GDM - DLC Creation Deets

First thing to note is the actual update 9.0 is not ready yet.  Unfortunately it has proven to be fairly complex, and more time is needed to complete / test / build the new version.  I was hopping to hit the update pre cyberpunk2077, but I will fall short of that.  It will be finished soon though minus some cyber time ^^

DLC Deets

Creating DLC is categorized as "Special" work, which is great because we only had contract work / engine creation as special work, and I have been looking to add something more substantial to this category to give more validity to the special category skills such ass "Rush".  I think this handles that nicely.

DLC can be created for Large and AAA games for 1 year after the games release.  This was a tricky choice for me as in reality there are no rules.  Some games do 1 year season pass of DLC then no update, others like payday 2 still do DLC 8+ years later.  This however is a video game and to quote a famous line "Player will optimize the fun out of a game" which basically means if DLC is better than games people will only do that, and if games are better than DLC no one will make any DLC.  To combat this I decided to make DLC quite profitable, but then limit the creation time to 1 year so it's good but its limited.  I think this will allow people to make some DLC without just going full DLC mode forever once they hit large games.

As for how DLC is created this gets a little complex, so hopefully this will make sense.  When you decide to create a DLC first we gather all the info from the created game to set minimums and data in the hud.  Your average review score is cut in half and given as a base expected quality % for your DLC.  Your total bubbles for the game is cut into 1/3rd and set as a minimum amount of needed bubbles to create to make a quality DLC.  Time is set to 3 weeks and base price for the DLC is set to half your game's price and ranges around that.  Ie for medium game that sold at 40  your DLC price would range from $13-20.  Your game creation cost is quartered and set as a base DLC price as well.

All your engine features are available to be selected and added to the DLC.  Each feature added will add increase the cost / tech in the DLC / time to create / dlc expected quality.  Features that are in the genre's very high category give boosted quality / tech while adding less time / cost.

You need to add enough features to reach 100% expected quality.  Enough tech to = the game engine tech (this simulates if you put enough into the DLC or would people feel you didn't try hard it's just a cash grab type situation).  You then set the price which does affect quality, higher price will slightly lower quality where low prices will slightly increase quality for players.

You then have your team start cranking out bubbles for the duration of weeks you had in the DLC creation.  Ideally you want this to be a little amount of time as possible while still producing at least 1/3rd your games total bubbles.  Skills like Rush can make short times no problem same for well trained staff, as there no limits to who is responsible all staff create bubbles based on research / focus to there full affect.

All these factors are then taken into account and a score is mapped from the quality ranging from 0-10, then this  score is used against your units sold of the game to simulate how many of your owners bought the new DLC.

You receive a breaking news which shows you the score of your game and has random positive and negative messages pending the score.  Shortly after you receive DLC sales as a 1 time chunk.  I was going to simulate sales by weeks, but I felt a quick cash influx made sense for this type of product and makes it different than game sales.  I am just using breaking news so that there is no interruption to game-play with menu pops or pausing timers etc etc   I like to avoid to many forced pop ups.

I put a short video on YouTube showing off the WIP concept  

I would love to hear your thoughts / suggestion and generally feedback about how I implemented this system.  It is still very WIP and balance can shift and system could change based on player feedback.

If you havent yet please consider wish-listing the game on steam support would mean a lot to me, but of course work will continue on this free version for now.  Steam EA planed for June / 03  / 2021

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1478350/Game_Dev_Masters/