Hi everyone, Apologize for the silence lately. After Localizor was made public in Beta 24, there has been a substantiel increase in users interested in translating Startup Company into more languages. Because of this interest, it has been necessary to improve various parts of system which has been taking up my time. Fortunately I'm almost done, and looking at the numbers it looks like we'll soon see both Dutch and Polish added to the game. Thank you to everyone who has contributed! schappy

Major change to website satisfaction: Dissatisfaction

Beta 25 will now completely change how website satisfaction is calculated. How it works today Today the website satisfaction is calculated by simply using the average of all features' satisfaction. You could have a Landing Page with 100% satisfaction and "Banner Ads" with 15% satisfaction. This worked okay, but it was super confusing to new players, as the red smiley would show 5% for "video ads" and 15% for "banner ads", indicating that "video ads" would be less annoying to the user. How it works in Beta 25 In the future there will instead be two options for a feature: Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction. Base Features will only produce Satisfaction and Revenue Features will only produce Dissatisfaction. The total website satisfaction is calculated by first taking the average of your base features and then subtracting the dissatisfaction from all the revenue features.
Hopefully this change will make it more clear to new players how everything is calculated. Please notice: Existing Revenue features will continue to use the old model to avoid breaking your savegame. If you want to switch to the new model, you'll have to remove and add the revenue features.

Outsourcing

By popular demand I'm now introducing Outsourcing in Startup Company. We had the feature in the game before (formerly known as Contract Work).
To start finding outsourcing tasks you have to hire and use a Sales Executive. It will take between 4 and 24 hours to find a new task. A task contains the following properties: Requirements - The components and modules that has to be delivered. Time Left - The amount of hours before the bidding ends. Deadline - The amount of days before the requirements has to be delivered (after time left and bidding has ended). Current Bid - The current lowest price. Another new thing about Outsourcing is that youll also be able to submit your own tasks and have your competitors work for you!
The Outsourcing feature isn't planned until Beta 26, as I already locked down Beta 25 (I believe you've waited long enough for new content already). Please notice that the Outsourcing feature is still under development and is subject to change. All the notes that are listed above are simply a preview of what's coming up in Startup Company. These new changes and items are not yet available in the public build of the game. Do you have suggestions or ideas for the game? Check out our Conflux board.

Release dates

Yea, I really don't know for sure, but let me explain what we're waiting for: Beta 25: Everything is done. We're testing right now. Strings has been uploaded to Localizor. Once everything is translated and bug free, I'll release it. My hope is Friday (June 28). Beta 26: Development has started. Together with Outsourcing I also want to include a bunch of additional QOL improvements. We're probably looking at late July.

That's all for this week!

I hope the changes above is as exciting for you as it is for me. I can't wait to ship it all to you schappy By the way, stay tuned for next week. I got some major news to announce! All the best, Jonas [url=https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames]

[ 2019-06-23 16:26:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

About the game

Startup Company is a business simulation sandbox game. You play as the CEO of a newly formed software company. With an empty bank account you are forced to complete client contracts, but as soon as you get enough money you will be able to start competing against the largest tech giants, building your very own products and services.

Startup Company includes:

* Build Mode: Design your very own office.
* Contract Work: Win contracts by competing on price and service.
* Crafting System: Merge components to create modules. Use modules to create products.
* Products: Build outstanding products by adding features, managing servers and running marketing campaigns.

Hiring

A great company is built by great people. Optimize your staff benefits and working conditions to attract the best employees.

Win Contracts

You'll be facing hundreds of available contracts, but not all of them will be good for your team. Work your way up and compete with the best in the industry to win the big contracts!

Develop, Merge, Repeat

That's right, even software needs a little piecing together!

No matter if you want to deliver contracts or build your own product you need components and modules. Use developers, designers and lead developers to produce what you need.

Startup Company includes a fully featured crafting/development system where you will be able to merge components into modules, servers or product features.

Release, Update and Expand

Creating successful products is all about making the right decisions. Implementing or upgrading the right features is what generates hype. Hype generates users and users generate money.

You'll have to constantly pay attention to your hype otherwise users will start to drift away from your product. Keeping the product under constant development and releasing new versions is key to success.

It's your sandbox, let your imagination run wild!

Development Stream on Twitch

All parts of the game development are being streamed on Twitch. Come join the community and the stream at:
https://www.twitch.tv/jhovgaard