I imagine the numbers are worse, especially for those of us living in high-income countries. And to be fair, I can count the number of lead developers that I speak to on my fingers and toes. The smaller ones are leaving the industry. As there is at least some level of quality control there. I know 5 CC-BBB level developers who are ditching PC going forward because of this. So marketing ROI is most likely to be lower than average, but I'll make a go at it toward release. Marketing is made more difficult by there not really being tight communities of hardcore-economic spreadsheet games. It's very niche and very focused on a certain type of player. GearCity is definitely not a marketable game. The rest add little to no value to my games.) There is no longer organic visibility going forward, so you need a marketable game and marketing dollars. Majority of them I would have no problems implementing on my own. And before someone chimes in about feature x,y,z. (Which in my opinion, is the main value of Steam as a developer. So this puts you in a pickle if Steam is your primary marketing platform. The former has no effect on me, the later is just more icing on the cake. Although Steam spun it as a bug when the media caught wind of it: They've also reduced royalty rates for big publishers and butchered the more like this system. With the threat of Epic Game Store poaching these games, Valve pulled organic visibility for most mid-level and lower games, including GearCity. This reduced visibility for everyone on the store, thus pissing off large publishers. With Steam Direct, approximately 20 games per day are being released. Something on the order of 80% market share (or more) in western nations. Steam has a near-monopoly on native, single payment PC games. But also due to the barrier of entry removal in the largest distribution platform. Primary due to Unity, UE4, and some lesser engines making game development extremely easy. The game industry, specifically, PC games, are facing extreme over-saturation. I have been meaning to make a blog post about this stuff, to kick off my "Feature Bounty" system, but in a nutshell: I hope that helps! And thanks for the shout out!Ĭurious what you mean by "the way the industry is going, it's unlikely." It's a bit buggy, and I am not sure how the digital distribution versions fare, but it is a very good macroeconomic simulator. Not related to business sims, I got a lot of playtime out of Superpower 2 in my youth. Although, AirwaySim is very expensive, slow, and multiplayer, which is why an airline simulator is our next major project. And it was enough of an itch scratcher to make me make GearCity first, instead of an airline simulator as I planned. As someone who now does investing as their primary job (thanks Steam Direct), it is a very good representation of financial systems.Īnother game I enjoyed was AirwaySim, it's not as complex as GC, but it does scratch the itch. I would have to say Wall Street Raider would be a good option. If you're into economics and not cars, it's probably OK to pass on them. Both of which, while complex for the time, were fairly light. It was heavily inspired by Detroit and Motor City (Old Timer). That's one of the reasons why I made the game. I can't really recommend any other industrial business sims with the same level of economic details. So what are your thoughts? Thanks for reading! GearCity made me feel like I was actually running a business in an understandable economy. In Capitalism, every game feels like it starts with building one store, clicking on a few products to sell, and then it's just an endless and growing supply of money as you plop down more buildings. So, to my question: are there other games with this kind of economic experience I should look at? I know Capitalism Lab gets mentioned often, and I have it, but it's never given me the same feeling. it all made for one of the best experiences I've had when it comes to a game/sim actually feeling like a business. Having the control it offers, the economic considerations, the long-term planning, the detailed P&L and productivity reports. Also, construction gets paid for as it takes place, instead of just having the whole sum deducted from your bank account when you give the order. Then it actually takes time for the work to be done. One example: when you redesign a factory to increase capacity, you have a wide range (slider bars) of options when it comes to the number of production lines and how much money you want to invest in the technology of the factory, which effect its maximum productivity. I have very little experience with it so far, but I love the depth of the economics that it presents. I tried the demo of GearCity and immediately pinned it to the top of my wishlist.
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