[h1] Celebrating One Year of Early Access! [/h1] In celebration of one year since the beginning of Early Access, Mad Games Tycoon 2 will be on sale this weekend only for 25% off! This limited time offer is the largest discount the game has received, and will likely be the largest discount the game will receive until after release! With the game having had over 100 updates since its release last January, this is an excellent time to get involved in the game if you have not yet! Work continues on the game and there are still many additions and improvements in the process of being implemented, but we believe the game in its current state is a great representation of our vision for the game and the progress it continues to make. A thank you to everyone who has bought the game, left a review, provided feedback or sent bug reports! Your support has helped the game get this far and continues to push it forward. And a special thank you to all the game translators for their hard work. Your translation work has helped make the game playable in over 16 languages and allowed many new players to enjoy the game who would not have been able to without your work! Thank you! [h1] A Summary of the Changes, Additions, and Improvements from Throughout the Year [/h1] Many improvements have been added in comparison to the original Mad Games Tycoon before and after the release of Mad Games Tycoon 2 Early Access - many players who have already played are familiar with these changes already but for anyone new here is a summary of [b] some, not all of the changes [/b] (you can find a full list in the patchnotes thread on the discussion forum) - [i] Everything listed below is already present in the game, some things are still undergoing balancing, improvements or have additional changes coming but they are playable now! [/i] [b] Multiplayer! [/b] It's possible for you and your friends to play together and against each other! You are able to compete for the top spots on all the charts, for employees, contract work and of course compete for Game of the Year awards! You can also share research and financial assistance when you don't feel like crushing the competition! Just start a lobby in game and invite your friends to play! (Additional work is being done on this feature) [b] Larger and varied maps! [/b] No longer do you have to move (like in the original Mad Games Tycoon) when you've outgrown your studio. The game offers multiple campus style maps where adding an extra building to create your next triple A title is only a click away! There is also a sandbox map, which offers one huge building from the start letting you grow your studio at any pace you wish without having to buy extra space. [b] A new employee system [/b] You now create your own character at the start of the game with their own traits. Other employees have also special traits (both positive and negative) and a morale system based on how well they feel they're treated. If you give them too much crunch time, not enough breaks, let the studio get too cold or dirty and don't offer them amenities like a lounge they can quit! [b] Dozens of changes to game development [/b] Honestly too many to list here but I'll try to note some key differences and features in general - -Games now have an IP rating. - Do you want to build the next great game franchise? Now you can! The IP rating of a game grows as you release better and better games. If you happen to sweep the Year End awards you'll see your game IP get massive gains and become envy of all the competition! All the big IPs compete on a top 100 chart, with the biggest IPs getting boost to their game sales and merchandise sales. There is also an IP menu listing the history of each of your IPs, and all its stats and awards. - So many game types! - In addition to creating your standard games, you can create sequels, spin-offs of existing games, GOTY editions, budget versions, game bundles, remasters, MMOs, F2P, addons/expansions for games, standalone addons and port your games to Arcade machines or cell phones! -Arcades! - Participate in the Arcade boom of the 70s and 80s by building a workshop and creating (or porting) Arcade games. Set the price and quality of your machines and watch the orders come in as your technicians try to keep up with demand. -Individual Platform Market Shares - Do you want to release games for PC gamers only? Is your company exclusively a game developer for consoles? Do you have a game series that you feel should only be on a portable handheld system? This is all possible, as there are multiple platform types with their own market shares and active user bases. -Hundreds of genre combinations with their own settings - Every combination of genres is unique, a skill based puzzle game will have different settings than a skill based action game. It's up to you and your studio to figure out the most optimal settings for each through development and quality assurance game reports. -Specialized fan bases - Is your company known for releasing amazing RPGs? Expect to gain a large fan base of RPG fans who want the next great RPG and might be a bit less interested in buying your new Racing game! -Platform variations - In addition to the types of platforms having their own market share, every individual PC and console has its own technology level and complexity rating. You need to make sure the game engine you are using to develop your game is not too advanced for the platform you wish to develop on, and if the platform is very complex expect a much longer and buggier development process! [b] Become your own truly independent studio [/b] -Create your own consoles! Create a home or handheld console and compete against other console makers for market share. Try to become the #1 console that everyone must have! (Additional work is being done on this feature) -Publish your own games, and the games of other companies! Create your production lines, build your storage rooms and become a full-on publisher as you produce your own games and negotiate with other companies to publish their games! -Build your server rooms to host your MMOs and F2P games. Watch the number of players increase, but be sure to keep the interest in your game high or risk letting all that server space go to waste! -Deal with support calls from your fans - Keep an eye on your fan meter, your new big hit may be increasing support demands and unhappy fans will forget about your company if they are not addressed! [b] Progress through the eras and create gaming history! [/b] There are multiple starting dates from 1976 all the way up to 2015 but the game does not end there, you can go much further into the future if you wish! Starting in 1976 you will experience the progress of technology with new tech, items and other advancements becoming available as the years pass. Can you keep up with the progress of innovation, or will your company become a once great memory of a bygone era in gaming history? -Perform market research - Always be prepared for the upcoming popular trends, know when it is time to shift your focus from one console to another and watch the digital age begin to take hold of game sales! - Research new technologies as they become available and watch your studio become more experienced in these advancements through development and contract work. -Sign exclusive contracts with publishers you have built relationships with. Until you are ready to go fully independent and publish your own games, forming these relationships and the financial incentives they provide can be critical to the growth of your company! -Follow the history through dozens of charts, the history menu, full IP menus that list the entire series history and all of its awards, sales, and revenues, and a historical Year End awards menu that list each year's award winners! -Random events and random historical events - Whether you have random events on, or decide to go the historical route and deal with events from gaming history, there is always the possibility of an unexpected twist around the corner to deal with! [b] An ever evolving world of competition [/b] Presently the game contains over 90 competing companies, these companies can release every game type that you can, they utilize IPs and many companies even have exclusive IPs that only they develop! They release new platforms, offer contract work and even try to keep some of their own titles exclusive to their platforms. [i] And in a future not yet released addition, you will be able to buy-out these companies and influence their decisions! [/i] -New companies through the years - The earlier start date you pick, the more you will see new companies come into the market and begin competing against everyone. You may start with 10 or 20 competitors but by the end be competing against all 90+! -Tons of A.I and balance improvements - A lot of background work has gone into creating a more active, intelligent and competitive A.I/NPC. These companies will regularly give you a challenge for the top spots on charts and compete for the results of Year End awards on the harder difficulty levels! -Difficulty levels and speed levels! - From Very easy all the way up to Legendary difficulty, there is a difficulty level for everyone to pick at the start of a game. The higher you go in difficulty you will find the competition steps up their challenge, your sales and reviews will be more difficult and making that first billion dollars won't be so easy! While playing on an easier difficulty allows for a much more casual gameplay experience! And if you find normal speed too slow, or too fast, you can optionally alter how fast time progresses, giving you more time in each year to develop games, or progressing to the later years much faster! Keep in mind this will impact how difficult the game is. -Modding capabilities! Many changes are possible with simple text editing ( [b] backup your files! [/b] ) from adding new genres, companies, technologies or platforms there are a lot of possibilities. There is also an active helpful community ready to answer questions and who have created mods, guides and tools to help with this. (Due to frequent updates in early access, mod compatibility is regularly changing so keep this in mind when making changes, keeping backups can help mitigate this) [b] Dozens and dozens of other changes, additions, and improvements and also more things to come! [/b] As started earlier, We cannot list every change but there have been many, many quality of life improvements, conveniences added, big and small changes to features and a general focus on making gameplay as smooth and fun as possible! A lot of work and passion has gone into creating this game and this work and passion continues to go into it! I hope this list gives you more of an idea what is in Mad Games Tycoon 2 and you decide to join us in this early access journey as we keep working towards full release! [h1] Recent changes detailed [/h1] Here are some details on the most recent changes since the last Steam notification update - -There is now a mini weekly top 10 chart on the main screen, showing you which games top the sales charts for PC & Consoles, Mobile games, Arcades and F2P downloads! This chart be toggled on and off with the new button next to your contract reputation at the top of the screen. -Additional employee groups can now be created, increasing from the previous 12 max to 25 now. This should allow you enough groups to manage your large number of employees better. -For balance, NPC console market share now increases faster upon first being released. These consoles should be more useful to develop for in the beginning now and more accurately resemble the initial launch demand consoles go through. -Companies now have exclusive IPs. This was noted above, but now each company will have exclusive IPs that they focus on. They will work more intelligently to build up these IPs with sequels and spinoffs and create competitive games that will increase their value and place on the charts! There exist over 100 different IPs spanning over the decades that belong to the various companies each with a genre, topic and scheduled time of appearance. -NPC's exclusive IPs can now be further modded allowing you to add subgenres , subtopics and target group . These extra customization options should allow for much more specialization and variety when adding IPs to NPCs companies. -11 new companies. These companies and their associated IPs will serve as extra competition in the various genres they specialize in. -17 new company locations - Many more options to choose where your company is founded. -25 new Topics/Themes - This will add extra variety when creating games and the Racing genre got some extra attention specifically. The game now contains 255 topics/themes in total. - It's now possible to click your money listed on the bottom task bar in the game and open up your monthly balance. This provides a much easier and quicker way to keep an eye on your monthly income and expenses! -Lots of changes to NPCs/A.I - The higher the difficulty you play on, the more competitive the NPCs will become with their releases. Console developers will try to focus on their own platforms with their releases. NPCs will use IPs better and have had some bugs with IP gain fixed, so they now create valuable IPs just like players and the logic behind their development choices has been improved. They also now have a variation in their development speeds depending on the company. -Lots of bugs and balancing of issues fixed - A few of these bugs affected review scores, Remastered games had their sales improved, and there were some other calculation errors resolved. [h1] Latest Patch Notes [/h1] Below are the full patch notes since the last Steam notification update (always can find the latest on the forum) - (Build # represents the date the patch was released) BUILD 2022.01.21A -------------------------------- - It is now possible to display the weekly top 10 charts on the main GUI. - 25 staff groups can now be created. - Added two disk hardware components for handhelds (tech level 4 & 5). - The staff tooltip now displays the group name. - NPC console market share now increases more upon console release. - The tooltip of consoles now shows the number of units sold. - BALANCE: Effect of heaters increased. - BALANCE: Puzzle games and strategy games now make a good combination. - MODDING: For NPC IPs, subgenres , subtopics and target group can be added. - BUG: If your console made extremely high losses, it was credited as profit. - BUG: If you created an addon for a "AAA" game, "99999" was shown as the maximum gameplay feature. BUILD 2022.01.14A / BUILD 2022.01.17A -------------------------------- - Added 73 new special IPs for NPCs. - Added 6 new NPC companies. - Added 5 new themes. - 11 new company locations added. - You can now click on your money in the GUI to open the monthly financial overview. - NPC companies now have different development speeds. - The game toolltip now displays the topic and target audience. - Developer and Publisher menu: NPC companies can now be sorted by number of games developed / games distributed. - BALANCE: Founding date of some publishers and developers adjusted. - BUG: Complaint icons of employees were on top of each other. - BUG: LOD for some lockers were set incorrectly. - BUG: (Multiplayer Lobby) If "Random Events" was disabled, you could still enable "Historical Events". - BUG: Sales figures for arcade machines were calculated incorrectly. - BUG: Calculation error for sold units related to pack content for standard editions and deluxe editions corrected. - BUG: The gameplay feature "In-App Purchases" deducted more gameplay points as the level increased. - BUG: Picking up staff sometimes did not work. - BUG: NPC games could have a platform selected multiple times. BUILD 2022.01.11A -------------------------------- - NPCs that make consoles prioritize their own consoles for their games. - Mintendu and Siga create games exclusively for their consoles (unless they are mobile and arcade machine games, or there is no matching console). - NPCs now choose the topic of their games more intelligently. - The game tooltip now shows the platforms on which the game is available. - BALANCE: Sales figures of remasters increased. - BUG: Bug in the German text file for topics removed. BUILD 2022.01.10A -------------------------------- - NPC companies now have specially assigned IPs. - Added 5 new developers: Maxus, Code Design, BioSoft, Beta Softworks, TEKMO. - 20 new topics added. - Company logos are now sorted. - NPCs can now create F2P mobile games and MMO mobile games. - Menu "Create Spin-Off" and "My IPs": IPs can now be sorted by "Neglect". - Develop Free Updates Menu: Addons and ports can now be hidden. - New background graphics: Birds now fly over the map. - IP tooltips: It now shows how many weeks have passed since the last game for the IP was released. - BALANCE: NPC companies should now prioritize creating successors and spinoffs of successful games. - BALANCE: The higher the difficulty level, the less frequently NPC companies license player engines. - BALANCE: Sales of NPC games reduced. - BUG: (NPC games) Remaster and GOTY editions did not have the license set. - BUG: NPCs no longer used in-house engines. - BUG: (IPs menu) F2P games showed "Units sold" instead of "Downloads". - BUG: Replaced some duplicate NPC game names. BUILD 2021.12.23A / BUILD 2022.01.03A -------------------------------- - Malaysia, Indonesia, Belgium, Luxembourg, Colombia and Iceland added as company location. - Search function for company location added. - Game names of ports can now be changed afterwards in the "Development Report". - MODDING: Games can now have more than 99 gameplay features. - BALANCE: NPC companies now release games faster in the early years. - BALANCE: (NPC games) development costs for games adjusted. - BALANCE: NPC companies now release better games as difficulty increases. - BALANCE: NPC companies maximize their IPs faster with increasing difficulty. - BALANCE: NPC companies now develop more games that match their fanbase. - BUG: MMO addons did not have "[A]" set. - BUG: (Pack menu) Some numbers had a wrong format. - BUG: Due to incorrect TAGs in game names, text errors could occur in game names. - BUG: Addons for manufacturer exclusive games became multiplatform games. - BUG: When you wanted to dismiss the player character, a message box appeared unnecessarily. - BUG: (Pack Menu) Sometimes the retail prices changed when a game had "automatic price" enabled. - BUG: (NPC games) Spin-off sequels had the wrong game name. - BUG: (NPC games) The AI could create multiple remasters of a game. - BUG: History had text errors. - BUG: Sequels of games with a rating of 100% were sold significantly less. - BUG: If the progress of technologies had the value "NaN" due to cheat tools, the research could not be completed. - BUG: There were some bugs in the calculation of game ratings. - BUG: (Multiplayer) A crash could occur if an object did not have the correct position. - BUG: (Commissioned games) Games were offered for platforms that have already been removed from the market. (Retro games excluded) - BUG: Collision box for minigolf was buggy. - BUG: If an NPC won an award (e.g. "Game of the Year"), there was no bonus for his IP.