Software Inc. Review (Salee)
I definitely love this game. Some aspects are really well designed and figured out how to make it an enjoyable game. It is not enough to model complex things, the hardest is to simplify and automate it so it does not get overly repetitive and not too complex to be a second job.
Very immersive, lot of ways to make it work just as in real life. Many levels of management, and the ability of automation to avoid being saturated with micromanagement.
Good and ergonomic UI. I do not care graphics, it does not really matter... maybe a little better animation could improve it and computer screens representing what they actually do, design, code, art or support.
Challenging gameplay with competitors and simulated user reactions and surpisingly wide range of challenges, like fire inspectors, burglars, lawsuits, complaints.
On the other hand, there are so obviously neglected parts...
- balancing. Marketing and accounting is ridiculously misbalanced. Why would I spend more to marketers than actual developers? A 1-2 person marketing team can do the job for 20-30 developer / designer size projects... and usually there is like 2 person for accounting for 100+ employee size companies. This is just ridiculous and annoying.
- Framework. I get it, speeds up not only sequel but new IP. However it does not update. Frameworks should be individual IP like 2D/3D editor and Audio tool so can be updated tech level, to make it actually worth making. Just like in real life, commercial SDK-s do update.
- The product feature targeting triangle is very misunderstood, YT people do not understand it and make false examples.
- Software has quality and creativity, but no information of the outcome until its released, whic should not be the case, that is why review is there. And even when released, fixing the bugs should improve quality at least in a range.. ok I get it, bad spaghetti code is hard to improve but not impossible.. every update should improve quality and it should be more like a percentage. There should be sliders both for design and alpha, phases where quality <-> time can be balanced.
- The digital distro platform.. sort of like a separate IP but no way to market it, and no clear way how to make ppl. wanting to sell sw on it, without excliusivity deal. And how? In 1985 there is no OS supporting networking and no ppl having network spceialization... this should be a 90's thing, maybe rather 00.
- Contracts and deals are a mess. These are the same things, yet messed up. These could have been unified, and could decide which phase to join in a development instead having 2 similar features.
- Leaders are nonsense. I know, this is mostly the case in real life as well, most managers are useless, are nothing more than money sinks and meeting organizers but this is a game, there could be something they do. Like they could work on group coheseion and fix compatibility issues. Instead they are expensive, and sleep most of the time, organize meeting and socialize. I know they could do HR and automation maybe that is the only reason they are good for.
- The review system is good idea, but the amount of alpha completion I lose is just a dumb random number. Even if I had good 9+ overall score, after reiteration I lost 50% of the project, this is just annonying random crap totally killing a good idea.