Combining Energy and Realistic Mining in a single DLC

[David]

Would you be interested in a new DLC combining the Energy DLC and Realistic Mining DLC ideas, as well as related ideas from older suggestion posts?

Energy DLC:
https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=5656

Realistic Mining DLC:
https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=5159

Older Posts:

Energy First:
https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic ... lit=energy

Electrical Grid:
https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic ... lit=energy

Electricity conversion efficiency:
https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic ... lit=energy

[BioBiro]

1 preorder, right here.

[femoral]

Yes!!. This is innovative. With this, It would be awesome to also see a Regulation System, Privatizations, Municipalizations, Expropriations and a Real Option System for the player!

[standardplayer]

Global Commodity Market would be an important component for this DLC as a place to sell the commodities you produce See this post about it:
https://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewt ... 314#p31314

[standardplayer]

• Resource Production Business Life Cycle:
o Lease or Purchase Land for Exploration
o Perform a Resource Exploration Survey of Land to find Reserves
o Perform a Reserve Appraisal: Estimate Reserve Size and Cost per Unit of Production
o Develop a Production Facility
o Initial Resource Production
o Dormant Reserve and/or Facility
o Second or Third Resource Production (with Advanced Technology after Research)
o Final Land Restoration

• Refining Business: Oil, etc.

• New Resource Only Map Areas:
o Rural Areas:
*Forest Biome
*Desert Biome
*Swamp Biome
*Mountain Biome
etc.
o Coast Line and Ocean (for Offshore Oil Rigs)

• Mining Costs:
o Capital Outlay Costs: Exploration, Resource Appraisal, Facility Construction
o Mineral Right Royalties X% of Resource Value or Production
o Production Facility Labor and Maintenance Costs

• Resource Markets:
o Global Commodity Market
o Local Market: Manufacturers or Refiners

• Cost Containment/Management:
o Exploration R&D to Reduce Costs
o Production R&D to Reduce Costs
o Staff Training
o Secondary Production Technology: Ability to Revive Old Mines and Wells to Extract Additional Resources by Drilling Deeper or using Advanced Technology


• Mining Company Facilities:
o Exploration Office: Employ Petroleum Engineers and Geologist to Locate Reserves
o Mining R&D Office: Employ Specialized Scientist to Research Mining Techniligy

[David]

Hi standardplayer,

Thanks for your input.

• New Resource Only Map Areas:
o Rural Areas:
*Forest Biome
*Desert Biome
*Swamp Biome
*Mountain Biome
etc.
o Coast Line and Ocean (for Offshore Oil Rigs)

I think this feature cannot be easily supported with the existing CapLab engine.

In this poll http://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewto ... =14&t=7197, a community has expressed a modest interest in:
"Develop a new standalone business strategy/simulation game for the mass market and release it on Steam. (Steam is a platform for games capable of appealing to a broad audience. It's our opinion that niche economic games do not thrive on Steam.)"

Would you like to see a new game being developed from the ground up focused on realistic mining and energy? The scale can be different, playing on a world map like those Paradox grand strategy games, as opposite to being limited to a few city maps in CapLab.

Potential gameplay elements that can be made possible with a global map include:
-Purchases of exploration rights from different nations with different policies
-energy crisis
-spikes and collapses in energy prices
-depletion of fossil fuel
-transition to green energy.

What are your thoughts?

[standardplayer]

Hi standardplayer,

Thanks for your input.

• New Resource Only Map Areas:
o Rural Areas:
*Forest Biome
*Desert Biome
*Swamp Biome
*Mountain Biome
etc.
o Coast Line and Ocean (for Offshore Oil Rigs)

I think this feature cannot be easily supported with the existing CapLab engine.

In this poll http://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewto ... =14&t=7197, a community has expressed a modest interest in:
"Develop a new standalone business strategy/simulation game for the mass market and release it on Steam. (Steam is a platform for games capable of appealing to a broad audience. It's our opinion that niche economic games do not thrive on Steam.)"

Would you like to see a new game being developed from the ground up focused on realistic mining and energy? The scale can be different, playing on a world map like those Paradox grand strategy games, as opposite to being limited to a few city maps in CapLab.

Potential gameplay elements that can be made possible with a global map include:
-Purchases of exploration rights from different nations with different policies
-energy crisis
-spikes and collapses in energy prices
-depletion of fossil fuel
-transition to green energy.

What are your thoughts?

I don't necessarily agree with the idea that niche games do not thrive on Steam. Steam is simply a distribution platform for PC games it is like the itunes of video games that allows people to find the type of games that they are interested and purchase them through a secure platform. I have seen several niche indie games generate significant revenue and built substantial audiences through the Steam Early Access Program. I obviously don't have access to the background numbers so I cant say exactly but, I have personally purchased and seen substantial interest in some business/economic games there. You can potentially both distribute the game on steam and off it through a website.

The Biggest Problems with Niche Games seems to be that because they are such a small team they fail because: they don't have the Ability to Execute the Idea Well or they create a great product without knowledge of their potential target market size and how to market to their Target Audience Well.

I think that you may want to think about marketing Capitalism Lab and any future games you create on Youtube by getting in contact with youtubers in the business/tycoon game niche then gift them game key with all DLC's and possibly a small fee to review it and pitch it to their audiences for X number of videos. Youtube and Twitch is why some of the most successful games mass market games became popular Minecraft, PUBG, Fortnite as well as some of the more successful niche games. That seems like one of the best places to market games these days in the influencer economy. I often look games up on youtube before I buy them or discover they exist through the platform search engine.

Some of the games that I own on steam that are primary business/economic simulations or have significant economic components that you may want to look into:
* EVE Online
* Farming Simulator
* The Guild 2
* Kerbal Space Program
* Mount & Blade Bannerlord & Warband
* Plutocracy
* Software Inc.
* Supreme Power 2
* Transport Fever

Don't own on Steam but is available on the Platform:
* Albion Online

Other business/economic simulations on Steam that I don't own but have seen:
* Two Point Hospital
* Production Line
* Startup Company
* Business Magnate
* Good Company
* Prison Architect
* Academia School Simulator
* Airport CEO

As for you developing a separate game it would really depend on how well it was executed and marketed. I would be interested in such a game but, I have seen very little out there in the market and the ones that were did not seem to be executed that well.

Mining Related games that may or may not have succeeded you can look at review for what worked and what did not work:
* Oil Enterprise
* Gold Rush

[saffgee]

I suspect David means that Steam simply take too much money from what is a fairly small profit margin anyway....

[David]

I suspect David means that Steam simply take too much money from what is a fairly small profit margin anyway....

We have first hand data from sales of our own games on Steam as well as some shared data from our strategic partners' games on Steam. Since I do not have the permission from the management to disclose any confidential data, all I can say is that our approach of publishing and distributing Capitalism Lab has been financially proven to be more successful than it would have otherwise if it had been distributed on Steam, based on our observations of shared data from our strategic partners' games on Steam, which are decent modern games, as opposite to Enlight's back catalog of titles on Steam.

On the other hand, for mass appeal games, I do think that they will do better thanks to Steam's vast user base.

For those who are interested, here are two very insightful articles about selling games on Steam:
https://gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarles ... t_sell.php

https://gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisZukows ... m_sale.php

If I understand correctly, these two articles made the point that developers still have to do most of the marketing for their Steam games. It may not be entirely out of place to compare this with a CapLab scenario where your company invests heavily into developing our own products and do all the advertising at its own expenses and yet you set up no retail outlets and instead let an AI company with extensive retail network and e-commerce presence to sell your products exclusively with a lucrative profit margin that dwarfs yours. It is up to each player to decide whether this is a good strategy though. I am just saying that this may not be a unreasonable comparison.

[David]

I think that you may want to think about marketing Capitalism Lab and any future games you create on Youtube by getting in contact with youtubers in the business/tycoon game niche then gift them game key with all DLC's and possibly a small fee to review it and pitch it to their audiences for X number of videos. Youtube and Twitch is why some of the most successful games mass market games became popular Minecraft, PUBG, Fortnite as well as some of the more successful niche games. That seems like one of the best places to market games these days in the influencer economy. I often look games up on youtube before I buy them or discover they exist through the platform search engine.

We do have such an offer to Youtubers: http://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewto ... f=7&t=5128

Personally, I have played these:
* Software Inc.
* Supreme Power 2
* Transport Fever
* Production Line
* Startup Company
* Prison Architect

As for you developing a separate game it would really depend on how well it was executed and marketed. I would be interested in such a game but, I have seen very little out there in the market and the ones that were did not seem to be executed that well.

Good to know that you would be interested in such a game. In addition to the two games you have mentioned, there is another game with the same subject matter called Turmoil.

I have created a new discussion thread for a more organized discussion for this potential game: http://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewto ... =50&t=7547

FYI, if the company ends up deciding to embark on such a new project, a new dev team will be set up for it so that there will be no reduction to CapLab's development resources and commitment.