Game Dev Tycoon - A Non-Labour of Love and Work

Hello there.

Right, my last post was something of a late night rush job. It was written because it had to be done, and it was posted because I had to share it. Now that I've put in a good lot more hours into the game, I can give you a much more realistic and thought through analysis of how good this game is.

It is definitely, 100% one of the few 10/10 games that I've ever played.

Other examples include Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption and Doom II. The game is extremely addictive and manages to make you really feel passionately about what is happening.

Right, firstly the main aim is to develop games and for them to be good. Ideally, for them to hit scores of 10. The higher rated the game, the more dosh you'll earn, the more things you can research and the further your company can expand.

I've yet to complete the game yet, but I know I cannot be far and it's been nothing short of superb.

The game isn't just about making games and money, there are opportunities to pursue; research to develop; people to hire, train and fire; new office's to expand into and game conventions to attend.

Not just that, but if you want a bit of extra cash or the chance to get some more research points, you can take on contract work - being mindful not to take on something your team can't handle though otherwise that chance for extra cash turns into you getting a financial penalty. 

From the things you research, you can then develop bigger and better game engines, giving your games an edge over competitors - at a cost though, engines can start off costing a few thousand quid, but as you research new technologies and better graphics, they can end up costing millions.

Developing a game comes in 4 stages:

• Pre Development
• Game Name
• Game Size (Small, Medium and Large - Only small games at first)
• Target Audience (Young, Everyone, Mature)
• Topic (Fantasy, Sports, City, Movies etc)
• Genre (Action, Adventure, Simulation etc)
• Platform (PC, PlaySystem, mBox etc)
• Game Engine (Your own custom made engines)
• Stage 1 Focuses On:
• Engine
• Gameplay
• Story / Quests
• Stage 2 Focuses On:
• Dialogues
• Level Design
• AI
• Stage 2 Focuses On:
• World Design
• Graphics
• Sound

Putting time and focus onto each area of each stage is controlled with simple sliders, and eventually when you can make medium or large games you can assign staff members to each area - being careful not to overuse individuals. There are certain genres of games that require more technical or design focus, so an RPG would have to have heavy focus of Story, Dialogue and World Design, whereas a Music game would have to have high focus on Sound for example.

In short though, there's not a lot I can tell you about the game that doesn't come from playing it, it's a clear 10/10 game that will suck you in massively, that will frustrate you (in the best way), that will get you tweaking, hiring and firing and finally fist pumping when you release a game that gets scores of 10 itself (that straight 10/10 all round game is still eluding me DAMMIT!!!) and the shock when you see your game that's done well has sold millions of copies. Also the strange pride you feel when your company goes to a games-con and it's the top-rated booth with millions of people visiting you.

The game is magnificent, it's simple yet complex and it will pull you in. Most of all, a sign that it's a great game is this: when it finishes, you'll be disappointed and a little upset that you didn't manage to do more. Of course you can carry on playing, however what you do after the end point wont go towards any score.

I must finish this with 1 piece of advice. Are you ready? Right...go now, and buy this game. Buy it now. I'll even help you (not financially of course you buffoon!) by giving you this: http://store.steampowered.com/app/239820.

Now leave this place. And enjoy yourself.

Toolbox24

Game Dev Tycoon Review

Game Dev Tycoon - Greenheart Games (http://www.greenheartgames.com/)

PC (Steam) - Casual, Indie, Simulation, Strategy

It's been a while since I posted a review of a game using the written word. So here it goes.

This is a very impromptu post because I only invested in Game Dev Tycoon (GDT) tonight. I got it on a whim after seeing it advertised on Steam's front page (http://store.steampowered.com/app/239820/) and for just over a fiver I thought "Sod it. It looks good fun, why not?!" and that gut feeling that it would be a good punt served me well!

Don't let the 68/100 Metascore put you off, it's intriguing, in-depth, extremely fun and so easy to pick up and play, it definitely fits the bill of being a "casual" game.

Previously I put PopCap games like Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies in the category of "Casual". You know the type: games that you could play sat on the toilet as well as laying in bed or sat at the computer...although don't mix those up, my wife doesn't appreciate it when I go to the toilet while laying in bed playing PvZ...

I digress though. This review will follow in GDT's footsteps - being easy, quick and simple.

The premise of the game is that you are a lone games developer in the 80's in your garage just as the gaming market is about to get massive. You have to work out (to start with) 4 things about your game - Title, Topic, Genre and Platform. The title is free text, so call it what you want; the topic is things like Government, Airplane, Zombies etc; the genre is things like Action, RPG, Simulation etc and platform is what the game will be developed for. Now you then need to strike the right balance of how the game will be developed such as it's graphics, sound, engine, dialogue, world design etc and how much emphasis will go towards each area. Some games are more suited to different areas and it can take a little while to work out what areas each type of game needs more love in. The easiest way though, think about what you like in games of certain genres and go with that.

After a while, if you get enough moolah, then you can move out of your dingy garage and move into a fully fledged cool office and even hire extra staff to help make your games the awesome things you want them to be.

You can research new game topics, create your own engines and conduct staff training for yourself as well as any staff you might employ - this might cost a bit sometimes, but it'll be worth it in the end. You also have interesting moral choices to make from time to time, such as what action to take on fans of your games creating unofficial content - you can leave them alone, or sue them for example. I personally left them alone, because a lot of great spin-off games from fans in the past - look at Counter-Strike as possibly the most successful one!

The game itself is ridiculously easy to learn to play, which bodes well for me, being a father of 4 with a small window of "me time" to commit to new games!! I've yet to delve incredibly deep into the game, but felt real excitement when my Movies/Simulation game for the PC "Movie Director" took off with 10/10 reviews earning me close to 2 million smackaroos while working in the garage! It meant I could expand!!!

Anyway, I'm going to leave this review there, because time spent writing this could be time spent playing the game itself for gawdsake! Go check it out and visit their website (linked at the top of the post) for more information!

Trust me on this though, it's a game that gets more interesting the further you delve into it!

Until next time...

Toolbox24

Computer Gaming IS Good For You

Well of course it’s you, I knew you’d be back for some extended loving.

Now I’ve had a bit of a mini break away while I deal with people that have no concept of how to use their brains, I’m back and on the subject of using brains…

I stumbled across THIS article on Forbes.com (I don’t really read Forbes, it was linked from the incredible listverse.com website). Basically the outline of it all is that playing computer games is not only good for you, it’s fucking brilliant!

After reading the article, and re-reading it, it correlates with a lot of things that I’ve thought of regarding computer games.

Article Points:

• They teach you how to think critically, how to solve problems.
• They teach you collaboration skills.
• They teach you how to fail.
• They make you happy.

So let’s just delve a little deeper into those 4 points, and then ladies and gentlemen, if you get shit from your significant other or a parent who’s moaning at you for being on the Xbox instead of enjoying the weather outside or being in your room all day you will have some sexy ammunition for them.

They Teach You How To Think Critically, How To Solve Problems.

The first point raised in the article is quite an obvious one when you think about it. Think about when either you were a child playing computer games or when your current little bastard is sat trying to get further on his or her chosen game.

There is usually a moment in every game that you approach it like the rest of the game…you think you’re getting somewhere…you’re certain you’ve done something right, that large platform just moved…oh no, wait…now you’re dead.

Something along those lines happen to you? Mayhaps, or maybe you’ve been playing a game like Football Manager, or Call of Duty, or Civilization? All of these games present their own challenges, their own ways of getting through problems, and their own ways of making you think differently. Solving problems in games, is about trial and error, about seeing where YOU the gamer is flawed, and how you can change and adapt in order to progress. These are key life skills, and can give you key advantages over others in being able to “think outside the box”.

They Teach You Collaboration Skills

That’s right. You’ve heard of Multiplayer right? Well generally (unless it’s like an Unreal / Quake Style all in Death Match) you are playing Multiplayer as a part of a team. Be it 2 massive teams fighting each other which generally limits the amount of actual teamwork and results a lot of lone-wolfery from what I’ve seen, or small teams – much like in Mass Effect 3 MP.

Now I prattle on about Mass Effect a lot on this blog – you may have seen – so it should come as no surprise that the game I’m going to use as a perfect example of teamwork and collaboration is Left 4 Dead.

In L4D you are effectively punished by the AI Director for wandering off and trying to be Rambo of the Dead. If you wander off, you get punished. If you work together, the AI Director in game essentially gives you more breaks. Say you get a massive horde of zombies, you deal with them but sustain enough damage to warrant using a med-pack or painkillers, once dealing with the horde as a team, generally you get a bit of breathing space to patch up, reload and progress before the next batch of enemies.

However, if you were to deal with a horde of zombies as say 4 individuals, not working together, covering each other – separated from each other, then the game might still provide you with a breather, but not as long and certainly nowhere near guaranteed.

This forces the players to work as a team to progress and succeed. This goes well for the Verses mode on the game, in which 2 teams of 4 face off, 4 suvivors vs 4 Special Infected. The infected will work a lot more like a team than the survivors, talking more, planning more and generally being more tactically aggressive.

They Teach You How To Fail

The example given of Forbes is one that is cropping up not just in the USA but in the UK as well. A culture among schools that there are no winners and losers at this can breed negative emotions and undue rivalries or whatever the fucking weak sauce case may be. The example being that a ribbon is given to everyone who participates in a race – shit of the bull. This if anything suppresses the competitive nature in humans, as if there is no reward for outperforming everyone else, what the fuck is the point of trying?

Essentially, this is one where Computer Games kick the royal arseholes of schools for younger kids these days. In Computer Games, there are definite winners and losers. Say you are playing Mario Kart – not everyone can win, obviously, there are winners and losers. You get chances to win, say in a Grand Prix where you get 4 or 5 races, you might win a couple of them but lose a couple – it’ll be seeing who earned the most points that is the winner.

In a nutshell though, computer games teach you to fail, but not only that, they teach you that if you want to succeed and you fail along the way, you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again.

They Make You Happy

Happiness. If computer games didn’t make people happy, would they be the multi billion £/$ businesses that they are today? Would Computer games sales have outstripped Movie and Music Sales for the past few years?

Right, OK, it might be a bit of an obvious one but it has wider connotations. Basically, the happier you are, the harder you work. The happier you are, the better quality your work. The happier you are, the happier others around you will be. It’s true, happiness breeds happiness.

Ladies, gentlemen…have you ever been brought down into a bad mood because your other half wasn’t happy? Have you ever been put in a better mood because your other half was generally happy?

This works especially well for parents as well here. As a parent myself, I am much more willing and able to be the fun, stupid Dad my kids like more when I know I’ve either had a good bit of playtime myself or I know that later on, I’m gonna enjoy myself playing on the PC.

That’s a bit of a poor point however, you could get happiness from reading books, or stargazing, or drawing – it would produce those same feelings and feelings in those around you as computer gaming. I’m going to quote directly from the Forbes site however for this point, as it puts it better than I.

“Dr. McGonigal says, “games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves.” Another name for ‘hard work we choose for ourselves’ is mastery.  When we work toward mastery, it stretches us – we go past our limitations, learn how to do new things….we get smarter.”

So there you go. If you want to spend a couple of hours playing a game, you fucking do it. If anyone gives you shit for it, you put them straight. You tell them that by playing games, you’re getting smarter, you’re getting ready for the challenges, ups and downs of life, you’re learning how to communicate effectively and work well as a part of a team and it makes you happy.

Got it?

I’ll see you later then.

Toolbox 24

Grand Theft Auto V Gameplay Trailer

Good Evening, Morning, Afternoon or whatever!

It's been a little while since I last posted on here, due to many reasons.

The UK Heatwave.

Work issues.

Tiredness.

Wombats.

And many more reasons that if I went into them with you, I'd have to varnish you with butter and put chocolate sprinkles on you, you naughty, naughty boy. Or girl. Or peanut plant.

Well the thing is I thought, what could I write about, could it be about that Chinese girl bursting her big fake tits the other week? Or could it be about that study that revealed that gaming doesn't lead people to violence, it usually is used as an outlet for stress and anger, and people who play violent games are less likely to act violently in real life - something I could have told you without the need to write a fucking thesis.

No, I thought I'd just show you the gameplay trailer for Grand Theft Auto V.

Enjoy.

I was looking forward to this game before, but now...Jesus H Corleone I'm gonna need to change my underwear several times over when I get this bad boy.

Anyway, that's about it for now, keep an eye out, I'm planning on playing some classic Wolf3D and giving it to you on YouTube like a complete bawwwwws soon.

TTFN

Toolbox 24

Mass Effect 2 Video

Good Morning...afternoon...evening...Good Time ladies and gentlemen!

Just a quick video from MonkeyBoxGaming - Where Games Go To Be Loved Up And Down.

BLAM.

I hope you enjoyed it .

Toolbox24

Xbox One U-Turn - And My Last Word On It

Well hello there!

I've seen some ridiculous shit online and in real life, but one thing that strikes me as hilarious is Microsoft Interactive's Don Mattrick going back to the gaming world with his tail between his legs admitting he was wrong.

Amazon's PS4 vs Xbox One Poll. Closed a week early at the above score.

I knew it. The vast majority of the online community knew it. Subject matter experts knew it. It's why the Xbox One performed so badly against the PS4 in every online poll that I saw. It's why Amazon had to remove their Facebook poll a good week early because the PS4 was winning with just shy of 95% of the vote from over 40,000 people (see above). And because of all this, Mr Mattrick said the following:

"An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games - after a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24-hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.

"Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today - there will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360."

So they listened. About fucking time if you ask me. From the moment they saw the winds blowing the way they were, the heads of sheds at Microsoft Interactive should have had a meeting that lasted about 5 minutes that should have gone like this:

"So, Sony have delivered a blow to us that could put us behind Wii U in the console race this generation...we can't be behind the Wii U. Only 24 people in the world own a Wii U and they all surely regret their decision."

"Right, so do we remove the crappy DRM that everyone is raging about?"

"Maybe. Let's wait a week and a half."

"What do we do in the meantime if we're asked any questions on the issue?"

"Leave that to me...Captain Mattrick."

That's right for the past week, the Xbox One party line was - If you don't like it, stick with our 8 year old device. In the infamous words of Carlos Irwin Estévez: Winning.

Anyway, before I of all people get accused of being a Sony fanboy (not overly sure how this is possible by the way - will explain shortly) I must say that this massive U-Turn is a potential game changer. Not incredibly so though, since the specifications and added extras that the PS4 offer are what normal people look for. 

Some have argued that the extra cost of the Xbox One is due to the inclusion of Kinect. But surely, the Kinect should be an OPTIONAL extra to the console, not something that must be tacked on whether you like it or not. Some have argued that Sony are imitating the Microsoft's pay-for subscription for playing online, but Sony with their subscription are including Netflix (which itself is usually what, 5-6 quid a month on it's own?) as well as access to the instant games library, which to the uneducated, gives you approximately $150 worth of free games a year. I'm sorry but if anyone can really look at the 2 subscriptions and think you get anything like that with Xbox Gold, then you're obviously deluded and so blinded by your own fanboyishness that you cannot see the truth.

Now I'm a rational person who thinks decisions through. I have to be. I'm a father of 4 children, I have a house to run, I work a full time job working alongside the RAF. The personal decision from me to buy either an Xbox One or PS4 isn't just a cut and dried "Oh I have an Xbox 360, I'm going to get an Xbox One" because it's an investment of almost £500. I can't afford to just make a decision based on faux facts, speculative workings, and my previous preferences because quite frankly - I have no previous preferences.

This has nothing to do with this blog. I just love the Xzibit Yo Dawg Meme.

I'll take you on a short trip down my own gaming life, (not like the blog the other day). My first console that was all my own was a SNES. The next gen, I had an N64 and a PS1. The next gen I had an Xbox and a PS2. And now this gen, I own a PS3 and an Xbox 360. And with every console I've owned, I've appreciated the pro's of all of them and accepted the cons of all of them as well. The PS3's hacking debacle was a massive hammer blow to the confidence of Sony - they fucked up bad and it's still fresh in the memory for a lot of people. The Xbox for me and a lot of people had it's own hacking and security problems. My own account was hacked twice, and close to £100 siphoned from my bank account. 

The official word from Microsoft on contacting them is that sometimes their system, when people pay for MS Points through the console, takes money from random peoples accounts - I swear on my daughters life, this was their official line to me. It was a case of, "yeah sorry about that...oh well." So this left me feeling betrayed by a company I had put a lot of faith and my own cash in to. But even with this, never ever have I ever put more stock into one console over another, both consoles have great games, and great abilities within their chassis'. Both have their flaws, and neither are perfect, but both are amazing machines. I can say this with a completely unbiased view, because unlike others who claim to be unbiased - I have owned every Sony console, and every Microsoft console.

Whereas some who claim to be unbiased, claim so because they use Microsoft Windows and have a Sony device like a TV or camera. I'm sorry, but that doesn't make someone unbiased. That makes someone grasping at straws to look unbiased. The only unbiased opinions, come from those who have owned and cherished consoles from both sides.

My real, actual unbiased opinion at the moment though? Neither of them. They're both overpriced, they'll both have their problems (RRoD = Xbox 360, YLOD = PS3 anyone?), and the games that will be available on them that I'll want will most likely also be available on Steam or Origin on PC. Eventually, I don't know, I'll wait and see some real reviews once they're out later this year. So my own answer to "PS4 or Xbox One?" neither. Not least for a year or two or even three - that's why my opinion is truly unbiased, and that's why this is my last word on the matter.

Full Stop. 

Toolbox24

Edit: Formatting updated.

An End, Once And For All

Last post of the evening! Promise!

I just thought I'd share with you all one of my favourite, if not my absolute favourite piece of music from a computer game.

In fact, this piece of music is one of my favourite pieces of music from any medium.

It's called "And End, Once And For All", composed by Clint Mansell and Sam Hulick. This version is from the Extended Cut of Mass Effect 3.

Sit back and enjoy.

Toolbox24