The Not Very Definitive Game Guide, My Random Bits Of Advice...

Don't read if you want to figure this stuff out all on your own.

Really, I mean that, the tips gathered below are from my 3 failures and 1 success I've had playing the game so far. If you want the fun of figuring out that stuff on your own--don't read this. If you are frustrated and need help, this is the place to be. Every game of GB2 I have played so far has been in a diary--so you can read about the games from which I gathered these gleaming gems of gamebiz insight.

Stats and Comments based on standard settings: normal difficulty and average starting cash.

Debunking the Myths:

Myth: I need to start an engine immediately
Truth: You won't have anything productive to do with the engine if you make one immediately.

A common (I assume--other comments of the board seem to indicate this) mistake is to immediately start coding an engine. In fact, all three of my failed games took this approach. Then, I read another thread where someone (sorry-I can't remember but thanks a lot whoever it was) said that they had their character study for awhile before doing anything.

Anyway, the correct approach, it seems, is to have yourself study PLUS hire 4 other cheap employees to fill your office space. You can get incredible value for the $2100-$3000 a month programmers. What you do is you look at their willingness to study. If it is at average for several categories, then hire then, even if they are rated all 1's now. If you want to get one pricer (like $10000 a month) employee--get one skilled in grafix or design. Programming is quickest of skills to train I think. (That may be wrong) POTENTIAL is more important than current ability--and think cheap.

Once you get your crop of employees have them train consistently in areas where they are average in studying. Keep in mind that you only one person good in leadership at beginning, so don't waste time studying this skill. Hardware is also useless at this point, so focus on the program/design/grafix skills.

Another tip for this part of the game: offer lots of study hours to people you are hiring. All they will be doing in 1980 is studying anyway, and then you don't have to pay extra salary or perks. This way, you get a super-cheap way to get full-time studiers.

Within a year or year and a half, you can get 3-3-3 people or 5-2-2 people making $3000 a month. That will save you countless cash later on--when you'd be paying 4 times that to hire people. Your biggest cost at this point in the game is employees--don't overpay for them.

Myth: Your first engine should be for Atari 2800.
Truth: Study first, get high quality programmers, and then make an engine for a new system.

The Atari 2800 gets overwhelmed by really good competing engines really fast. Instead, develop your first engine for something like Spectrum. You will have an unopposed engine for many weeks if you start your Spectrum engine right when it becomes available.

Myth: I'm going to be an [insert genre name here] company.
Truth: You will make action or adventure games for several years at beginning or you will go broke.

I was a victim of this one. I tried to start out with simulation and bombed. You need to make action games cause they sell immediately and you can get engine selling business. You claim that is not profitable--that is another myth I will address later...

Myth: Not buying tools is an option.
Truth: Your engine will be a waste of time then.

It sounds cool in theory to develop without tools--just make it on the cheap. But you get what you pay for--in this case: nothing! You will barely get mediocre deals with a 75 engine and you will have to upgrade quickly to stay competitive. Also, you give your already difficult to produce games little chance when they are competing against games made on a 100 engine.

You need at least an 80 engine--hopefully better--and you need tools for that. Don't be stingy--buy tools.

Myth: Engine Selling Makes Little or No Money
Truth: Do It Right and it Will Fuel Your Company

Engine selling is not a good long-term way to make money. It is not even a good stopgap measure to make money if you don't follow these tips:

1. Build an office on week 1 of 1980! Do it! Do it! For engine selling to work well, this is a must.
2. Once--and not before office is complete--hire as many under $3000 a month salary employees as you can. Why?
3. Never, ever, ever waste good employees on support of other companies games. Do you want 5% of their stuff or 100% of yours (well 92% assuming you use good music.) Instead, send them some useless $2200 a month person. Won't help them, but won't cost you much either.
4. Don't agree to 78 weeks of support either. Instead, reduce the money accepted and weeks of support offered. Assuming you made an action engine for a major platform, there will be countless mediocre opportunities available. What you do is offer 26 weeks of support in return for at least $40000--usually you get about $60000. You then send a $3000 a month employee ($2200 plus some extras to get them to sign) to work the 26 weeks. You get $60000-($3000 x 6.5 months labour.) End result: Profit of $38000. You don't get a percentage of sales--but a 5% cut of a mediocre game isn't worth much anyway. Remember, use non-skilled employees to do the service though--don't waste a skilled $6000 a month on helping another company.

When you build the office, you can then have 10 or so of these $38000 per 26 weeks profit contracts going at once and so you will be collecting on average $38000 in profit every 2.6 weeks. This is enough--if you used the cheap employees trained with skills approach--to keep the company from losing money while you develop your first game with the new engine.

Myth: My first game needs to release quickly to get cash.
Truth: Once you get the engine selling going right, you have a lot of time to make the first game.

The way I started playing, I would always end up in a race against time to get the game out before I went bankrupt. This will cause corners to be cut and for a shoddy (3/10) game to come out that no one buys anyway.

Instead, get one person good at programming (Programming seems to aid engine upgrade process speed.) (Take them off your game whenever your engine starts getting old and have them revitalize your engine. (Upgrading engine will not improve past initial rating--just bring it back to where it was when it was new.) Keeping a modern engine is good for both game rating and engine sales. Engine sales are the thing giving you the time to make a good game.

Even with well-studied employees, realisticly, think of about a year to make your first game. If it takes longer, let it, a (7/10) or higher game is immensely valuable. Sequels are a HUGE part of this game. Once your first game gets a fanbase, then you will be able to release shoddier and more quickly made sequels that still sell great.

The first game will make or break your company. Spend the time, and make it a good game.

Myth: Release the game when it is ready.
Truth: Pay for the analysis report. Even if you are deep in debt, hold the game until a sales burst (Christmas time is best.)

You can get literally 3x sales for your game if you release at proper time. You want your first game to be a blockbuster. If your first game flops, then a sequel is useless and you are at least a year away from a decent source of income (engine-selling only keeps you going for so long.)

Myth: After the first game, immediately make a sequel or new game.
Truth: No, No, No

Instead, make a new engine. And don't make an apple II one. Make an action engine for a new system such as C64 or whatever else is new. Once again--key to engine selling is being better than competitors. If your engine exists before competitors arrive, you get easy sales for awhile. Don't wait for a platform to start selling, instead make the engine right after the announcement of new platform so you get the initial edge. By doing this, you will be able to phase out the old engine and start selling this one.

*Now (AFTER) the creation of the new engine--then start the sequel. Assuming your first game got a lot of sales, it should have a loyal fanbase. Now, you create the 2nd game of the series for BOTH platforms and use lower standards. Sequels are easier to produce, so instead of 100 or so for the categories, instead 60 or 70 should work. Once you get a fanbase for a series, you can really spend a lot less on the new games.

Once the sequel is ready for release, then again wait for the right moment. Sell them both and if they got a (6/10) rating or bette,r you should be rolling in cash.

Myth: After game two, I should make a platform
Truth: Only if you want to go bankrupt after nearly making it big.

I almost ruined my current diary this way. Platforms cost a lot of money to make--but you don't notice that from the start. Errors people make:

1. You need a trained hardware group to get a platform really off the ground. People forget this.
2. You need a lot more money than you think you need. $30 million was barely enough for me. If you have less than $20 million--don't bother yet.
3. You aren't going to make a ton of money immediately after it is released.

Why?

Well, let's see, you can only make 3600 per week (you realistically won't have a factory yet)--they are going to cost you upwards of $400 to make each, and you will have little to no buzz about your system. So, to get buzz you need to do two things:

1. Pay game companies a lot of money to make lots of games for your platform. You want lots of games released on your platform, but you're going to have to pay to get them. I made a deal to get 67 games made for the Brackett (my first platform) and that cost me $4.5 million. But it was worth it.

2. Sell units at a loss. Good luck trying to sell 3600 of your units at even manufacturing cost alone, let alone a profit. People paying $600 for an unheard of platform with no games on it yet?! Hell No that won't happen.

You are going to have to make lots of units and then sell them cheap. By selling them in bulk, you generate buzz which when added to the games releases will build excitement. Eventually, you can get the hype high enough to make large profits ($180 million for my first platform) but you are going to be looking at probably 25-50 weeks of losing money after platform release before it breaks even. Know that you will have to be selling at deep losses for months after release of a system.

-------

Also, you should have a trained hardware team. I recommend three cycles of sequel of your first series plus a game or two on the side before the platform. Sales of these units should be enough to get you into platform making cash range and sales should stay high for awhile with the third-generation games.

Once your game sales can pay salaries--then you fire the cheap employees with little studying ability and turn the ones with at least average study ability in hardware loose on studying hardware. Also, replace the fired employees with new hardware employees who have at least average potential. You train these non-stop on hardware, and when have the best in leadership of the bunch train more in this area.

Why?

Well, if you use your normal team leader, he/she will not have enough hardware ability to use top-level chips. Unless you want your system to be outdated on release, make sure you have someone high in hardwear ability lead your team. But if you have less than 6 or 7 people working on a platform, it will never get done, so that is why you need a hardware person who is also a leader.

Once you release the platform, don't be afraid of selling it at deep losses. You need to build hype. Once you get hype, the rest comes easily. You can easily sell the 3600 per week units of a platform for $1000 or more if hype meter is high. Pay the price to get your product in the public eye--make people want it--and jack up the price.

Disagree with my comments? Confused by something? Want to add to my tips or correct me? Got a question about one of my tips or the game in general? Post here.

This is very good. I havent had time to read all of it, but what i read was very very good, nice going
I might pin this thread in an upcoming tips and tricks forum if its ok with you ?

Nice job. Hopefully this helps me out because so far the game has been impossible

Very good conservative gameplay. I'v yet to make any money whatsoever with an engine, and I have a completely different style of play (gets me to the 2.1 billion barrier before 2006 though) I might have to go ahead and post my own version of this later.

Some additions regarding the platforms:

This is the most essential part in getting your platform to sell. You have three deals you can make: try (at mediocre level) to offer three of the biggest companies - with lots of games in the pipe - one million dollars and take the maximum of games you get - if I remember right it where 18 or 19 at that level. This way the deals don't cost you the world, but you will start with around 60 games ready, that will help the hype of your product...

I have to disagree on this: if you go for a platform, do it right. You will probably going to develop one state of the art platform, using the best chips available and doing a lot of research on new technology and consoles - if you don't, good luck on the market...

Since your production capacities are very limited (in the beginning you only have a capacity of 3600 units a week... even with a full factory on level 3 you can only sell 10800 units a week - might have to change this a little...), you don't need the super-hype for you console to sell out - you won't be able to meet the demand you create. Fill your niche and take the profit - never loose money on producing your first console!

Invest time in the reduction of production costs - having invested 100+ weeks on a console, don't spare the 16 weeks for two additional cycles of reducing the production costs. That should leave you at costs of around 1000$ per unit. You may start with prices of around 1099$ - and in case your technology is very good, you will succeed with this strategy. Soon the production costs of your console will drop - so you will have to lower the selling price. Do so, but only to the level where you still sell out each week. Check your sales charts often. 100$ profit margin is a nice way to ensure your success.

Yes, yes, yes!

Your leader will cost you a lot of money - try to find someone who is good ad studying leadership and average at hardware (never found good at both yet - if you get your hands on hardware-->good, consider employing) - and try to find him with a weekly payment of below 40.000 a month. Train him, train him, train him - leadership 70+, hardware 50+. And make sure you have some hardware team ready - level 3 current and study ability average - bring them on level 5, then you are ready to start producing your console.

Remember that increasing the study of hardware is expensive - speeding up twice can cost around 250.000 $ per worker! But it pays off! These hardware guys cost you around 16000 per month (don't pay more :-)) - totalling to 186k for 50 weeks of study. Speeding studying up, you have to pay 300k for 15 weeks (study costs + wage), but your console will be developed much faster, ensuring you an additional plus there, leaving you with profits in the long run...

You are right about when your platform is good and has high specs/high price. You see however, I didn't realize--or if this is your first platform--you may not have the money/resources to build the high spec model. So mine was a $600 to produce model which was nothing special.

There was no great buzz yet, the games that I had paid to have produced weren't out yet. I tried selling at $600 to break even and could get only about 500 weekly sales. That was no good way to launch a console--so I cut the price to about $250 and that sold out the inventory and got buzz going. I would raise the price back up but slash it down if buzz started to fade. Cheap sales seem to revive buzz when necessary.

Certainly, though, if you already have buzz at time of release, you won't need to sell at a loss. However, if you are still at the $20-$30 million cash stage, you probably don't have resources to make a top-of-the line platform fast enough to have it actually be top-of-the-line at time of release.

i'll be interested to see what the get money faster approach is (and whether or not it relys on the bug that was fixed regarding platforms.) My approach is conservative, yes, but after failing 3 times in a row, going quickly bankrupt, I wanted something that would at least get me to 2006. This method probably works on hard as well (haven't tried yet.) But yes, post your approach as well and we can test it.

Interesting. I've found that if you code the engine, for Atari 2600, immediately, then make a game with high research, and i get anywhere from a 5-8 rating.

Great guide SteriogramIdiot. I'd just like to quickly give a couple of money making secrets.

1. After the holidays sales imediatly drop.

2. Try action games. They always sell the best.

3. When ever making a game release it during the holidays. They can some times sell a million copies in their first week.

4. When making a platform go for all the best stuff. Best CPU's, GPU's, SPU's, and RAM. It will cost an assload of money and you'll need a hardware God as a team leader but once it'll be released you'll make 450 mil in your first year easy.

5. STUDY!!! Better workers = better games. And better games = more sales. And more sales = new plasma screen television with surround sound.

6. Get a good publisher to boost your game's hype to max.

Well those are my tips. Hope you find them useful.

Thanks loads for the tips- Steriogram you make very good long posts!

The basics of my style of play. I'll do a more filled out version as I play and post it later tonight. This works well on easy and gets you to the 2.1 billion barrier (not tested with the new patch, going to do that tonight actually, on a second write up)

Step 1. Buy tools, fully upgraded, build an engine, with all the bells and whistles (advanced as much as possible). Build it yourself, it dosen't need to be fantastic, your not selling it anyway. Atari 2600, action.

Step 2. Great you have an engine. Hire 4 new workers, the top in each category (Code, GFX, GUI) two of them in programming.Steal them if you have to to get the best. I generally just double their pay, and hit offer (I never offer leadership or study time)
Start a game using all but your best coder, use him to continually upgrade your engine, untill it reaches it's max, DON'T FORGET GENRE UPGRADES. The genre upgrades are going to set your game apart. Max research on the game, and best music. When he is done upgrading (which he probably won't complete) add him to the dev team.

My game usually ends up rated about a 7, and about half the time places in the best games category.

Try to release around week 30 (it may sound stupid, but it gets you a jump on x-mas sales and allows buzz to be generated for x-mas) DO NOT RELEASE AFTER CHRISTMAS, wait at least untill the next year (only a few weeks anyway). Keep in mind, that if the game is good enough, sales will still be high by next christmas, and give a nice little Christmas bonus. Aim for a publisher with high advertising and high production ability, the cut can be steep but oh well.

Step 3, Immedeately start production on a new game, same as before, make sure your engine is fully upgraded.

Step 4, by now you should have 2 strong selling games, start on an NES engine (if available and throw your resources into this one). Start making sequals of your games, you can actually go with a low % producer now that your games have some buzz, just keep in mind, you want high production. Keep you engine(s) fully upgraded.

Step 5 (the big money) You should be closing in on 20 million at this point, upgrades begin, first upgrade your HQ. Keep producing those hit sequals, and keep those engines cutting edge. Update your piracy protection on occasion. Once you HQ is done, upgrade it again and build a factory and warehouse (upgrade your warehouse 2-3 times as well). Double your design team, using the same guidelines (best of the best, funds be damned). Start simultaniously producing sequals.

Step 6, Your factory is now done (but don't stop upgrading), time to hire your hardware guys, you should be able to hire anyone available now, so aim for the 10 best hardware guys out there (make sure to get one who is highly rated at leadership as well), Pick the highest HW rated one (may even be as high as 90) or the closest to best with the highest leadership (+/- 10 points) and go all out on your new system, best of the best on all accounts. Use your two dev teams to keep pumping out games, if they start taking more then a year, then combine them into one, KEEP THOSE ENGINES CUTTING EDGE. Don't forget to research every major console release, and new processor (if I know then console flopped, I ignore it)

Step 7, hopefully you've gotten to about 30 million at this point (hopefully more) spend 10 million on the 3 best publishers, to make 100 games each for your system (wait untill about the last 20 weeks or so), release your newest game(s), and put everyone to work on the new console. Upgrade speed about twice and then finish it. Get full production going on it and have your hardware team work on lowering cost, get your dev team onto making an action engine for it. When thats done start on exclusive sequals to your now final fantasy proportion games. Keep lowering that price till your plumb broke, or your games are done, whichever is first. I have successfully been able to set the price at $1000, and watch it sell out in 2 months, and continue at that pace for 4-5 years without a price drop (if supply still isn't meeting demand, why drop the price). If you've done well, you'll have the two best agmes of the year on your new console driving sales even harder (I'v actually been able to make the Atari 2600 outlast the 5200 several times from great game releases).

Your now on easy street, start your next console, using the same guidelines as before, and keep pumping out your sequals. Typicaly by the time my second console releases (mid 90's) it's stops become finicaially viable to produce games for my own consoles (even after 9 years, theres just not enough consoles to make a profit off of the games) so I just pay producers to make games on my platform.

I rarely waste valuable man hours on studying and i'v only lowered the cost of my consoles on a few occasions, and usually so it will sell out and make room for my next console. I have mad eit to the 2.2 billion barrier every time this way, and even twice now i've set the price to 99999, and watche my company hit -2.2 billion, and make it back up over the 0 mark (i try to stop it in the billions) and have maybe 20,000 in stock, then dropping it back down again, it sells back out in a few weeks, and asia stops getting shipments (my consoles are never big in asia, probably because they never get any). Keep in mind the old saying, you get what you pay for.

Got another myth to bust:

MYTH: You should never produce games for multiple consoles

TRUTH: Multiple console games increase total sales. Once you're building a game, you have already devoted a large amount of resources to it. To make it work on multiple consoles adds maybe 3-4 weeks (with the right design team) per console. This means that for 3-4 weeks of development you get a game. This means that, even if the target consoles aren't greatly popular, you really haven't lost much on the game, and it will sell.

MYTH: Always make the platform for the newest/greatest system

TRUTH: While the recommended (and safest) course of action, yes, it is entirely possible to make an engine for an "old" console (in one run I made an engine for the Atari ST, an unpopular system all told, well after it's prime) and follow it immediately with a very good game. The game will boost the console popularity, allowing you a plethora of engine sales. If you have a set of "cheap" employees providing the support on those sales, you get easy money on what would otherwise be a dead system.

I've seen this technique work several times (I've always later killed the game by trying to expand too fast, but yeah) and I've even gotten consoles that had less than 50% still in use to the top of the "best buys" list.

The reality of this game is that you are hard pressed to overestimate the value that a high end 9/10 or even 8/10 game can have on sales of related engines.

My best example was that one where I made a action engine for the Atari ST. I then made a game, released it around week 35 (just intime to hype up Christmas). By the end of Christmas, the Atari ST had made the "best buys" list. After the awards show, in which the game took 3rd, the console was at the top. I was selling the engine at a furious pace, and found myself working my design team bare with 3 well selling sequels on what should have been a dead console.

I remember something like this actually happening with the N64. It was having serious issues, and Nintendo looked like they were going to drop it completely. Then, 2 major games came out (Nintendo pushed one of them along so hard that the producer had to 'remove' some elements from the game, making the first release full of 'exploits.') The games were in order, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and then later 007 Goldeneye (Arguably the first decent FPS for a console). These games saved a console that looked like it was going to die because of mediocre implementations of 3d variants of the nintendo classics. (What was with Mario 64???) Now, admittedly, the Game Cube did eventually go the way the N64 had threatened to, but that's another story...

So having tried my style on patch 2 it dosen't quite work, the console kills the company before it's released, so I'll have work on the console part of it for a bit to see what works.

Patch 2 should stop you from getting the tons of money. I think my approach is still a valid way to make a successful company even after patch 2--but consoles are no longer the cheat they were before. And I did warn in my tips that making a console to soon would doom your company.

Own platform:
Agreed. ~30 millions of cash and a hardware/leadership god, plust delay every time there's new tech, plus 2-3 weeks of lowering price costs and maybe upping performance(not neccesary unless new tech/platforms deteriorated it) and then your baby will be completed. If done with max tech it can last 5-7 years, but the biggest problem will allways be production capacity. 30000 a week would be oh-so sweet even if i had to pay 20.000.000 to get it or 200

Early Engine Developement:
I hope you havent forgotten that Gamebiz has plenty of variations in historic platforms. C64, Windows 3.x, Playstation, plus at least 4 others i forgot went out of bussiness within weeks of initiall sales in one game. Now imagine if you gambled on a sure shot like C64 or Playstation and it just waved bye bye to your uberawesome engine just 3 weeks from completion. Good luck peddleing it to all those interested in releasing games for the mighty 35000 market. If your financial future is at stake, don't make such gambles. Also check out from time to time if any platform is being undersold. It could be a sign of production being stopped soon.

Expanding Offices:
Whed to do it? It depends on the difficulty plus how certain you are that your prayers of protection from financial doom have been anwsered. I tried the highest difficulty possible and found out i couldn't do it. So i was stuck with 5 guys for a loooong time. So i invested in studying and a maad engine for the C64 when it came out. Kept it constantly 20 pts above competition and kept selling it for years and years making eventually 9 mil. But the year was already 1991... so i ended that failure.

NOTE: Add to my list of tips as above:

If you plan on making money by selling engines--which I highly recommend--then upgrade your engines all the time. Max them out or at least level 3 or 4. You will get much better sales. I thought this was a waste of time at first, but when you end up getting $400,000 a deal support contracts for only 26 weeks of support, you will love the more highly upgraded engines.

I just wanted to add that you can cut down those 26 weeks to just 2 weeks. That's around 150.000 - 300.000 income per week... wub that money...