Game dev tycoon big games. Game Dev Tycoon: bad good simulator

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

Genre: economic simulator.

Platform: MAC, RS.

Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux.

Controls: mouse and keyboard.

I'm sure many of those present here love games. Some of these people would like to create their own, but due to a number of reasons, be it lack of skills, knowledge, or simply time, they could not do it. Economic indie developer simulator computer games Game Dev Tycoon from the Greenheart Games studio allows us to be a game maker at least a little.

By the way, the developers fought against piracy in their game. A version of the game with minor changes to the code was published on the Internet. Thanks to these changes, at some point our studio itself became a victim of piracy and the money ran out very quickly, which led to Game Overy.

Start.

We begin our journey as a game maker in a small garage with 70K money. With due diligence, you can increase your money and move from the garage to a spacious office.

After we have come up with the name of the player and the name of our company, we can begin. The very first thing we are allowed to do is create our first game.

Game development.

After the player has decided on the game genre from the five proposed ones: action, adventure, RPG, simulator and strategy, and has chosen the theme of the future project from several open ones, the development itself begins. it has 3 stages where we need to adjust the sliders depending on what we want to get. If the player has an idea about games and what is important in a particular genre, setting the sliders correctly will not be difficult.

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

When all 3 stages are completed, all that remains is to wait a little longer for the bugs to be eliminated. Nobody likes bugs, not even virtual players of our creations.

When everything is ready, we can release or delete the game, give or change the name.

After waiting a little time, our creation is rated. The line between good scores and terrible ones is very thin, even with the right sliders it is possible to create a terrible game

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

Research

The second thing we will be able to do in the game is conduct research. They are needed to discover new game themes, the ability to make games on not one, but three platforms, and improve your engine. YES YES you can create your own game engine and sell or rent it over time.

After creating several games, a journalist suddenly visits us and asks us to give an interview about the game being developed. A journalist can also ask what is more important in a game of this theme and genre. Some time after the interview, the media will report about our game, plans, etc., and after this moment the “Hype” counter appears. It shows how much people are waiting for our next masterpiece. After the necessary research, we have the opportunity to raise the level of excitement ourselves by investing in various types of advertising, from small investments in magazine advertising to large advertising campaigns.

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

As we progress through the game further, the player begins to be invited to exhibitions, where, depending on the money paid, we will be given small, medium and large stands. Such exhibitions are a great way to build excitement for an upcoming game. Just like with marketing, after the necessary research, the player will be able to create their own exhibitions.

Development

By creating successful projects, the player has the opportunity to move to a spacious office and hire the first employees. From now on, our character and hired workers can be trained for research points. It is up to the player to decide whether to turn them into design specialists or technical masters. Research points are earned during game development, contract work, and engine creation.

Fans, publishers and money

Well, the player and employees are trained and all the sliders are placed correctly, but sales are not high. Fans play a big role here. In general, they appear immediately after the release of the very first game, but we understand their meaning later, more fans -> more potential buyers, more buyers -> more profits. But what to do if there are few fans and you want money? This is where publishers come to the rescue.

Having set some conditions, publishers give money for the development of the game, take it away most revenue, but also selling a game with the help of a publisher is 10 times more than independent work without a publisher. But if certain conditions are not met, the publisher may take some of the money from you in the form of a fine.

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

We have to resort to the help of a publisher until our small company gets stronger and gains a sufficient number of fans and earns a lot of money. But what to do if the money runs out and new ones will not be earned soon. The first time the player has a negative balance, the toy makes concessions and the bank gives us a certain loan. The bank can give a loan several times, but at one not very pleasant moment this does not happen and the game ends. The lack of opportunity to take out a loan whenever you want and for any amount is a little upsetting, but if you go through it correctly, you may never encounter such a situation.

By the way, regarding the conditions from the publisher, there can be 6 of them: platform, genre, game theme, target audience, game size and minimum rating. By the way, the fine from the publisher will depend on the minimum rating that you receive after creating a custom game. There may be no conditions other than a minimum score to give the player more freedom to be creative.

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

New opportunities

Here the player is exploring new opportunities, releasing games, advertising himself at exhibitions and not only in general finding new opportunities where to spend his hard-earned money. And if a couple of conditions are met, we are given two more money eaters: a technical laboratory and a research laboratory. If everything is clear with the second, research is new and useful, then in the first the player can create his own console. But you should approach this business with a very thick wallet, since creating a console will eat up our savings and not choke, but if the console is created and sold, if the player stimulates its sales by releasing exclusive games, then all costs will be fully repaid

Review of the game "Game Dev Tycoon"

Another opportunity offered by the game is creating your own online masterpiece. The player himself can remove such games from sale, unlike offline games. Up to a certain point, the income from an MMO exceeds the costs of its maintenance and profits flow like a stream into our hands, but then the moment comes and it becomes unprofitable to maintain such a monster, and it eats more and more money. Along with closing the project, the player can create an addition that will allow him to earn a little more income from our MMO.

Conclusion

Wow, we've reached the conclusion. Summarizing all of the above, we have the opportunity to create games that are analogues of existing masterpieces, and we can at least create here something that many are looking forward to with great impatience. About this game You can tell more and more, but let the players themselves find everything that is not described in the review. Unfortunately, this toy cannot last more than a couple of evenings due to the monotony of what happens in the last stages of the game, and even if the game is successfully completed, repeating your success in the second or third playthrough is not as interesting as discovering everything new for the first time.

What awaits the player?

Game Dev Tycoon is one of the simulators made with high quality and at a high level. The main task for the player is to create his own game in order to ultimately become a leader in the gaming business. As expected, you will start creating from a small garage in the distant 80s, but you will not have a lot of money, so you will have to save on lunches and, in parallel with learning the art of game design, you will also need to make the room you rented cozy. Now it will be necessary to master new technologies, train new workers and develop the most popular games.

Successful completion

If you can’t get good reviews, are constantly going bankrupt and can’t correct your mistakes, then let’s look at the walkthrough in more detail:

1. If you haven't made your own custom engine yet, it's best to use features like Basic Sound and 2D Graphics V1.
2. First, try developing a game in the Sports Action genre. Set the sliders for stage 1, 2, and 3 as follows - 100/50/0, 0/50/100, 0/100/50.
3. Now start developing the genre Military strategy with the sliders installed at the marks indicated above.
4. If everything is done properly, then you already have enough money to start developing your own engine (custom) and approximately 100,000 in-game currency for expenses. After creating the engine, include 2D graphics V2 into it.
5. After such manipulations, you should still have enough points left to start exploring the Racing genre.
6. Now you will use only 2D graphics V2 and forget about all other programs, including basic sound.
7. When developing Racing and Space simulators, leave the sliders in their previous positions.
8. Proceed with Fantasy research, and then with subsequent development (the sliders have not changed).
9. Now is the time to move on to developing the RPG genre and set the sliders to 0/100/100, 100/100/50 and 100/100/100 respectively. It will be possible to produce one game after another - medieval RPG or fantasy - but you should never release the same theme back to back. If you want variety, try creating Adventures, but keep in mind that this topic is more difficult due to the d/t balance. You won't have to do any more research in the garage.
10. You can safely go to the office if you have V1 3D graphics available for development, as well as at least 2,000,000 in your account (if the game only recently went on sale, then 1,500,000 is possible).
11. Now is the time to start managing personnel and train yourself to “make me think”.
12. Hire 4 workers at once, preferably in quick succession. If possible, choose a candidate who has a low level of low Design/Technology, as well as more research and less speed.

Start by developing one game from each existing genre, this will give you access to Action and multi-genre games - this topic is considered the most difficult to properly balance. Do this before the balance starts working and you will receive > 30 D+T points.

Replay gaming history. Create best selling games. Research new technologies. Become the leader of the market and gain worldwide fans.

Game Dev Tycoon is a game developer simulator from Greenheart Games, which consists of just two people, two brothers, Patrick and Daniel Klug. At first they planned to make the game for iOS, then they decided to make it for Windows (specifically for the Windiws Store and Win8, mysterious people).

I’m not a big fan or connoisseur of simulators, I haven’t played and don’t want to try all sorts of Football Manager and other dubious sims, the most I can do is 24 hours in SimCity. I came across Game Dev Tycoon thanks to a sale on Steam, I had never even heard of it before. The choice was between GDT and Papers, Please, both indie and both $4. I downloaded the pirates and after half an hour of playing I decided to take the first one.At the moment I've played about 20 hours, and most likely I won't spend more than 24 hours in it.

Short description:

Our company begins its journey somewhere in the 80s, in a garage. The game cycle lasts 35 years, during which you need to lead your company to success and prosperity. During this time, new ones will enter the market gaming platforms, such as Gameling by Ninvento and Playsystem by Vonny. At the end of the 35th year, the game will count your merits and give the final score. After this, you can continue to play, but then the in-game world stops developing and no new platforms will appear. In addition to creating the game itself, you can and should conduct research, for example, on new themes for games, or new technical bells and whistles for your engine (which you then create yourself). As you develop, you will be able to hire employees, train them and, in the future, give them specialization.

Creating a game consists of 3 stages: 1) Creating a concept. You choose the setting of the game (space, fantasy, military, etc.), the target audience (if you have already researched it), the genre (action, RPG, etc.), the platforms on which the game will be released and the engine with which you will create it. 2) Selecting the “graphics” version from those available in your engine. 3) Actually, the creation of the game, which, in turn, is represented by three more stages of moving sliders and installing workers in directions.

Now, actually, about what’s good about this game. And, as it turned out, there is not so much of it.

Since this is a game development simulator, it will provide an understanding of the basics of development and the problems that developers face. You will be fined if you do not achieve the required average rating from the press (if you are working with a publisher). At a minimum, you will understand why a multi-platform is more profitable than an exclusive one. In addition, the developers have a sense of humor, just look at the names of companies and platforms (Vonny - 10/10). There are also a dozen humorous achievements, for example, while working in the garage, calling your game “Pong” or developing a game within a game.

What's wrong with this game.

For starters, the engine. Throughout the game, starting from a small garage and ending with a huge office, we must create our own engine. We can license our engine to other companies (for a mere pittance), but we cannot use someone else’s ourselves. Besides, old version You can’t upgrade, you can only make a completely new one. In addition, we have a large list of features for the engine, but not even brief description what they do and where to use them. How is multiplayer different from online in my action game? Why, for example, Advanced physics can be turned on with basic physics, and without (how can advanced physics exist without basic physics.)? And at the same time - Realistic body language can do without Simple And Advanced. One might think that the advanced version includes the previous one, but physics hints that something else is at work here. Further, despite the fact that the developers decided to teach pirates a lesson and then cried about the fact that only 6.5% of all players bought their game, we cannot in any way protect ourselves from piracy in the game. Moreover, it simply does not exist. The only place you can hear about him is pirated version games.

The press is also upsetting. Throughout our career, our games will be reviewed by as many as 4 publications. My company is now in its 90th year, games make billions, but they are covered by the same four magazines. At the same time, our earnings and game sales directly depend on press ratings. Despite high technology and thoughtful design, if, in the opinion of the game, the genre does not fit well with the setting, poor ratings and failure of sales are guaranteed. In addition, the press gives incredible important information, which will help make the game better. Actually no, journalists may say a few words of praise/derogation and something obvious about the combination of genre with platform or praise for focusing on a certain aspect. Considering that this is practically the only source of feedback (after all, there is no concept of community here), it is very difficult to understand how to make the game better.

As our company grows, we gain fans, which is cool. But something suspicious is happening here too. Fans are gaining very slowly, a game that sold 120k (think about this figure) copies brought us 600k fans. That is 0.5%. This is with an average rating of 10/10 and huge hype at the release of the game, and with negative ratings we lose up to 200+% of fans from the number of copies sold. There is also an exhibition where we rent a booth, or we can organize our own “Blizzcon” (we can even combine it). The number of visitors is growing, apparently, at the same rate as the number of fans. Either the formula for calculating the increase in exhibition visitors does not include the number of company fans, or at some point some modifier appears, but in the end, when we have a hundred thousand fans, the exhibition can gain a million visitors, but now I have 14k fans , and the exhibition is visited by 4k. And another interesting thing is that the number of visitors is the same for our personal exhibition and for the general one.

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Speaking of formulas, some people got really confused and wrote a huge succes guide, which describes in detail how to break the system and deliberately lower the quality of the game, for a measured increase in the overall score. Another guide is simpler and shows the ratio of platforms to audience, genres to platform, etc. (by the way, the game believes that adventure games will not be held in high esteem on the PlayStation 5).

Continuing the topic of formulas and calculations, it is worth remembering the in-game economy. Let's start with the fact that we sell indie games at a normal price of 7 bucks. The whole game. But the absence of inflation is normal, although the website says that it is business simulation game. Another thing is selling AAA games for $18 (on any platform) and the inability to regulate the price. In addition, if we release the game with a publisher, we will get more less money, for example, 0.85 cents per copy (~for medium or great game For some reason, publishers don’t order AAA projects. At all.). And now it’s worth remembering glorious MMO who are in this game is totally broken. You see, MMOs in this simulator cannot be monetized. No way at all. We just sell copies (like ArenaNet and NCsoft with Guild Wars 2) and pay for its maintenance. Obviously, as sales increase, the cost of maintenance also increases, because all customers play our game indefinitely and in the end the game still sells 100k copies a week, 100k people play it, but the maintenance costs more than we make profit. According to the logic of the developers, in order to maintain profits we must release Expansion Packs, but the fact is that the minimum budget for an AAA game is 20+k dollars, and an MMO can cost as much as 70 (not counting marketing costs). But the most interesting thing is yet to come - the console in this wonderful world costs $47 (2.5 times more expensive than games for her), and 12 million consoles = 22% of the entire market. I won’t voice the ridiculous amounts that our digital distribution platform and licensing of the engine to other companies brings us (which we don’t have; we have no competitors in the game).

By the way, these same AAA games are made by a team of 7 (seven) people. Even MMOs with a budget of under 70k.

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Bottom line

Perhaps the developers themselves made a slight mistake in combining the setting with the genre, because at least game industry and to some extent about money (any industry- about money), but to a large extent also about “art”, and simulating people’s reaction to some combination of genres or the ratio of gameplay to story is perhaps almost impossible. As a result we have best simulator game development, simply because it is the only one (game dev story from mobile devices does not count), but very, very unrealistic. I understand that I’m now scolding an indie studio of two people, but I didn’t expect a GTA about game development from them, I expected at least a good one business simulation game, but got something more like a casual game on the phone. Verdict: It’s worth getting it at a 50-75% discount on sale if the topic is interesting and there’s nothing else to buy.

While creating quality game there are many factors to consider. This article will guide you on how to achieve this.

Typically, the goal of game development is to achieve a high score (preferably 9.5+). However, during development, your actions do not directly affect this score, but rather your game score. The game score (a hidden value that you won't see. Don't confuse it with so-called game reviews) consists of the sum of Design and Technology divided by the game size modifier (this compensates for the fact that a larger game takes longer to develop and accumulates more points) and multiplied by several quality modifiers. All these modifiers, as a rule, range from 0.6 to 1. Thus, reducing at least one factor reduces the total game score very significantly. The game score does not directly affect the game score, but is compared with the previous game score to calculate the game score (details in the next paragraph).

You can influence the amount of Design and Technology points outside of game development by exploring new areas (allowing your employees to gain more points by leading developments in those areas) and training employees or hiring new ones (this will increase their contribution to the common cause) while how you can influence all the quality modifiers during game development. Good quality ≠ Good review!
First, you need to understand that a well-made game does not guarantee a good review (review score - also a table with reviews of publications).

In this game you compete exclusively with yourself, i.e. with your previous records (except at the very beginning of the game, while you are competing with game presets (base game records)). Your game score is compared to your best game score (allowing for an increase of about 10%-20%), and this is your final game review (aka "review score") (before the review score changes slightly at random). Therefore, in order to get a good review, you need to slightly increase your previous game score.

This is VERY IMPORTANT to understand:

To obtain good reviews ONCE, all you have to do is keep playing and no matter what you do, you will eventually get a game rating of 9.5+.

In order to get good reviews every time, you must design games to consistently improve them, but not make them perfect. Each new one needs to be made a little better than the previous one.

Why should you care about creating high-quality games then? Then, it’s easier to make a high-quality game (with maximum quality checks) than to make low-quality games that are equally lousy (due to comparing the next game with the previous one, making something worse or better is not the best solution - editor’s note)

For example, in order to get the game best quality Based on working with the sliders, you should never go below 20% during development (~3-6 per genre), never go above 20% (0-3 per genre), and go above 40% at least twice (~3-6 in genre).

However, in order to make a game of worse quality, you need to do the opposite, set less than 20% to certain topics (~3-6 per genre), more than 20% to certain topics (~0-3 per genre). So if you are aiming for the best quality, you have 60% freedom (slider value 60% of 100%, others not) in 2 sliders, 80% in ~1-4 sliders, 20% in ~0-3 sliders and 100% freedom in the remaining ~0-6 sliders, and if you go for the worst quality, you have 20% freedom in ~3-6 sliders, 80% freedom in ~0-3 sliders and 100% freedom in the remaining 0-6 sliders. So you have 500%-800% (of the total 900%) freedom in the first case and 360%-660% in the second case. So if you stick to the "best quality" rules, you have more creative freedom than if you stick to the "worst quality" rules.

For those who did not understand anything from the two paragraphs above, I will explain. Each game has three stages of development where you move the sliders up/down. At each stage, it is IMPORTANT to set the sliders in the correct percentage, because... this is a future modifier for receiving a GOOD REVIEW. So, for example, Action takes priority in development time over such parameters as Engine and Gameplay (and the engine is the most important of them). The History/Quests parameter here has a “negative” modifier. Thus, the time devoted to the Engine and Gameplay is set high (100 percent for the Engine, which has a modifier of 1, and 80% for Gameplay, since it has a modifier of 0.9), and 0% is set for Stories/Quests (since the modifier is 0.7 ). And we see from the bottom of the progress bar that we spend more than 40% of the time on the engine and gameplay, and less than 20% on History/Quests - this is exactly what is said in the paragraphs above: A “bad” modifier has little time for development, and “good” (with a coefficient >= 0.9) more than 40% (specifically by the progress bar, not by the sliders).

Even more radical rules in the genre/theme combination. There are great combos (with a quality modifier of one), and there are strange combos (with a minimum quality penalty of 0.6). So if you need to get a weird combo, you'll be very limited in what genre/theme you should choose (let alone making multi-genre games). However, if you are focused on creating Great Combinations, you have more freedom.

For example, Dungeon, Airplane, Fantasy and many other themes can create not only one worst Strange Combo (look at the table with + and -, there are only 2 minuses), but also 4 Great Combos (4 pluses ). In general, there are a lot of topics that give more Weird Combos than Great Combos (Game Dev, Superheroes with three Weird to one Great, Romance, Startups, Hospital and Surgery with a score of 2 to 1), then how most of them give more Great than Weird combos.

So this page will not help you in developing a game that will get good game review(the same page with four numbers from gaming magazines/publications). She will tell you how to make better games, which in turn will help you get good reviews. If you're developing games of consistent quality (Great Combos, Tech/Design balance, no bugs), your game score will be based almost entirely on the sum of the Design/Tech scores you see during development (the orange and blue balls on top), and, this way, it will be easier for you to judge how well you did (before you see the review). Errors
Above all, avoid the following things: Developing two games in a row with the exact same theme/genre/second genre.
Development of a sequel or add-on (expansion) less than 40 weeks after the release of the previous version.
Development of a sequel using the same engine (does not apply to addons).
Developing a large game without using 2D graphics V4 (version 4) or higher/3D graphics V3 (version 3) or higher.
Developing a AAA game without using 3D graphics V5 or higher
Developing an AAA game without appointing at least three specialists in relevant fields considered important to the genre.
As stated above, game quality is calculated as a combination of various modifiers, each of which is applied as a multiplier to the sum of Design and Technology. If we leave aside those mentioned above, then the following modifiers remain that affect the quality of your games:

Technology/Design
Sliders offset (percentage of time)
Genre/Theme Combinations
Trends (trend)
Errors (Bugs)
Thus, to ensure that the game is created High Quality(except for trend, which is somewhat of a random modifier), during development you should:

Get the correct final score balance between Design and Technology
Select a great combo of genre and theme
Choose a platform that matches your genre (or both genres in the case of a multi-genre game)
Identify and remove errors (bugs).
The game creation process can be divided into two main parts: pre-production and development. Preparation for production.
During pre-production, when major game issues are being resolved, the following options are available:

Name of the game
Size. It affects the amount of time spent on development and its cost. It's hard for small games to score the average 10 points.
The target audience
Subject. General theme of the game (Military, Fantasy, Science Fiction, etc.)
Genre
Platform.
Game engine.
The choice of genre is the most important in the preparation process. Genre influences most of the decisions that will be made during the development process. Theme/Genre Combinations
An important part of pre-production is choosing a theme and genre. Combining them can result in either a Great Combo or a Strange Combo.

Multi-genre combination
The only way to get a Great Combo for multi-genre games is to use two genres, each of which will receive a "Great Combo" according to the theme. This means that a theme like Surgery cannot get a “Great Combo” in multi-genre games (see table above, surgery only has one Great Combo combination).

Genre/Platform Combination
Each genre has its own popularity on each platform. Your choice of genre in relation to platform has little impact on game reviews. It has a greater impact on game sales. The higher the selected platform's sales modifier, the more you will earn.

This table is based on original data. (++) - Excellent fit, (+) - Normal fit, (-) - Avoid these combinations.

Combinations of platform and target audience.
You will receive messages from time to time about the suitability/non-suitability of the target audience and the selected platform. Your audience choice has a minor impact on Game Reviews. First of all, it affects the number of sales of your game. The higher the sales modifier of a given platform, the more you will earn from this audience.

Based on the original game data.

Fits good

Great fit

Avoid such combinations

Table on PC changed to latest version games and written according to the notes from there.