what am i supposed to do?

[kai]

i create my first software and get 20 million in profits, so i spend this all on a new big office and more employees. then i create my third software which gets me 140 million in profits. what now? what am i supposed to use all this money on? i won i am a multi millionare :d see you later guys im buying a mansion and selling the company

but seriosley. i run out of steam as soon as i get rich, like whats the point anymore, why would i need more money than this, what else is there to do?

[CASTEL]

Play on the hardest difficulty?

Even when you get rich, you can play to expand your company. Try to be the first in the 3D business. Start a game franchise. Work on the best damn OS the world has ever seen. Set up multiple automated teams. Build an amazing looking office. etc

[LatN's Strategy]

What difficulty and what year; challenge yourself; Easy, Medium, Hard and Impossible.
You looking for a CHALLENGE; here...

2021 Software Inc Challenge...
Year: 1980
Difficulty: Impossible
Days per Month: 1
No Loans, No Selling Stocks!
Auto Role All Hires Including The Founder
No Hires Until 4Stars Business Reputation; You can hire only Staff
Max Employees Limit 400
Every development must be on PM at the end!
Employees with stars in secondary skill can only be assigned to secondary Skill
End Game = 2Bil

Contact me when you reach it in maybe 2021!🥇

[soldyne]

I see what the OP is saying. the challenge is not the point. even on impossible, once you get hundreds of millions there seems to be little point in proceeding.
sure, you could buy out the competition, but what does that do? just generate more money?
sure you could design the best selling OS, but, what does that do? just generate more money?
Sure you could have 400 automated employees, but, what do they do? just generate more money?
the problem is that games that focus on business (most tycoon games) have no other motivation beyond the making of money which you can usually do within an hour or so of game play.

a good example of a tycoon game that minimizes money is Megaquarium. money is tight in the beginning, but, mid game the focus is on research and late game the focus is on maintaining prestige. Megaquarium is a tycoon game but money is not the focus.

survival games are similar. most of them have no end goal and assume that "survival" is the goal of the game. but, lasting 1 day is technically "survival" so you have technically won after an hour of play if survival is the goal.

"survival" and "profit" are not goals, they are a means to a goal. so the real question for Software Inc. is; what is the goal that my profits are trying to help me achieve?

[Gopher]

even on the hardest difficulty you run into the same issues. Once you make your first profit, as long as you don't overspend you will continue to grow exponentially. We really need more to spend our profits on other than making more money. I'm sure he has more planned for the gameplay aspects so I wouldn't worry too much yet.

It's hard to balance money sinks. Look at lawsuits for example, when those hit they would easily bankrupt you at first until they were balanced.

[Ginger]

As Sweaty Gopher says, the problem isn't solved by increasing difficulty, because all that does is defer the point when you've "made it" back maybe an hour or two of game play, but once past that point, the game is done. I personally get most joy out of this game by starting again, replaying the part of the game that's challenging, and getting bored once a) millions roll in, b) all the other companies in the game bizarre run out of money, and c) even office designing (one of the best things about this game) becomes static with no further changes required.

What the game needs is a rework to spread difficulty throughout the lifetime of the player's experience. Just spit balling: -

1) Reduce rewards so it's hard to get to a point where one has "made it", so the mid to late game continues to be challenging (market forces in the difficulty settings somewhat address this, but once you've made it, you're done)

2) Introducing much more complexity as a company grows, e.g. ramping up submarket demands and thus demanding larger team sizes, or more cooporation between teams

3) Increasing costs to offset bloated income. Taxes seen very low. And what about staff costs? I mean something better than just artificially increasing staff salary - what about adding requirements for additional staff roles? Where are the admins, finance people, or management hierarchy (outside of project management)? Why does my 200 staff company have one IT guy who can look after 100s of servers? I'm a senior cloud engineer IRL, and I can tell you one person can't do that! Less than half of the company I work for are developers, and we're a large US software house. I can appreciate this game is not a business simulator as such, but having the mid to late game bring in complexity of running a large business might alleviate the reducing level of challenge.

[Gopher]

Originally posted by Ginger:

As Sweaty Gopher says, the problem isn't solved by increasing difficulty, because all that does is defer the point when you've "made it" back maybe an hour or two of game play, but once past that point, the game is done. I personally get most joy out of this game by starting again, replaying the part of the game that's challenging, and getting bored once a) millions roll in, b) all the other companies in the game bizarre run out of money, and c) even office designing (one of the best things about this game) becomes static with no further changes required.

What the game needs is a rework to spread difficulty throughout the lifetime of the player's experience. Just spit balling: -

1) Reduce rewards so it's hard to get to a point where one has "made it", so the mid to late game continues to be challenging (market forces in the difficulty settings somewhat address this, but once you've made it, you're done)

2) Introducing much more complexity as a company grows, e.g. ramping up submarket demands and thus demanding larger team sizes, or more cooporation between teams

3) Increasing costs to offset bloated income. Taxes seen very low. And what about staff costs? I mean something better than just artificially increasing staff salary - what about adding requirements for additional staff roles? Where are the admins, finance people, or management hierarchy (outside of project management)? Why does my 200 staff company have one IT guy who can look after 100s of servers? I'm a senior cloud engineer IRL, and I can tell you one person can't do that! Less than half of the company I work for are developers, and we're a large US software house. I can appreciate this game is not a business simulator as such, but having the mid to late game bring in complexity of running a large business might alleviate the reducing level of challenge.

Exactly! We need project managers to manage the leads and VP's to manage the project managers/team set up. You would need an HR department that handles issues with employees, etc. The lead doesn't handle these things, the lead in real life just focuses on technical aspects usually the project manager is more the HR manager for the team.

I just recently landed my first software engineering job last august and it's bizarre.

So they hire me in August, pay me until February, then I finally started my sprint this month so they paid me for 6-7 months to do nothing. My friend still hasn't started a sprint she started same time lol...

[Ginger]

Originally posted by Sweaty Gopher:

So they hire me in August, pay me until February, then I finally started my sprint this month so they paid me for 6-7 months to do nothing. My friend still hasn't started a sprint she started same time lol...

Did zzzzs drift up from your head like they do in Software Inc? :D