Game Dev Tycoon Intermediate Success Guide: Tips On Employees, Marketing And More

Room Two of Game Dev Tycoon is when things get real. If you are struggling with hiring good employees, developing medium-sized games, using marketing or other complexities, check out our intermediate level guide, here.

Game Dev Tycoon, a new iOS simulator game that puts players in the shoes of a game developer, has been a personal obsession of ours this week. In the game, players spend the first part of the game working out of their garage until they’ve amassed $1 million in capital to invest in a new office. Upon moving to the new office, the complexity of the game shifts into high gear as, not only do you have larger overhead, you must also make decisions about hiring and training new staff, developing more sophisticated games and adding marketing and publishing contracts to your plate. If you are working inside the second room of the game and feel you’re floundering, this guide was made for you. We posted an earlier guide that focused on beginner strategies and while many of those tips could apply in the second room as well, we’ve done our best in this guide to focus on the specific challenges this new room brings.

Game Dev Tycoon Intermediate Success Guide: On Employees, Marketing, Publishing Contracts And More

Don’t Move Too Soon

Once players have amassed $1 million in capital, the option will appear to move to a new office. Though this might be tempting, our advice is to wait until you’ve stored up closer to $2 million. When you move to the new office, you not only must pay to transition there, you’re monthly overhead immediately jumps up to $32,000 -- four times what it was in your garage. Though you might feel like a pro at putting together hit games at this point, you’ve got plenty of flops ahead of you, and as the games become more expensive to develop, these flops can do a lot more harm. If it is your first time playing through Game Dev Tycoon, hang out a bit longer in the first room to build more experience and knowledge of best game combos before you make the jump.

Hire Help Slowly

One mistake that many new business owners make both in the real world and in Game Dev Tycoon, is hiring too many bodies too soon. Hiring new faces costs a lot. Not only do you have to put a sizable chunk of cash into advertising the job, you also have a monthly salary to pay out. Even employees with humble skills can easily cost you $15,000 a month, which may not sound like much, but really adds up over time. Our advice is to try to produce a few games on your own in that space and then hire only one employee at a time.

Get Employees With Varied Skills

As you unlock the option to create medium sized games, it will become very important to have people on your team who specialize in certain areas of development. Your character comes with a balanced set of skills in research, design and technology and so he or she can work on anything. However, for your first two hires, it’s a good idea to find one that is strong in technology and another that’s strong in design. To find someone focused on design, you can select the “Show Reel” option. For focus on technology, check the “Demo” or “Algorithms” option. It’s important to immediately do the staff welcome training to build rapport among staff and increase your new employee’s mood/motivation. As mentioned before, don’t hire too many people too soon or you’ll soon find yourself in a hole you can’t dig out of.

Keep Developing Your Engine

As your games become larger and more complex, you are going to need an engine that can bring the features needed for these games. As a result, constant development of your engine is a must and can be the difference between a good game and a great one.

Specialize Employee Training

As I get research points, I am constantly alternating between engine development, new genres, and employee training. Though training is as important when you first hire your new help, headed towards the advanced stages of the game you will need highly skilled people to head specific areas of development. Focusing specifically on an employee's strengths is more important than trying to get an employee with balanced skills. Since larger games require you to allocate developers for different features, its best to have highly specialized people. You can look at the icons below different training options to determine which will serve them best.

Plan Your Marketing Strategically

While marketing can be a great tool for building hype around a game, I’ve often found it's not necessarily something you have to do, if you use other means of gaining traction. For example, doing interviews is a great way to build hype without spending a dime. Also, if you get offers to do a booth at G3, it’s a good idea to do it during or just before you start developing a game. Medium sized booths or larger are best. If you time it right, it’ll build lots of hype during a game development or provide bonus sales for a game that has recently been released and is still on the market. If you do decide to do a traditional marketing campaign, think about which kind would serve your game best. For example, if you are doing a medium sized RPG, demos may be a great consideration, but for a smaller, casual game it would be a waste of money.

Carefully Select Publishing Contracts

Publishing contracts can be an awesome way to get some extra revenue and to test out medium sized games before trying to develop them on your own, just be careful which ones you take. If you see a publisher wants a game that is a terrible genre/topic match, don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll be able to turn a turd into gold. Although you’ll get a lot more hype and maybe even more sales from a published game, if the reviews are poor, not only will you incur a penalty, you also risk losing fans.

Patch Bugs Quickly

Though hopefully most of us are releasing games without any bugs in them, occasionally one slips in and fans will demand a patch. Never deny a request for a patch, even if you are in the middle of developing a game. You’ll get terrible PR and lose fans if you ignore requests for patches. Patching a game usually doesn’t take long. Simply tap on a character you want to build the patch and select the Patch option to develop it. You must do this right away or the option will disappear, along with your disillusioned fans.