Tips on "Game Dev Story" for the Android

If you've ever had an idea for a product that would take the gaming world by storm, "Game Dev Story" gives you the outlet to pursue this dream virtually with your Android phone. Kairosoft's simulation gives you tools to build your company from the ground up and make your mark in the industry. Making the right personnel choices, coupled with balancing in-house development with contract work for other developers, is key to gaining market dominance while winning over critics and fans.

You begin by selecting a genre, then a type, which is the subgenre of your new game. Your games are most likely to become hits when you combine genres and types that intuitively go together. For example, an action genre with a martial arts type is likely to be profitable, while combining the shooter genre with the romance type is much riskier. Once your company is financially secure, you can occasionally try the riskier combinations. While that romance-themed shooter isn't a guaranteed success, you'll still gain points that you can spend to improve future games with the same genre or type, increasing their chances of market success.

Each of your staff members has a different area of expertise, such as graphic design or coding, and statistics such as "Proficiency" and "Sound" reflect their proficiency in those development skills. Over time, staff members gain experience in their core skills, much the same as characters do in a role-playing game, and attain new levels in their professions. Don't hesitate to fire your first staff members and replace them with more skilled personnel once you have the money to do so. While it may seem less expensive to allow your starting staff to improve their stats through gaining development experience, it's more cost-effective in the long run to fire your weaker staff members and incur a large one-time cost to hire an experienced developer.

Contract work provides income and points you can use to raise your staff's statistics, but you need to ensure that your contract jobs won't interfere with your core business. Limit yourself to accepting assignments that take 10 weeks or less to complete. This ensures that you'll be able to keep your clients happy while steadily introducing new games to the marketplace. The holiday season is the most profitable time of year, so manage your time commitments to allow you to do contract work for a month or two in the early summer, then give yourself a four-month window to develop a hot new release for Christmas shoppers.

The simulation gives you 20 years to complete your project. Once a year, a traveling salesman will visit your company offering gadgets and accessories. Every game you develop has its own statistics, such as "Fun" and "Sound," that reflect those aspects of quality in the finished game. The salesman's items can increase the statistics of the game you're currently working on -- if you can afford them, that is. While these boosts are expensive, the increased quality they provide translates into increased sales and better reviews, making them excellent investments.

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1 comments:

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