Historical Companies?

[aewhistory]

I’ve been following this game for ages and I have high hopes for it. It still has a way to go, but it is really getting there. I’ve had a number of thoughts but until I play more I don’t really want to say… you know the old saying about better to silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove everyone right?

Anyway, I do have one thing I’d like to share now. The game is wonderful for putting you back into the historical setting of the early computer era, but there are no historical people or orgs from the era. I think that is a miss. Perhaps that is something that mods will need to do (when there is a workshop) but isn’t it legal to reference real companies in a game like this? Even if you can’t, perhaps something that you can do is that had a quasi historical scenario where stand in companies adopt historical attributes.

Here is what I mean: have the stand in for IBM (call them HAL) enter into the computer market in the early ‘80s with a ton of money but with a piss port computer. Have Commodore (call then Admiral) sell tons of cheap computers and if you eventually implement hiring executives* and whatnot they’d be the first ones to have a rotating door (Jack Tramiel could be tough to work for, but he also inspired loyalty). You could go on from there.

I think what I’m saying is that the different competitors of the game seem to need more “personality”. I’ve only played a few hours and really just mucked around, but this seems to be a major issue for me. I hope this feedback helps.

*- this reminds me of something I hadn’t planned on mentioning. In all of the games of this nature that I have played—most of them center around software development—hiring key people is at the center of the game. This game desperately needs more human talent inputs. A good engineer can cost a lot but also make a ton of difference, things like that. (Think Shiraz Shivji joining Tramiel and coming from Commodore to work at Atari, then turning out the Atari ST in about ten months!)