Thursday, June 6, 2013
Tip #1
When starting the game, you’re thrust into the gaming world with only two employees (and they kinda stink). First off, if you’re trying to become the next Nintendo within the games 20 years then you might wanna do a contract or two at first to get some extra money otherwise just go ahead and hire 1 or 2 people with word of mouth. If you do a contract and get some extra money, hire using the magazine ad. Try to get a graphic designer and a music composer, depending on who you start out with. Now that you have a team of nerds ready to make games at your will, you can enter the gaming industry. For a good starter combo use either trivia and history or table and reversi and develop for the PC. If you didn’t hire from the get go, you will have to outsource for graphics and sound Your first game won’t get great reviews but people will always buy it. If you hired people from the get go, you probaly unlocked some extra genres and types to play around with. Later on, the game will teach you about research data and gamedex and the game awards.
Tip #2
Not having a lot of genres to choose from at the start of the game is hard and frustrating. That’s why Kairosoft lets us unlock more, mainly from training your workers. You get more genres from training workers. The combinations to think about is are Job Title (i.e. Coder), Level, and the Training Method (i.e. Reading). This is always great to know and to have for ANY starter or veteran of this game.
Tip #3
I would definitely recommend hiring some staff right at the beginning and getting a writer and a coder. Once you these staff, start doing some contract work for pretty much the first year. It seems weird, but doing the contract work gets you valuable research points. From there, you’ll want to level up your writer to level 5 and your coder to level 4. Once you do this, then train your writer in reading. This should unlock the RPG, Simulation, Romance and Fantasy genres and types. This already gives you two amazing combinations (RPG + Fantasy and Simulation + Fantasy) to work with, and the extra money you get from contracts should allow you start making Budget+ games, which increases the quality and speed at which you makes games (ALWAYS develop using Budget+ if you can). Start off developing for the PC, and keep developing for the PC until the Game Kidd comes out, then switch to that. That should cover you until you reach the second office, at which point you should have enough money to figure out the rest on your own.
The best way to improve your sales (and your chances at GOTY) is to release your games at the same time as either Gamedex or Christmas (M12) to get a massive boost in sales. To release around Gamedex, start developing your game around M3 W4 and for Christmas, start around M9 W2 (assuming you are developing using Budget +). You want to finish your games in M6 W4 and M11 W4 respectively, as your game will release the following week, and will coincide with the highest selling seasons.
One of the most commonly overlooked stats on staff is their stamina. Stamina determines how long a staff member will work before they go home. It also has a direct effect on how much training you can give them before they go home and recouperate. A staff member can have maximum stats, but if they can only work for 2 weeks before they go home, then they are not of much use. The special characters have the highest stamina bars out of all the staff you can hire, and prove to be invaluable as they can work for longer before tiring out.
