Hello everyone, I hope you had an awesome weekend! I am back with another update for you and want to update you on where I am in development for the game Tech Executive Tycoon. Last week was a very interesting week putting in more of the AI and testing it. This week I will be doing the same thing as this is probably the most intensive process of the development of this game. This week will be important toward fine tuning the experience that you the player will have when playing the game. Again, I don’t want to dig too deep into the specifics just yet of how it will all work.
For this update, I want to start to speak with you more about how your employees will impact your company. I also want to talk about what makes them tick. Each department will have different sets of skill positions, but in this update I want to share the overall purpose of the HR department which in this game reflects real life quite closely. As you can imagine, the HR department handles employee relations, management and evaluation. Your HR department will be primarily responsible for the happiness of your employees throughout. So that you can start to understand how you will be utilizing this department, lets discuss some specifics. The first thing to know is that the HR department is like a buffer for employee happiness. Employees will be happy or frustrated regarding different aspects of your company and their situation. It is part of the responsibility of your HR department to mitigate that. So when you have an adequately staffed HR department (which depending on their skill and talent will enhance or limit their effectiveness), your employees will naturally be happier, because the HR team creates programs that help employees of your company handle stress. The HR team is fully responsible for every employee within your company, from orientation to creating and compiling adequate training programs, so that your employees can progress through your company or just simply improve their skills over time.
Each employee you hire has a list of things that can affect their happiness. The final list is still being determined, but all in all they will have a considerable impact in the game. I will list a few of them and discuss how they will work; the list is as follows:
Benefits – You the CEO will have options for picking up insurance for your employees. This will not be a cumbersome process. In fact, the selection of benefits is quite straight forward. You get different options which have different value. Choosing one will show you how much it will cost your company to acquire and retain annually. As you can imagine, the cost directly correlates to the quality. You then have an option of passing some of the cost to the employee. So if they sign up (given they feel they can afford it), you will be charged per person within your company. You will have the option to absorb the full cost, therefore making your employees love you. However, this is just one source of happiness for each employee. The most challenging part might be that each employee weighs each source differently, so one employee may value benefits more than the next one.
Company Prestige – Your company has a reputation and this fuels the prestige level. The higher your company’s prestige, the more renown it becomes. A highly prestigious company gains certain benefits over it competition. That includes having people yearning to work at your company. When this happens, some employees will even endure lower pay for the opportunity to work for you. However, having a low prestige score can make it difficult to attract good to great talent. This will be random for each employee however, since every person wouldn’t be that particular.
Salary – This one is fairly huge. Employees work for pay and are no different in this game. Though some employees care more about where they work and that they are working in their desired field, most employees come for the money. As a result, underpaying employees will carry a heavy penalty. Overpaying employees will carry a certain boost to their efforts and productivity. In the game there will be a standard pay scale for each position and you will have a way to always stay up to date on this.
Comfort – In the game the office where the employee works will have a few ratings. A cleanliness score, a privacy score (managers and executives), and décor score. Cleanliness matters to every employee. Décor and privacy are an item of concern for managers and executives. So when assigning a manager or an executive, you might want to be mindful of this.
Personal Life – Trying to keep with a certain amount of reality, every employee has a private life and sometimes things are not as pristine as they might want to make it seem. In the end, this is one area that you the player will not have any sort of control over outside of just making sure your HR department is adequately funded and staffed to mitigate any negative effects of such events. However, each employee has a discipline score which also helps you. Employees with higher discipline more adequately manage their own problems.
So this are the current sources of happiness that is in the game. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to let me know what you think.
Richard brand: will there be company’s competing each other like Microsoft vs Sony and Apple
WEB: Yes, the main AI functions that I am working on is in fact the competing companies you will face in the game. Each one will have its own AI controlling its behaviors, so they will act on their own based on the market conditions and many other factors including how you affect the game world with your products and other actions.
Pine Tree: will I be able to choose the core count and clock speed of my CPU's and stuff like that?
WEB: Yes, you will. There will be base attributes you will select and set for each product you create.
Arctic Wolf: Will we as the player also be able to manufacture Power Supply Units & Memory? If so, can we also put those individual parts in an of pc build if we decide to be a manufacturer? Will we be able to customize the look of our CPU's, GPU's, Hard Drives, Motherboards, Memory & Power Supply Units (If they are added.) so we & human player pc manufacturers can tell the difference between brands if they want to use a specific product from our product line?
WEB: Currently power supply units and memory are not in the game “yet”. To the second part of your question, I will use an example of how you can use other products in a different one. When it comes to PC’s and Consoles, you can fit your CPU’s and GPU’s into them. It’s like you are modifying it to fit that specific system. The attributes of the CPU’s and GPU’s directly impact how good or bad the PC or Console will be as those units are very important to the operation of those products.
As far as customizing the look of the products you create, that is something I am planning to add after the release of the game.
When it comes to other companies using your products, that will be in the game. Some PC manufacturers might be very interested in using your CPU’s or GPU’s in their products. They will purchase the parts from you which can be a big boost to both your CPU/GPU and company.
Arctic Wolf: Can you add an ability that when playing as a technology/gaming company you can build a PC for your company employees/game developers & where you can see the components visually & put them all together to build say a gaming PC for game development or an office computer for productivity?
WEB: Once we add in the product building module, this is something that we want to add as well.
Arctic Wolf: What kind of target demographics or customers can we sell products to with computers?
WEB: Each product has a set of customers. Each will have their enthusiastic fans, business fans and casual fans. In addition, there are wealth classes in each of those groups depending on the physical location.
PKGameOnly: Did you take away the ability for the HR Manager/Dept. to hire all employees for whatever department that needs employees? Also if the HR Dept. is going to be able to train employees, it would be nice to see the employees going to a "Training Room" for the duration of their training. So when you look over at your company you will know which employee is actively working on a project or being trained and not working on projects. I like the status bar on each employee so you can see how they feel about different things going on around them. It would also be nice if there was a small window showing comments the employee would say, i.e. "Got Hired today", "Loved my training Class", or "Room too crowded", "No coffee offered" just things like that so that you the player or HR/COO will have an idea what personal issues the employees are having and maybe able to solve it to make a happier employee and hereby more productive employee who will make a much better product for the company.
WEB: No I did not. You will be able to pass certain responsibilities to your executives and managers. Mainly this will be represented in multiple ways. Right now, once you branch out to multiple locations, you will be able to hire executives and you can tell them to hire for a specific location and they’ll manage that process. If you do not have any executives, then you can pass it to your department managers, who will request the HR department to hire for that location where you want to fill seats.
Arctic Wolf: Ok so in the game you said we'll have the modular product creation module post release so my question is what will the UI be like for making computers? Will it be similar to consoles? Will it be a bit like the TV creation process you showcased in the tech executive tycoon trailer?
WEB: The TV creation process from the earlier trailer and previews of this game is a good idea of how I will approach the process, however the UI will be much better. The functionality of the old system will be what I pull from. So yes to a degree. Once we have something to show in that regard we will do so right away. I personally believe it will be awesome if I can pull it off the way I have drew it up.
ZAEROE: Are you planning to implement a rudimentary political system? Berlin was actually not so accessible up to 1990. Same goes to Moscow, Shanghai and similar cities, at least when it comes to an open economy. Or one would be restricted to only deal within certain areas for a time. But everything should be available at 1990
WEB: Right now the answer is no. I didn’t try to mimic the real world as far as time periods go. In the end, this game is more of a sandbox than a replication of the past. In fact there will be modes as you can start from 1970/75 or start from today or maybe even choose a year to start the game. However, there is still fine tuning to be done, and I plan to address some of the more blaring inaccuracies for the sake of those who may want to repeat history or change the course thereof more accurately. As far as political history, I will steer clear of that. The statement I made about the game being a sandbox, in a way that will allow players to rewrite history in a sense.
