Gallery: What's Right (and Wrong) With Game Dev Story's Addictive Simulation
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As he crunched the numbers one last time, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert knew he'd have to shut down his game-development studio and let everyone go. He'd tell his employees that they were out of their jobs, that the dream was dead. Still, Gilbert wasn't really worried. If he had been, maybe he wouldn't have spent so much time developing PC adventures — games he knew wouldn't sell all that well — and maybe he would have been a bit more practical with his expenses. Maybe he would have done things differently if his studio were real. Game Dev Story, the deliciously addictive mobile game that Kairosoft released in October, lets players like Gilbert simulate the inner workings of a game studio, [Hollywood Mogul](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Mogul)-style. But how accurate is it? Does it genuinely capture the development process? Can it really help you learn how to run a studio? How terrible an idea is it to put pirates in an adventure game? I spoke to Gilbert, self-proclaimed Game Dev Story addict and a legendary game developer himself, to find out how true to life the game really is. __Above:__ Game Dev Story gives you access to a limited number of direction points for each game. You can use those points to emphasize a number of different criteria, each of which could have a different effect on how your game forms and how it ultimately sells. "This is kind of a simplified version of real life," Gilbert said. "The points they're talking about here are really time and budget. Developers always have to say, 'I have this much money: Where am I gonna put it? Where's that money best spent?'" So how accurate are the different fields? Do developers really pick between categories like "polish" and "game world"? "Kind of," Gilbert said. "I dunno about realism ... but things like niche appeal and approachability are definitely factors that we talked about. How accessible is this game to people? Is it something you need to understand an Xbox controller to navigate, or is it something mom and dad could play?" Innovation is one of the stranger categories, Gilbert added. "I don't think anyone really sets out to make an 'innovative' game," he said. "It just kind of happens." The problem with this point system — a problem that's very real for game studios — is the tradeoffs that developers must make when dealing with time and budget constraints. Gilbert's most recent game, comedy action-RPG [DeathSpank](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeathSpank), made a lot of those compromises. "We made a lot of tradeoffs in \[*DeathSpank*\] with the reusability in that world," Gilbert said. "Lots of the buildings, trees, monsters, things that populate the world were re-textured and reused. Maybe if it had been a full product, instead of a downloadable game, every cave or monster would be different. But those are the kinds of tradeoffs you make."
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Compartmentalized Game Design ----------------------------- [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8) simplifies the development process in a very bizarre way. Rather than throwing everything at you at once, the game compartmentalizes game design: First, you work on the scenario, then the graphics, then the sound. Finally, you go through a bug-testing process that can be skipped or half-assed to save some money. "There really aren't steps like this," Gilbert said. "The order that these steps happen is probably not the way it would really happen. You certainly would not wait until the beta version of your game to start doing sound." All those stages happen at once, which might have been too chaotic for a simulation game like Game Dev Story to capture accurately. "And of course, it's unrealistic to think that a company would release a game without fixing all of its bugs," Gilbert added. "That would never happen."
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Outsourcing, Just Like in Real Life ----------------------------------- While developing your videogame in [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8), you can choose to either handle each step internally or hire freelancers. Design, art and sound can all be outsourced by workers who might have little or no experience working in the industry. Outsourcing happens fairly often in real life, too. Unlike Game Dev Story, real companies rarely outsource programmers or designers. Artists and musicians, on the other hand, are often hired from outside the company. "It's too bad," Gilbert said. "Sound and music are really this forgotten thing that's just hacked on, because often they get outsourced and the musician isn't an integral part of the development process." He also emphasized how music can lend huge emotional power to games, as demonstrated by Gilbert's [Monkey Island](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Island_%28series%29) series. "One of the big parts of the music's effect in Monkey Island 2 is that \[composer\] Michael Land was part of the team," Gilbert said. "He was there day in, day out, writing music for the game, very integrated in the process. I wish that happened more."
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Pirate Adventures and Other Unpopular Genres -------------------------------------------- Pirate adventure? Never gonna sell, if you ask the trendsetters of [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8). For each game, you pick a genre and a type from a list of options, creating game hybrids that could range from "Ogre Racing" to "Dance RPG." Some combinations sell far better than others — there's even a [GameFAQs guide](http://db.gamefaqs.com/mobile/iphone/file/game_dev_story_genre.txt) that ranks them all. But those rankings don't account for trends that might affect genre popularity. "One of the issues here is that genre popularity does change," Gilbert said. "Some movie could come out and make a whole new genre — like, say, vampires — a lot more popular." Even a hit game could massively boost a genre's popularity, he added. "Who would've thought of doing westerns before [Red Dead Redemption](http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/agegate/ref/?redirect=)?" When Gilbert played Game Dev Story, he didn't put much stock into genre popularity. He just went with what felt natural: PC adventure games. After all, he was the force behind classic games like [Maniac Mansion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_Mansion), Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders and the cult classic Monkey Island series. That's why his fake company flopped — PC adventure games just wouldn't sell. "The game is so realistic that my PC adventure game company went out of business," Gilbert said.
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Playing the Reviews Game ------------------------ Once your game ships in [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8), you're subjected to a slew of magazine reviews, which are presented as one-line summaries followed by numerical scores. "I got a big kick out of the bluntness and simplicity here," Gilbert said. "This is probably exactly how game developers look at reviews — the last line and then the score." How depressing. But hey, most people would be lying if they said they didn't sometimes skip ahead to see how a reviewer scored a game. After all, aren't most consumers just looking to see how they should spend their money? "You really have to look at reviews with a grain of salt," Gilbert said. "There isn't a point where I've looked at one review's critiques and said, 'Hey, I've got to do that better.'" But maybe developers can learn from reviews as an aggregation. "I like to look at trends — if every reviewer found the combat to be too hard, maybe that's something that needs to be addressed in some way," Gilbert said. "Not necessarily that it should be easier, but maybe it should be communicated more correctly." So how does Ron Gilbert read reviews of his games? "Simple," he said. "I read the good ones and pretend the bad ones didn't happen."
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On Advertising and Marching Bands --------------------------------- In order to build up your company's fan base in [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8), you can take out all manner of advertisements — magazine ads, online ads, radio ads ... and marching bands? "We hire a lot of marching bands," Gilbert said. "I'm surprised you haven't seen them." Sarcasm aside, one strange aspect of the game-development simulation game is the way your company advertises. Rather than marketing for one specific game, you'll advertise the company itself. "All companies are thinking about their brands," Gilbert said. "Look at [BioWare](http://www.bioware.com/) — that's a brand. When BioWare comes out with an RPG, people will buy it because it's a BioWare RPG. Whereas if Stupid Games Inc. came out with an RPG, it'd be a lot harder for them to get attention." But it's not like BioWare goes and takes out an advertisement for BioWare — the company would take out an advertisement for, say, [Dragon Age II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Age_II). Which leads to the follow-up question: What's the best way for game companies to advertise? "What struck me about the advertising here is that they really missed out on the grassroots portion," Gilbert said. "For smaller developers, you're going to spend far more time and money doing social networking — Twitter, Facebook, talks, panels — stuff that helps you get your name out there."
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Moonlighting on Movies and Mascots ---------------------------------- In order to make some extra cash between projects, [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8) allows you to take on external contracts. These contracts, which range from movie development to mascot design to comic creation, are often completely unrelated to videogames. "A lot of developers definitely take on contract work, but it's never really non-game-related," Gilbert said. "I could see a developer maybe doing 3-D graphic work for television commercials or something like that, but not something that's outside of their core expertise." Gilbert's fake game studio only made PC adventure games — no outside contracts necessary — but what about his real studio? "Well, at [Humongous Entertainment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humongous_%28game_developer%29) we did a lot of kids stuff," Gilbert said, referencing projects like Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam. "We worked on licensed games, but it wasn't really contract work."
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In the *Game Dev Story* Zone ---------------------------- When "in the zone," one of your programmers or designers can rack up points at extraordinary speeds. The portrayed studio atmosphere is small and simplified, but is it accurate? "Programmers clearly do not burst into flames," like they sometimes do in *Game Dev Story*, Gilbert said. "But there actually is a lot of truth to this. Whether you're a programmer or an artist and you're working, you're really on fire. You're coding, getting through all this stuff, thinking of cool innovations, new ideas. It's just such a rush." Interestingly, the studio in [Game Dev Story](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/game-dev-story/id396085661?mt=8) is set up so your character, resting at a desk on the top left of the screen, does absolutely nothing. He just sits back and watches as his staff does all the work. "Yep, the CEO just sits there, detached," Gilbert said. "The secretary is the go-between between him and the commoners." Gilbert recently signed on to work with longtime friend and collaborator Tim Schafer at [Double Fine Productions](http://www.doublefine.com/). But Schafer, Gilbert explains, isn't exactly that kind of CEO. "Double Fine is far different than other companies," Gilbert said. "It might sound cliché, but their vision isn't really just making money. The company was started by Tim, a creative person with a very strong vision for the company, and it's an interesting place because of that."
