty of money. But don't develop medium games without a publisher until a the game tells you can (based on your fan level, 100k I think).

Hopefully some of that helps. If you want to be more specific about the exact problem I might be able to narrow it down, but if you do the above you should be safe. It may help just to watch someone play too. I just created a let's play series for this game as a laugh to test some recording software and making a channel. There's probably better ones out there, but I move into the office around 9:40 mins into video #3 and immediately hire. Here's a link to that episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUqmIPR1liY

[amphetamisty]

Originally posted by uofalangston:

I usually hire one staff as soon as I get out of the Garage ($1M). You really need at least one, so don't put it off, but I could make it to the last office with only 1 staff if the game would let me.

I'm not sure what you're doing wrong exactly, but I found I don't have to sink a lot into training at the beginning, so if you're having trouble right away, save your reasearch points and money for something else. New staff bring down the productivity of the existing team, so give them the welcome training and do some consulting jobs (easy ones, they won't help much at first) to kill time and let their bar go up. Staff become more effective after a few games, so give them time and don't over commit.

Make sure you're hiring decent staff too. Try to get someone around your numbers and probably somewhat balanced (despite specialization later, you still need at least 300 in the other group). Try to get a lvl 3 employee with decent speed and research too (research is alawys lacking in the beginning, but doesn't directly help while making games). Don't be afraid to not hire and search again no one is decent.

If you're having review problems after getting staff, make sure your design and tech number for your games are more or less steadily improving. If they aren't (stick with the same type of game, action, sim, whatever you're good at until you can consistantly get good scores), it's probably time to start training. One of you should start focusing on design and the other on tech (specialization is good later). However, especially at the beginning, be sure to develop for a new topic every time so you get the bonus xp. Sometimes I'll release an action romance game just for the xp boost (or just trash it after development). Leveling characters that way will allow you to hold off on training for quite a while to be honest. BTW, it's ok to overwork staff on a medium game (try to spread it around so it's like 150% each), but be sure to give them vacations to recover (and anytime their bar begins to drop).

If you're just not making enough money, you probably need to get a publisher. I try to avoid them in general, but it just takes way too long to build a fan base without them. 3-4 publisher jobs is probably all you need throughout the entire game though. They really help with money too, I always make money even if I get penalized for bad reviews (though the fan hit hurts, so just do ones with low requirements at first). Also, always be developing a game unless you need to train or research until you have plenty of money. But don't develop medium games without a publisher until a the game tells you can (based on your fan level, 100k I think).

Hopefully some of that helps. If you want to be more specific about the exact problem I might be able to narrow it down, but if you do the above you should be safe. It may help just to watch someone play too. I just created a let's play series for this game as a laugh to test some recording software and making a channel. There's probably better ones out there, but I move into the office around 9:40 mins into video #3 and immediately hire. Here's a link to that episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUqmIPR1liY

Thanks a lot. This covers all I needed :)! I'll check out your let's play later :).