#game dev tycoon

[videogamepolls]

Have you played Game Dev Tycoon (2012)?

Yes

No

I watched someone play it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onSep 6, 2025

Requested by anon

[thejolteonmastertj]

I happen to be on a Game Dev Tycoon kick atm so people’s reactions to Nintendo bringing 12+ year old franchises back from the dead is so (wholesomely) funny to me

b/c now I imagine this is what’s happening when I reach the late-game of a successful run & am just making sequels to everything cuz idgaf about research points anymore yippie.

[galenwilson]

Something about Game Dev Tycoon

I've been thinking about Game Dev Tycoon recently. It's a relic from a fundamentally different time and I don't think it gets discussed as much as it perhaps should. First and foremost is the fact that it truncates the history of video games to only the 80's onward. This is perhaps true to a certain perception of gaming - the NES being the console which revitalized the industry in America. GDT was made by Australian developers, and from my Australian friends' testimony their perception of video games is pretty directly tied to the American market, but it could easily also be the fact that the game has a focus on the Home market scene, and the 70's was much more focused on the arcade scene.

All that aside, the perspective that the game ultimately supports is one which pitches every game developer as Valve - a plucky indie studio that becomes a billionaire Publisher, tech developer, and software giant while still being beloved by millions of fans. I'm not about to crucify the game for not showing every aspect of game development, especially the Crunch culture - while the EA Spouse blog post was made in 2004, conversations about Crunch culture were something that gained much more momentum throughout the mid-2010s. I still find it interesting that even at your maximum capacity, your studio only has less than a dozen employees when games had long since become hundred-person projects at the AAA level.

What I find most interesting is how many of the various community-related decisions boil down to "Boss, do you want to be inexplicably mean to the fans for no reason and save $40, or do you want to release the source code to a game you haven't touched for 50 years and make 5 whole new fans?" I'm exaggerating for effect, of course, but it's a perspective on corporation-fan interactions that clearly comes from people who are, themselves, fans first and foremost. It obviously makes sense from a fan perspective to, say, have a fan base who like to mod your games, because that's how they remain socially relevant. DOOM, Skyrim, Fallout, so many Bethesda properties are maintained in the general gamer sphere by their mods and custom content. But there's a failure to understand that businesses only care about these things to the extent that it will affect their bottom line. Bethesda would love to put a wall around the Garden that is DOOM, but they understand that doing so would be extremely unpopular and detrimental to their brand. Their closest attempt to this failed from a fan perspective, and was rife with content theft. Embracer Group, meanwhile, has no qualms squashing companies and hoarding IPs until they might one day be profitable to use. When Volition was shut down, it squashed the chance of a PC patch for Saints Row 2 (still the best Saints Row game, or at least the most well-regarded), which had been worked on by a since-dearly departed developer. Embracer doesn't have a reason to release the patch, because it would not tangibly make them money or value, it would only be a nice gesture (something companies are immune to.) They have no reason to do anything with the Saints Row brand because it recently had a high-profile failure and they can't recoup that loss until it becomes nostalgic. And the Saints Row fan base, however much of it still exists, doesn't have anywhere near the legacy or cultural capital to challenge Embracer, or convince fans of other works not to buy Embracer products.

A company like Nintendo, meanwhile, is always in flux with its audience, because while it doesn't have to appeal to the 'core gamers' crowd like said crowd thinks they do, they're currently gunning to be the next Disney, and Bowsette was essentially their Zootopia; a reminder that the Fans are Always Watching. They have to carefully maintain their image, and the ways they've managed to do so and failed to do so are both worth a discussion much longer than this Tumblr post. But they're well known for taking legal action against both a pirate who they sued into a debtor's prison and emulator groups that fuck up a little too much. They understand what their IP is worth, and they'll (hyperbolically) murder anyone who gets in the way. Game Dev Tycoon doesn't offer any perspective like this, and I can't blame it - it was made in a wholly different time. But it was also kind of the last game like it to reached the level of success it did, and I really want there to be an updated version - if not a whole new product, then a mod that makes the game much more grounded in the reality of game development AND game publishing. I want it to give you the opportunity to experience a range of perspectives. For one thing, while your main character is the only one you directly control, there isn't an aspect of 'auteurship' in your games, since it's more like you're just one of many developers in a company that eventually also does Publishing, and then also creates consoles, and so on. And that's not an invalid perspective in the industry at all! But there's other perpsectives. Imagine a game where you could choose scenarios like, "you're John Carmack or John Romero, and you're making DOOM", to "You're one of 130 developers working on Mass Effect," to "You're Double Fine and you just got purchased by Microsoft," and so on. Really make you embody different people in different time periods, or naturally lead to scenarios inspired by the realities of developers. Naturally, on the other side, I want to be able to be more evil about being a Publisher. Once a studio has made it, the nature of private capital is to maximize profits and minimize costs, and that leads to extremely unethical and borderline illegal behavior. Let me do that, let me corrupt what I once held dear, let me take the fun out of making video games so that I, the average Gamer, can understand the perverse incentives of my favorite pastime. And, hell, let me do the opposite - let me be the one to sponsor weirdo Auteur directors like Kojima, or hire quirky studios that match my brand like a Devolver Digital. At the very least, if I'm going to be Valve, then I should be able to buy 7 Superyachts.

[origamiopossums]

Because my husband beta reads some of my Prison Break fics, he’s apparently had it on the mind a lot. Mind you, he’s never seen the show.

He’s playing Game Dev Tycoon and his newest game in the game is called “Escape From Panama”. He’s basing his games on PB based solely on what he knows from me and my fics.

[doctor-nu]

I've been playing Game Dev Tycoon again recently.

[min3nc]

they simply don't understand our vision

[hahajax]

this is hilarious

[gemstone-gynoid]