What's the point of 'wasted' interest?

[Kingdark]

I don't really see the point or understand what the point of 'wasted' interest is. Isn't more features better? If I were to develop a software with everything it can support, say ten things, with other software only having six, isn't that a plus point?

If I have more features, then I'm a step ahead of the competition, aren't I? So, what's the point of this?

[nosedigger]

Simple answer - no, the more features you have, your product will not be better than competitions, or even sell more. That's why this game have Wasted interest mechanic, to steer away players from producing each product with max features.

More explained:
Features are there to add Market interest to your product, but final Market Interest is what matters, or to say that 100% you set sliders to. So all the excess Market interest generated by features is discarded as Wasted interest. If you play Texas Hold'em, you have 7 cards (5 on table +2 in your hand), but ultimately you can choose only 5 of them. That logic is applied here, you can have 100% interest in all 3 categories, but your final Market interest is how much you set slider in each of them.

Your product will be better than others if you produce it with Outstanding quality and hitting 100% of what current Market interest is. Now, I wrote a guide about Market Saturation and how it affects sales (I do not link, you can find it in Guide section), you can read it to understand better, but it boils down that the Sliders are what is affecting sales much more than features, because the more overlap you have with competition, your sales will be lower. Having optimal Market interest is not the best idea, if there are competing IPs on the market, it is better to set it differently, so you stand out from them and get more sales.

[JD_Mortal]

Think of it like this...

I'll use MS-Paint, Paint-shop Pro and Photo-Shop as examples.

MS-Paint has basic art tools. A paint brush, a bucket, a line tools some primitives and few saving options. It is great for making icons, pixel-art and a horrible logo. It is free, because no-one wanted to pay $5 for it, when the creator originally tried to sell it. Microsoft purchased it, so they could say they had an "included art program", with the OS.

Paint-shop Pro was a cheap alternative to Photo-shop. It had essential tools, a few brushes, filters, layers, transparency and many file formats it could open and edit and save as. Though the tools and formats were all limited in various ways. It sold well, but they were asking nearly as much as Photo-shop. (They were quickly sold to JASC, then to COREL?)

Then there was Photo-shop. It started out as just a photo editor, but they quickly adopted "tools" for brushes, after seeing the early success of other image-editing software. The name stayed the same, which was the programs biggest downfall and the ultimate thing that made it a bigger success. (Photo editors were useless tools. This was a photo editor on steroids, which turned into a paint program on steroids!) It is like walking into a blockbuster, vs walking into a gas-station to rent a movie. This had a million things you could do, nested all over and tools galore! (To a business, if you were going to buy a license, you wanted to get only ONE that did everything great. As opposed to 20 licenses that each had to be learned and only did a few things great and better. Great was adequate, in relation to the license costs.)

Once photo-shop became an "industry standard", they went crazy with prices and kept packing more features into the software. It was impossible to keep up with all the version updates, which ALL had to be purchased again! (Free was only for bug-fixes, and those were few and far between, because new versions were the solution to an older version "not working as expected".)

In the game, you can quickly get a sense of "market saturation". That just shows how many products are out there with those generic "feature types". (The actual feature doesn't really matter, at all.)

The idea is that your chances of a sale will potentially increase if your product "fills a void" and "avoids the holes already filled". Unfortunately, there is nothing that indicates ACTUAL "demand" for feature-types. (Honestly, the most saturated areas could be "the most in demand", which is why they got saturated. The unsaturated areas could be because those programs failed, because there was no demand for them. It is a horrible thing to base your program off, in any instance. Maybe the developer did that on purpose, or he just doesn't grasp "supply and demand". Since all you see is "saturation", which really says nothing about how good or bad your product will sell.)

The concept of using the saturation as a guide, implies that high saturation is bad and low saturation is good. So, when you apply the results, the lowest level on the chart should be setup to be your highest level in development.

The purpose of the lines, in your design page, is to indicate the gratification of implied demand and waste. If your feature type is over the line, you are increasing "wasted effort". If your feature type falls short of the line, you are not reaching "interest levels".

Once setup, as close as possible, with as little waste as possible, you can adjust the three volumes to balance the "feature levels". Any bar above the level, will be used as the "lowest" point in leveling. The other lines will try to balance, to give you the least wasted interest and most desired interest. (Again, based off "saturation", not actually based off "interest" or "demand".)

One trick you can do, to get perfection... Lower your technology levels, which also reduces the strengths of the applied feature type levels that you selected. You can always update the technology AFTER it is released. That is faster than "developing it" with that technology level in the beginning.

EG, Your 3D technology might automatically be at the "highest level", when making a new program. If it is NOT GREEN text, then it is usually too high. Higher than any expected interest. Lower it and it should change to GREEN text. Keep lowering it, and it should remain GREEN, and at some point the BLUE bar will start to shrink. (There is a BLUE bar between the + and - buttons that adjust the technology year level.) As it starts going down, it may still be GREEN text. That means that it is still desired, but not as desired as the BLUE bar, which is fuller.

As you reduce that year, your GREEN, RED and BLUE selected feature type values should also get reduced.

So, in 2010, "Security" for a feature may be 300 points and fill-up your development "interest level", way past the point of saturation. If you lower the technology level for that location where you selected that HUGE security feature... It will drop to 280 points, then 220 points, then 190 points, then 100 points... Now you will be in the technology level of about 2006, which is still GREEN text and maybe the BLUE bar only dropped down one small notch. You have just reduced your "wasted interest" and stopped before getting so low that your "interest" hasn't decreased.

Why would you WANT to add as much technology as possible?

This is a big one...

1: For YOUR internal use only. If you use THAT fully featured program, with the latest technology, to develop YOUR other programs, or programs for others... They develop FASTER and with better quality results.

2: For use as an SDK, for future releases. Since you have already included EVERYTHING in your internal version. If you made it as a "new framework" (an engine or an SDK)... Your future "public" releases will be made faster. You just don't include ALL the features. But, because YOUR internal program has ALL the features, and you are constantly updating it... The SDK framework will also have all that potential. You get something like a 30% development bonus. (I forget the actual number.)

3: To sell as an IP, when you get tired of making those types of programs, because there are better ways to make money. Sold as an IP, fully featured and fully updated, it will sell for TONS of money. (Not as much as you could potentially still make.)

Here is another tip...

If you have a good OS made, and you have setup automation to make sequels and "new products", of that type and other types... Have them make ALL the original releases EXCLUSIVE to only YOUR OS, to start. (That will boost your OS sales, as that is the only place to run your software, NOW. Wait about a year, then port to any other OS that has a lot of users, as well as any new OS that just released. Then throw a ton of money into marketing, after you port it to the new OSes. Do marketing in October, November and December. This game has a "christmas sales boost".)

Just don't waste time updating ALL your software to the latest technology. Only your most active sellers. Let the others die-off. Keep them debugged, but don't update the tech. Every time you update the tech, you introduce new bugs and rarely get "new users". Create a new version, with a newer year technology, and maybe a new feature added. Your fans will jump onto the new program, from the old one. You will also have that bonus of "new users", which you will NOT get if you just keep updating the same old program. That only comes from creating new programs.

It is worth having a marketing agent do the marketing for you. Virtually, they are spending millions advertising for you. They always seem to be spending the perfect amount and getting more fans than you can, unless you have a real skilled marketing team. (It is like they all have 3-stars in marketing and some marketing magic that we never obtain. I rarely get more than about 2000-4000 followers, marketing myself. When I let them market for me, I end-up with 5000-100,000 followers, somehow.) Maybe I am just marketing wrong. :P