Cyberpunk Megacorp Simulator - Spinnortality

[Cikomyr]

SplatterCatGaming had a fun gameplay video:

Trying a YT link on my mobile...

Basically, you are a Megacorp. You research products. You research marketing spins. You sell your product where the spin will work out best based on demographics.

You gain control of the media. You change demographics to better sell products. You develop rather immoral product. You influence governments to legalize your product. You sell your product.

You stage black ops coup to destabilize nations. You put puppet leaders who like you. You keep sowing chaos. Government collapse. You incorporate the territory.

No idea how far this goes, but this sounds awesome. There is a free demo available, and the game is on Kickstarter.

[Eldan]

Sounds pretty great, but that name is clunky as hell.

[Cikomyr]

Spinnortality?

I thought so at first, until i got where it was going for.

Marketing approaches are "spins". These are how you make most of your money.

And the game finishes when your avatar dies. Initial lifespan is 50-80 years old after start. But you can extend it with technologial research, so the game is also a search for immortality.

So.. Spin-Immortality. Spinnortality.

[Seerow]

Whelp that was a fun watch. Sold me on the kickstarter at least.

[Eldan]

Spinnortality?

I thought so at first, until i got where it was going for.

Marketing approaches are "spins". These are how you make most of your money.

And the game finishes when your avatar dies. Initial lifespan is 50-80 years old after start. But you can extend it with technologial research, so the game is also a search for immortality.

So.. Spin-Immortality. Spinnortality.

Yes, yes. I get that. I get what they mean. It's still clunky to actually say.

[Cikomyr]

Whelp that was a fun watch. Sold me on the kickstarter at least.

It looks immensely fun XD

There is a free demo to try out! Which i will totally do during the weekend!!

[ufo]

The demo seems to actually just be the current build of the full game. I just spent my whole evening with it, I was entertained.

[Cikomyr]

I was really entertained too. I always felt a dire need of more liquidities, or more social contacts, but i always feel like i am restricted mostly because the very choices i made myself.

[jamesPatton]

Hey guys, I'm the game's dev. Glad to hear you guys like the game, thanks! :) Don't hesitate to ask me any questions about the game.

And yes, I completely agree about the name. I picked it back when... well... to be honest it was a bad pun that I kind of regret. Pretty sure I'm going to have to change it soon, any ideas?

[Cikomyr]

Hey, Mr Game Dev, thanks for popping in!

I asked you a few questions in the comments of SplatterCatGaming's vid, but you probably missed them.

- procedural generation of nations stats is a good idea. 2060 is far enough to allow any nation in the world to go.anywhere on your scales. I initially though there were a lot of "extreme" positions initially, but then after playing for 8 hours, i changed my mind. So no more questions here.
- Does your procedurally generation of demographic garantee a diversification of cultures, or it would be possible to have all-materialist nations at generation? Does the "natural drift" push for more diversity in the world, or is 100% random?
- third question was asking if there was natural drift. I now know that "yes"

I played for a good 8 hours now. It was really fun, i destroyed a nation and rebuilt it as Corponation with 100% ownership. It will most likely be my main source of income in the near future. I acquired majority % ownership in another (too bad you cannot outright buyout the opposition).

However, i reached a point where I feel the game.. stalled a bit. The only thing i do now is trying to weaken laws everywhere, develop more products that i cannot sell for now, and.. wait for my contacts to build up so i can do more stuff (we need more contact development options).

Do you have more gameplay options planned to arrive eventually? I know the game is an early.buils, but i enjoyed my time!

Edit: i can also see you have "manage social media" technology implemented already ;)

[ufo]

Some small design suggestions: tooltips for goddamn everything. Check out the Endless games by Amplitude for what I’m thinking of. I found myself confused at times because as a non-expert most of the economy- and tech jargon is pretty much interchangeable techbobabble - and I think it’s a good idea to keep it that way, but find ways to work around it.

As a Linux user, keyboard input is... let’s say fun :D I wanted to call my corp Scales Inc. and through my best effort I managed to type in “0scales44 corp”. Not a major problem at all since I didn’t use the keyboard at all past that screen. Sound controls inside the game options would be nice. I dig the music but it quickly gets repetitive and the interface instantly made me want to listen to Ben Prunty.

Something that made me enjoy the game a lot is the tongue-in-cheek but quite mature way that many concerns of modern innovation are handled, and obviously problems of runaway capitalism. I love the snipes at reactionary tendencies in the spins, but they are also quite scary for being grounded in reality. These themes taken together make me feel that you’ve created very good cyberpunk, especially considering how smoothly you’re telling a quite typical cyberpunk story from a perspective that’s rarely explored in that genre. The game managed to make me feel like I was playing some sort of political RPG when the nitty-gritty game mechanics are actually more like a typical management sim.

I didn’t play a game to the end yet, mind you. And I’ll probably wait for a new release before tasting this again, but I’ll definitely be back for more. Well done! Much love for Linux support and even more love for having your work freely available <3

[Maryring]

I'm sorry to say, but I didn't really like it.

The early game starts interesting, but you run out of things to do very quickly. And more importantly, things to spend money on. I tried to go for the Good/Green ending. Everyone loved me and considered me a force of good without me doing any publicity stunts. I forgot the thing even existed for the most part. Early game I used money to change laws only, but by the time the laws were lax enough that I could sell my more novel stuff and earn tons of cash, I had nothing to spend money on. I was gonna live for another 60 year and had so much money to spend on nothing of value whatsoever. Not even the schools for contacts because I had far more contacts than I knew what to do with as well. And I still couldn't win because apparently the universal income doesn't exist? I couldn't find it on the agenda list at least.

Espionage felt like the only two things that mattered were lowering or raising prosperity value. And while vital to winning the game, it's also... really... boring. Sitting around, waiting for your military contacts to lower the prosperity far enough down that I can rebuild about two thirds of the world into what I want. By the time I'm doing this, no challenge remains in the game.

Furthermore, the project that allows you to see how a specific spin will be received not only removes all thought from the game, but also reveals how the main choice of the game, deciding on a spin for your product, isn't really a choice at all, but a calculation.

The spins themselves are nice, and the world has good dark humour, but as far as gameplay goes, I don't enjoy it.

[Cikomyr]

I have to add another specific +1 shutout for the quality cyberpunk slightly tongue-in-the-cheek yet realistic/grounded. Its a pleasure to read.

[jamesPatton]

Dev again - wall of text incoming!

Cikomyr: glad you had fun!

Yes, the game's been mostly tested for the first 4-6 hours, but not much past that, so it doesn't have a very well-balanced midgame or endgame. That's one of the things I'll be taking a close look at in the next few months. I'm hoping that I'll be able to give players more interesting goals for the midgame, not quite sure how yet though.

What would you say were the things that were most lacking for you? Was it that you couldn't weaken the laws quickly enough? Or was it that the whole thing felt rudderless?

ufo: Yes! Tooltips for all!!!! At some point I'm going to do another UI pass, and when that happens I'll tooltip the hell out of this thing.

Oooooooh, yeah, I need more Linux testing :/ Thanks for the heads up! Sound controls are planned, just need to look up exactly how the Unity sound system works.

I'm glad you liked the tongue-in-cheek-but-oh-my-god-this-is-kind-of-real tone! It's like... the world is kind of ridiculous right now, and the best option might be to make fun of it, because it is all laughable? I'm SO GLAD that you think I'm doing good cyberpunk! That is a hell of a compliment.

Actually yes, I think you stopped at the perfect point because as Cikomyr pointed out, the midgame is pretty slow right now, and the endgame doesn't exist yet (victories do not trigger). But you can always come back to it on release, or in a later build if you decide to become a beta backer.

Maryring: That's fine, thanks for your feedback! It sounds like the whole thing was just way too easy for you. What would have improved your experience? Maybe a system that detected you were doing well, and threw some problems at you?

Universal Income should be on there, but you have to scroll down - maybe that was the issue?

Yes, lowering or raising prosperity needs a serious buff. A lot of people have complained that it just takes way too long, so I'm going to make that a much quicker experience. And yeah, by that point the game's just a slog of "I have all the resources I need, I just need to push this button 100 more times to win." Not fun :/

What do you mean by "reveals how the main choice of the game, deciding on a spin for your product, isn't really a choice at all, but a calculation."? I thought it was clear that the spin angle you choose is a calculation you make to try and make as many consumers use the product as possible.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! :) The campaign is into its final week and looking pretty good. :D

[Cikomyr]

I think midgame is the point where you should have the rising tension with your Rival. I mean, just having him there (but impotent) somewhat early on in the game is a good idea to set the stage (a.k.a. see him coming), but midgame should be the time where the gloves come off and you start dishing it out.

I think you should have a somewhat exclusivity mechanic in place; maybe only one of you between your rival and you can launch a product in a certain country? Or maybe you basically have exclusivity on a marketing spin, so you can launch the same product but you *have* to use a different marketing spin in that territory? So if you are successful, you can cut into their profit margin?

Maybe have some "market research" option. I like some of the choices we can make when faced with problems ("reduce price", "marketing campaign"), but maybe have those be actual product/campaign/country-specific boost/modifiers you can apply. So if you launch Social Media in Southern Africa, and your opponent picked a better media spin, maybe you can voluntarily reduce price to increase your market share (and deny your opponent's).

I'll have some more ideas. But i have to say, your game is good stuff. Are you considering expanding a little more the spec ops division to maybe have more Shadowrun evocation?

[jamesPatton]

All really good ideas, and I've been wondering how to make the rival mechanics more engaging. I'll see if I can work them in. :)

Yeah, I'd really like to do more with the military taskforce/spec ops ideas rather than just have them be a passive force that give you a boost. The whole point of a taskforce is to send them in somewhere to do something, right?

By the way, the Kickstarter made its goal! :D

[Cikomyr]

Congrats on making the Kickstarter. I feel there is a really good game in the works here, and if you continue to put as much love and skill into it as you did the early game experience, you might have a true cult classic on your hands.

Keep the good writing in-game, it makes the difference between "a game with fun mechanics that distract me" and "a game i am actively looking forward to play further". Good writing is what propelled SMAC above and beyond the mere "higher than average" game ranking it deserved on its mechanics alone. It just makes the game more memorable and lasting.

Like i said, mid game should probably be about fighting your rivals. And dont hesistate to try out tweaks or reworks of some early mechanics if it makes your game easier.

You should have more.. varying available legislatures. The current is, in my opinion, a bit bland. How about having certain legislature agendas only available once you reached a certain influence with a ruling party?

Potential agenda could be:

- State-backed market monopoly of one of your product
- State providing your product to all citizens, thus paying for them and ensuring 100%
market penetration ("everyone should own a car! Government will have a standard-issue America-made Ford")