Mad Games Tycoon 2

Mad Games Tycoon 2

27 ratings
Power Tips: Newbie Stuff, Intermediate Guide, Employee Management
By Sol
It can be daunting to get started with a lot to do. With this guide, hit the ground running in the right direction.
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Getting Started, Basic Theory
The first thing to do is sell the sportscar and hire anyone without flaws. Research the starting Genres so that you have all four. Then, you need to research the Trending Topic and a few others.

Of your genres, check the other guides and determine if one of them is a good match with the Trending Topic. Set your sliders correct, use all features for your first few games to get your experience up. I only make games for Byte I - if you are starting in any other time, release for the PC. If you wish to make your own console now, you must commit to ONLY release games for systems marked as "Computer".

You want to research Quality room as fast as possible.

Make your first 5 games and be sure to:
1. Use their trending topic and correct sliders. Later you can make sequels and spinoffs, so get your genre matches correct from the get go.
2. Collect game report from quality after every game you can.
3. Remove bugs before release.
4. Start and finish a free patch immediately, before Week 1 is calculated if you can.
5. When unlocked, make a Paid Update to release around Week 5-6 after.

I like to use two development rooms - one makes games, the other makes game engines, updates, and paid updates.

When releasing games, follow this pattern and pick a genre to be every third release - in this case, I choose Adventure, one of the first four genres:
Adventure
Puzzle
Racing
Adventure
Puzzle
Skill
Adventure

If, of your last 5 games, 3 of them share a Main Genre, you will get "Bored Fans" penalty. This release pattern allows you to maximize use of Adventure and Puzzle: while occasionally releasing a Skill or Racing game. Once you get your trending genre unlocked, you can change things up - assume your genre is RPG, you can do this:

RPG
RPG
Adventure
RPG
RPG
Adventure
RPG
RPG
Adventure

Doing this, you are protecting Adventure from Bored Fans by making it every third release.
Intermediate/Advanced Tips
When making a game, check your Development Progress. You will get an idea of how good your game is expected be. When you set your sliders, you might recall the percentile ones for RPG, it's 40/30/15/15. You want to shift around the people in your room so your final score is a good match for this expectation. You might remove a Programmer or Graphics person if you check development report and see you have too much Tech or Graphics and not enough Gameplay.

Gameplay Features, Engine Features, and Consoles themselves can skew your games toward a certain score (Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Tech) and you want to adjust where you need to for your genre. Your prior game scores for the same genre. will clue you in if you need this one to have more gameplay or less graphics, for example. If you know you're getting a bunch of tech and not enough gameplay, you can remove all programmers. If it's a genre with 50 gameplay slider and it's still happening, you can cut out features that add tech and use all features with high gameplay.

You don't need to super micromanage everything - and even if you get it perfect, RN-Gesus will have something to say about it. Which also means if you're not 100% perfect, you can still get 97-100% percent scores by coming close enough.

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Have as many 90+ game devs as possible. Later in the game, there should be nobody else in the Development room unless you have a genre that skews toward graphics or sound. If so, then you can put 1 of each in the room. Usually, you will have too much "Tech" compared to everything else; which can be a symptom of gameplay features and use of Programmers in the Dev Room.

I don't worry about having every special sound/graphics/quality/etc room improvement. I check gameplay report and close and reopen and when I see it as close to 99/99/99/99 as it will be AND has zero bugs, I release it. The other graphic/sound/quality/etc can be added by making a paid update and using those rooms to enhance the paid update.

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Give every game one free update, one paid update (with a free update) ASAP. Then, a second free and paid (with free) update at the Week 5 mark if possible. If you release console exclusive games, this can keep them around longer. If you port that game to Arcade, it helps the IP for it a bit. Like I mentioned - paid updates can be used to add in features from the sound/graphics/quality/etc rooms.

Also, with Arcades - if you release an Arcade game and then port it, its sales will help increase the Arcade sales. Another good reason for a paid update to the port.

Note: I do not know if this works in both directions. When I port a console game to arcade, then release a paid console update on Week 4 or Week 5 (after the first 3 week rise), my Arcade sales did increase. This might just be an unrelated random increase, or a placebo effect - or, even better, it might work in both directions that the port helps the sales of the original.

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Paid Updates, Sequels, and Spin-Offs are great for increasing experience and building IP. At some point, literally everything you release will be either a Sequel, Spin-Off, or Paid Update to something. This is why you want to make good genre matches early - your first game, even ranked at 60, can be your first lucrative IP down the road.

I wait 2 years after release to make a sequel and change the number to the most recent issue. Dragon Fantasy becomes Dragon Fantasy 2 and Dragon Fantasy 3.

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Watch for market oversaturation. On the left side of Topics, is a bar that moves green, yellow, red. Avoid releasing topics that are red. Fans are sick of them, and they will sell less. Release high experience games that are green.

Later in the game, you can release a B+ game with a new genre, then give it 4 Paid Updates to master the genre now. This is a good method to quickly collect a group of genres to use later. You want to be aware of the Topics your Genre uses, and release your Sequels when their Topics aren't oversaturated.

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You can stick a bunch of bored do-nothings into the Research room and have them research some topics. This can be used with above tricks to stave off "I am bored, I quit!" for a while.
Employees
Training Rooms as quickly as possible. If you get someone early with good perks, pop them into the training room and keep them forever. You can also use training rooms to keep people like researchers and technicians busy in between stuff so they don't quit as often.

Technicians, when not making consoles, can slip to the workshops to make arcade cabinets. You can just port one game per Workshop and leave one more for contracts. It will take up space, but it's a great way to keep Technicians busy so they aren't quitting right before you need them to make a new console. Otherwise, they could go years at a time without work.

Always leave a few extra desks in your Support and Office,. These seats can be used to place bored employees during periods where they wouldn't have work and it won't hurt you that they are "misplaced" into the wrong role.

Create a separate 4 or 6 desk or so room for: Development, Console Development, Sound, Tech, Quality, Video - set them to auto complete all contracts and don't wait. This will give a LOT of money, better contracts, better contracted games - and contracted games can be console exclusive for your console, which is always worth doing. Earlier contracts will can be done with 4 desks. Later ones might require up to 8-9 but will pay over 100k. And by building these rooms, you aren't hovering your mouse over the contract icons on the bottom left of the screen, because as soon as they come up, they get started and completed automatically.

Training employees to 90 in their skills is important. You should have your Dev Team at minimum 70s before doing a B+ game and 90 before doing A games. When starting in the 1976 start, I stay with B games up to 1986 and pump them out like crazy. You want highly skilled employees in the correct room.

Employees need - Good Policies, Good Work Environment, Work.

Employee Settings:
1. No crunch time ever.
2. Low pressure.
3. Some Breaks or Many Breaks.

Rooms:
1. Carpet/Artistic Drawing helps room quality.
2. 1 Coffee Maker per 3 employees. 1 Water and Trash per 10.
NOTE: If desks are placed with clipping, this can be put in between desks by the chairs.
3. 1 Medical Cabinet per 3 employees. You can use hallways and space between desk/wall.
Once you get some awards for game of the year or gold records, they have 5 stars! Put them in rooms. One per room is good.

WORK: People like to be busy.
Techs: Workshops keep them busy when not making consoles, and increase their tech skill
Research: Don't auto-research topics. Research about one topic every 1-3 months. You can also use Training Rooms.
Extra Desks: Leave extra desks in your Support, Marketing, Research rooms, so you can toss people in there in between jobs, like you move Console Dev techs to Workshops above.

Corridor: It's important to use the Cleaning Robot. Ensure your hallway has some kind of Artistic Drawing 2, maybe a few chairs or benches.
Bathrooms: Add a trashcan and carpet. Maybe Artistic Drawings behind the toilets.
Lounge: You really only need Keyboards, Refrigerators and Seating. If you have TWO less desks than "Overcrowding Limit" per room, most rooms can fit a TV. You can also stick a Radio in between desks in most rooms. The more needs you can provide inside the room, the less people need to go to the lounge. The more needs you can provide in the room, the fewer needs the lounge must provide. So you can have small bathrooms and lounges.

Heating must also provide heat to lounges, bathrooms, and hallways. People WILL quit on the toilet and en route to places.

If you have an odd-width room with extra spacing, put the extra space in the middle, skewing both side's desks toward their walls, the space in the center can have a heater and some amenities.

Contract Work rooms are good to keep people busy. Just build 3-5 desk rooms and move some people over to complete the work.

Polishing games can keep people busy which means not quitting.

As a final resort, you can manually negotiate their contracts and pay them above their value to keep them from quitting.
3 Comments
Majber 1 Aug, 2023 @ 6:37am 
Hi, are all this tips still valid?
Raspoo 24 Dec, 2022 @ 2:46pm 
Hooray for Jim Cornette
JariZ 12 Nov, 2021 @ 1:50pm 
I botched my first gameplay and this helped a lot, thanks!