I’ve played Game Dev Tycoon plenty of times – around a year ago, it was nearly the only game I played. I found the core loop to be immensely satisfying, but I never looked at why I enjoyed it. So this past weekend I sat down to figure out what I enjoy so much about the game and came out… a little less impressed than I’d hoped. The game is good, but there are a few things that I think it could have done a little better.

This isn’t intended as a review. Rather, I’m going to go over a number of aspects of general game design, and management games in particular to understand what it does right, what it does wrong, and what other designers can learn.

Teaching

Game Dev Tycoon teaches the player in the best way, which is to say, it doesn’t teach you. At the beginning of the game, you see your developer at his computer and are given no direction. You click on screen and a small menu opens, a menu with only one option: Develop New Game. From there, the game just lets you experiment. You can choose various game genres, topics of games, platforms and more, and you’re expected to learn the best games you can make by experimenting.

However, the player is not left drowning. After a game is developed, you can create a game report, essentially a post mortem. This gives you feedback about the game you just created – the effectiveness of the topic and genre combination, how well the genre matches the platform chosen, and the importance of various aspects on the game. For example, world design is more important in an RPG than it is in a strategy game.

Experimentation combined with feedback (more on feedback later) is a wonderful form of teaching. It allows players to genuinely feel that they have learned rather than being taught, and that their successes are their own. It is also a testament to the importance of the next point I’m going to cover: low starting complexity. If the complexity is too high to begin with, then players won’t feel comfortable experimenting.

Starting complexity

At the beginning of the game, you have one resource – money. Games cost money to develop, and earn you money when they sell. Simple, no? Well, there’s also the implicit resource of time. You have monthly costs which are deducted no matter what you are doing. Whether you’re developing a game, sitting doing nothing or any of the other tasks that are introduced later, money will be deducted every month.

Development itself is mostly about choosing how to allocate developer time – at three stages of development, you get to allocate resources between three different tasks such as dialogue, level design and artificial intelligence. Keeping this to three stages with three tasks each is smart – it keeps the time management simple enough that, once again, players are comfortable experimenting.

Time Allocation

Development also introduces two new resources: design points and technology points. You get these points from the various tasks in development. Certain tasks will contribute more design or technology points. Each genre has a specific ideal ratio of design and technology.

While developing games, you also create bugs. Once development is complete, you must take time to get rid of these bugs. However, bugs don’t really contribute to the complexity of the game. There is no way to prevent them and they only really increase the development time of the project. That said, I don’t think they detract anything from the game so no reason to change them.

Along with bugs, you also earn research points during game development. Research points become a resource nearly as important as money – earning and spending research points is one of the main ways that the game handles increasing complexity. Speaking of which…

Increasing complexity

Immediately after releasing your first game, clicking on the screen now gives 4 options – develop new game, research, generate game report & Game History. Game history simply lists released games, and doesn’t factor into complexity. It’s also an option I never used. I appreciate that it’s there, but it’s not the most important thing.

Research

Research is the most important new option. It allows you to spend research points towards new topics and technologies. Getting new topics is important since it prevents the game from feeling stale. There are a lot of potential topics in the game, but you start with only four. By researching new topics, you can explore new interesting types of games. Along with topics, there are also new technologies that slowly become available.

There is something very clever that is done here. It is common to see research topics available that you don’t have enough points for – the very first time you research, Custom Game Engine is visible, but costs 50 points which is impossible to get at this point. This is a really clever way to hint at things that will be available in future. Even if you have no idea what Custom Game Engine means, you immediately want to find out. It gives you an immediate goal to work towards.

You can get a few more research points at this time. By generating a game report, you will immediately get a handful of extra research points. However, the far more important thing you get from this is very useful feedback. We’ll cover feedback more later. Back to complexity.

When you have at least 50 research points, it is possible to research and then create custom game engines. These take money and time to create, but unlock new research opportunities. There are also features later that can’t be used without a custom engine such as improved graphics and sound.

Other complexity

After the third game you release, a new option is added: Contract Work. Contract work is a more reliable way to earn money by doing small projects. They take less time than developing games, but also give much less money. It’s also not 100% reliable – as the game progresses, more difficult contracts become available and failing these comes with a penalty. The importance of this for complexity is that it adds another decision at all times – do you develop a game, or do contract work?

Shortly into the game, targeting a particular age group becomes an option. By adding this as a development option, we have an increase in the number of considerations to make when making a new game. It also adds more complexity in terms of which genres and topics work well with the audience.

Once you earn at least a million dollars, you can move to a larger office, which allows you to hire staff. Hiring staff is itself a complex task – the budget has to be determined, and you must decide if you want a developer focused on Design, Tech or a balance. Once a staff member is hired, they take some time to be fully productive. However, the biggest thing that happens when you hire staff is that they must be paid a salary. This increases your monthly expenses, increasing the difficulty as well as complexity.

Shortly, you get the ability to create medium sized games. Once these are introduced the complexity of game development increases once more, since staff members now have to be assigned to particular tasks. Having staff members work on too many tasks can lead to exhaustion, and they will contribute less to the project. Later on, large and AAA games are also introduced. These increase the difficulty, but not the complexity itself. In fact, game development complexity peaks once medium games are reached.

Near the end of the game, two last pieces of complexity are optionally introduced: an R&D Lab, and a Hardware Lab, can be built. These are however very low complexity additions. For each of these, you set a monthly budget and a task, and everything else is automated. While the low complexity of this is a little disappointing, it does have the advantage that it keeps you focused on what you should be thinking about: game development.

Pace of Progression

The pace of complexity progression for the first half of the game is good. The introduction of research, custom game engine, contract work, staff management and medium sized games are well timed and keep you constantly learning new things. Unfortunately, this is nearly peak complexity. Difficulty does increase twice more – large and AAA games make time management for staff tighter, but not really more complicated.

I feel like the game needed just one more big jump in complexity. I understand why the R&D Lab and Hardware lab were kept simple, and I think it was the right decision. The complexity should be in the game development. I’m not sure how to fix it, but something was needed. The last few in game years end up feeling quite monotonous. Even with new research, I fell into a very predictable loop. Speaking of loops…

Gameplay Loop

Understanding the main gameplay loop is a good way to analyse the change in complexity over time. The loop doesn’t cover everything, but does give a good idea of the number of options available. It’s also worth noting that the loop doesn’t cover everything you can do – for example, this loop doesn’t cover staff management, since it isn’t something you really think about that often.

The first loop is fairly simple, and looks as follows:

Develop Game -> Game Report -> [Research] -> Develop Game

The square brackets indicate a task that you may not perform every loop, but at least think about. A few games in, the loop gets a little more complicated:

Develop Game -> Game Report -> [Contract Work] -> [Research] -> Develop Game

Shortly after this, the ability to develop new game engines is researched, and the loop increases again:

Develop Game -> Game Report -> [Contract Work] -> [Research] -> [Develop Engine] -> Develop Game

This is where the loop settled, at least for me. Most of the complexity ended up being pushed into the game development, not the loop itself. This isn’t terrible in and of itself – it’s worth noting that by the end, contract work and research were no longer really optional. I did both in every loop. In this sense, the loop is well constructed.

Feedback

Feedback is essential in any game. Players need to know how their actions are affecting the game world, and specifically if they’re doing the right thing – and if they’re doing the thing right. So how does Game Dev Tycoon go about feedback?

The primary form of feedback for a game is in the form of game reviews. Shortly after releasing a game, you get four reviews out of 10. These give you not only numerical feedback, but also some tips such as ‘Simulation games work well on PC’. These make for good, direct feedback: unambiguous, easy to understand and incredibly pleasing when you get it right.

Part of the feedback also starts shortly afterwards, when the game starts selling and you get income. While scores are more direct player feedback, the feedback of earning money is very important. Seeing that number climb is very satisfying.

You will also get small milestones along the way as feedback – alerting you to sales numbers and your position in the charts. The sales do seem to be influenced by scores more than anything, but it reinforces your success. It feels good.

Game reports also give you a nice form of direct feedback, telling you which parts of a game are important to focus on, what combinations of genre and topic work well and what platforms work well with particular audiences.

All in all, Game Dev Tycoon offers good feedback: clear, easy to understand and with an immediate impact on gameplay.

Positive Feedback Loop

A positive feedback loop is any situation in which success in one iteration of a loop increases the chance of success in the next iteration, and failure in one iteration increases the chance of failure in the next iteration. Game Dev Tycoon has very strong positive feedback.

The most obvious piece of positive feedback: a successful game gives you significantly more money for your next project, meaning you can make decisions that benefit the game without worrying about costs as much. You can also take more time to get rid of bugs without worrying about monthly costs.

Conversely, a poorly received game means you have less money and may end up making a less successful game since you cannot spend money on the best technology and platforms, but must choose the cheapest options. You may also be pressured to push out a game sooner with a few bugs. You may also find yourself nearing bankruptcy. If you take a bailout from the bank, then even if your next game is successful you may lose most of that money to paying back the bailout.

The positive feedback loop is incredibly strong, and works well.

Negative Feedback Loop

Negative feedback is incredibly important – it is a loop in which failure in one iteration improves the chances of success in the next, and success in one reduces those chances. Negative feedback can be a very difficult line to walk, but also important to the perceived fairness of a game.

Making a game with the same topic and genre directly after another game will always get lower scores. This is a clever way to force players to mix up their games, and allow exploration of new combinations.

Something Game Dev Tycoon is missing, unfortunately, is any negative feedback loop for failure. This is a huge missed opportunity. In the best case, even a failure should feel like you are making progress towards something. I feel the game had an amazing opportunity to do this with the game reports: the lower the score a game receives, the more advice the player should get from a report. This would mean that when a game falls short of expectation, even though you are punished – you will lose money and struggle with your next game – you will receive plenty of information that will benefit future games.

End game

At the end of the chosen game length, your high score is calculated and… that’s kind of it. It feels unfortunately anti-climactic. By the time the game finished there were a lot of things I still wanted to do, but I always find it difficult to keep playing a game after it has ended. Without context it feels empty.

I feel like having a more concrete goal would serve the game well – have a billion dollars, make a 10/10 AAA game, release a bestselling game of every size, just… something. In fact, I feel like that last one is a good option, since you will also see your success ticking up as you go along. With each best selling game you make, you would see yourself approaching that goal, until you make that amazing AAA game and wow everyone. It would make the end feel like an achievement rather than an inevitability.

Final Thoughts

Game Dev Tycoon is good. It really is. I enjoy playing it, and the very short gameplay loop means that, especially when things go well, you get quick positive feedback and reinforcement. This is good. But there are a few things that could be improved. The complexity plateaus halfway through the game, there is very little negative feedback, and the endgame is particularly weak. All of these things could be improved, and would lead to a stronger game overall.

The purpose of this criticism is not to break down this particular game, but to help me and others make our own games stronger – to keep what is done well, and to improve what can be improved. I’d love to hear your feedback, especially anywhere you disagree with me – I want to get better.

Next week I plan to cover one of my favourite games in recent years: Cities: Skylines. See you then!