Game Dev Story

You know, it's been quite a long time since a game as cheap as Game Dev Story, costing me only $4 (I would have gotten it for $1, had I bought it a few days earlier, darn), had hooked me as much as it has. When I'm not playing it, I really don't have any urges to turn on my iPod Touch and play it. But when I finally do start playing it, I just can't put it down. It's not like there aren't any downtime parts of the game where it would be easy to turn it off. Those come every time a game is done being made and has shipped, where my workers literally start saying "I'm bored." But, there are reasons why I don't start one game right after I finish another, money being a big portion of that. Before I started raking in the big bucks (well, in my view I would still consider myself to be a small company without much capital, can't even afford to make games for the biggest systems), I'd be down to barely enough cash to afford my workers. One year I was squirming in my seat, nervous that I wouldn't have enough money to pay all my employees. I was watching the game progress percentage go up as the days and weeks went by, payday slowly getting closer and closer. Luckily my timing paid off perfectly, with the game releasing the week before I had to pay everyone, meaning I had no trouble coming up with the money. But anyways, that's not the point. The point of this post was how funny the names in the game can be. Every time the game says that a company is releasing a new system, I get a little excited, knowing that it will be a ripoff of a real-life counterpart. So far the game has done a tremendous job keeping up with the systems, in the order they were released, and even including some obscure ones. In that case they even mention something along the lines of, "This console seems a bit strange and might not sell well, so we should see how it does before applying for a license."

For the first few games released, I didn't worry about the names of my games, and just let Game Dev Story take care of the work, naming them Game #1 and so on. Well after the first game awards, I saw how funny some of the names could be, all very similar to the real companies' names and games. So from then on, I decided to do the same with my games. Unfortunately, the game only keeps the past 32 products in the history, and since I'm in year 14, I have definitely made more than 32 games (probably around 35-40). So without further ado, I thought it would be fun to make another list of games, this time of the ones I have made in Game Dev Story, starting with the oldest (that is still recorded). I shall include the game name, system type, genre and type of game, how many copies sold and any awards it received, but will keep the system name out. Learning the names of the systems as the game progresses is part of the fun of the game, and makes the player want to keep playing to see what else is out there. As an important note, I do not have all the possible genre and types unlocked, and am sure there are many out there I'm missing.

Sly Ninja - console - Action & Ninja - 103,978 units
Bio is Life - console - Life & Animal - 176,301 units
Dungeon - portable - Shooter & Dungeon - 188,540 units
AlphaPirates - console - Educational & Pirate - 87,515 units
Knight's Night - portable - Sim RPG & Historical - 362,578 units
High Seas - console - Action RPG & Pirate - 188,478 units - Best Design
Living Animals - portable - Simulation & Animal - 227,417 units
Let's Golf! - portable - Simulation & Golf - 99,408 units
A Pirate Story - portable - Audio Novel & Pirate - 202,605 units - Worst Game of the Year
Cartoon Clash - portable - Racing & Cartoon - 195,756 units
Wanna Date? - portable - Simulation & Dating - 244,265 units
ARR! Pirates - portable - Life & Pirate - 282,805 units
Calm Breeze - portable - Action RPG & Ninja - 542,687 units
Animal N' Cars - portable - Racing & Animal - 433,668 units
Dungeon Xplorr - console - RPG & Dungeon - 500,134 units
Running?! - console - Simulation & Marathon - 318,164 units
Oblivian - console - Action RPG & Dungeon - 544,056 units
Hell..o Robots - console - Shooter & Robot - 370,698 units
Xs Eight - console - RPG & Historical - 431,517 units
Robot Bomb - console - Action RPG & Robot - 881,808 units
Cameo - console - Action RPG & Animal - 418,148 units
Choo Choo! - portable - Simulation & Train - 769,515 units
Cumbrero! - portable - Simulation & Dating - 553,276 units
Look, Robots! - console - RPG & Robots - 809,960 units - Best Design
Spirit Trains - console - Simulation & Train - 1,826,994 units
Spirit Racks - console - Simulation & Dating - 1,179,864 units
Wall of Duty - console - Shooter & Historical - 923,771 units
Chromo Time - console - RPG & Time Travel - 2,107,826 units - Best Design
Tome Portal - console - Action RPG & Time Travel - 2,807,295 units - Best Design
Sim Bird - console - Simulation & Airplane - 1,449,284 units - Best Music
X Signs? - console - Simulation & Train - 440,801 units
Sprinter Cell - console - Action RPG & Spy - 1,483,088 units

So as you can see, my numbers went way up over the course of time. It's funny too, because there are some excellent genre and type match-ups in this list, but there are also some horrible ones as well, and the game will point them out when you find them. Unfortunately, it's all trial and error, and it's not always fair. For example, some games that we know of and have sold extremely well have exact genre and type match-ups in this game, but don't show up as good pairs. So what is a good match-up in real life cannot be dependent on one game or franchise, but rather on what commonly makes a great match-up. Also, don't just take away information on this list as proof as to what is a great match. Just because I have high sales for a game doesn't just mean the genre and type are a great match. For most of the games on the second half of the list, I put much thought and effort into creating the game, including who of my employees did what parts of the game, and which employees did extra parts on their own. There are also different strategies to use throughout game development as well, which drastically affect sales and scores from critics (which I did not include in here, but do have that information as well, and also what ranking it received after one week of sales).

Take for example two games on my list, Spirit Trains and X Signs?. They came out on the same system, had the exact same genre and game type, and were only released 26 months apart. Spirit Trains sold much better than X Signs? did, even though Spirit Trains had 4 more reviewer points (out of 40). To make matters even more interesting, let's throw Choo Choo! into the equation. It was released 13 months before Spirit Trains (39 before X Signs?) for a portable system, and received 3 less points than X Signs? did from the reviewers, and yet it basically doubled X Signs? sales. So what I'm showing is just because one game sells really well, doesn't mean that it's a great combination. The game may seem straightforward, but there is quite a bit of thought and strategy that play into developing the games. It really is a game dev story. Now I want to really be like a giant company, and release a hall of fame game. And then I want to do the other things which aren't even possible with my staff and history of games yet...