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Management game metagame: management game taxonomy. Taxonomy is comparative so trying to come up with categories without a list of games already to compare against each other is probably going to go nowhere. There's survival city builders! Logistic crafters! City building logistics! Up is down. Life is chaos.
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Dec 30, 2020 17:57
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When I think of management games I usually think of games where you place buildings/machines and then npcs do the actual busy work. Stardew valley wouldnt qualify since you do the actual work yourself instead designating at far plot and having some peon do it
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Dec 30, 2020 18:08
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I personally file Stardew, Graveyard Keeper etc, along with stuff like Zomboid and UnReal World as homesteading games, all about working to carve your own space out of nothing. Even though there's all the farming, I don't think of it as being at all like day, the actual Farming Simulator games.
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Dec 30, 2020 18:09
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We're going to end up with a recommendations n dimensional plot graph aren't we.
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Dec 30, 2020 18:09
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I mean all genres are arbitrary so if the op wanted to they could put DOOM in the op as a resource and spacial management game and they'd be technically right
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Dec 30, 2020 18:12
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You all are going to make me lose my poo poo again about steam user tags. No, CS:GO isn’t a “strategy” game because you can use the word “strategy” in a sentence about what you do CS:GO. Honestly I would make the thread a home for anything even tangentially related to management that doesn’t have its own thread. Stardew does, but if some other “manangement lite” game doesn’t have a home, list it.
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Dec 30, 2020 18:42
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I come to this thread primarily as a chat thread before we abandon all the games that have their own thread. It holds in depth discussion about management games not supporting a thread but I'm really here for the chat about management games and their relation to other management games. But maybe I'm the one doing it wrong. When I think management game I first think about games where you are designing processes or systems in or outside the game with some sort of permanence, to progress. This describes city builders and ant farms/isometric bases entirely as the end result is a functioning system. But also gives some outs for the odd balls like certain homestead games with involved set up get a pass because you need to come up with a process to save you enough time to talk to people etc. But DOOM's space management means something different and I'd throw it out on the permanence part: solving the lava factory doesn't really impact solving the hell tower.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:16
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zedprime posted:But DOOM's space management means something different and I'd throw it out on the permanence part: solving the lava factory doesn't really impact solving the hell tower. Untrue! The latest dooms let you choose whether your rocket launcher fires 3 rockets or 1 big rocket and that choice made in the lava factory directly affects the standard factorio measurement of Rockets Per Minute.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:32
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For me, the maintenance of your agents are the split between management game genres. In Industries of Titan, there is no maintenance of your employees or citizens beyond a slight power draw, is different from the Epic Games Store contemporary "Before We Leave", where your pips eat vegitables and smoothies which require significantly more investment than the house building that attracts the pip in the first place. Thank you for coming to my ted talk. My current genre split is based on the development time remaining and expended.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:40
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I guess from my view core to management games is the automation. If you have a successful game in progress and leave it alone it will run more or less indefinitely (barring any special events that will require your direct intervention) and your main engagement is in changing that system to produce more or meet objectives or whatever your broader goal happens to be. You can sub-divide objectives from there based on what your main automation agents are, and how involved it is to maintain them. If the whole purpose of the system is maintaining your agents (which is to say, people) then you have a colony sim. If maintaining your agents is a heavy component of your design but they're in service of a separate goal, then you have a traditional management game. If the agents require little or no maintenance as long as you keep fuelling the machine you have an automation game, with a sub-genre of train games where the main design challenge is in actually getting your agents to route properly. If the agents are largely abstract then it's somewhere in the area of city builders, although there's probably a larger category you can sort city builders under that aren't entirely about building a city. Homesteading games usually revolve around partially automating your work but you still need to stay manually involved in making things happen so they're in the vicinity of management games but more part of the larger umbrella of games about building stuff. That's my take anyway. Which appears to be a synthesis of the above two takes, happily.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:53
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zedprime posted:I come to this thread primarily as a chat thread before we abandon all the games that have their own thread. It holds in depth discussion about management games not supporting a thread but I'm really here for the chat about management games and their relation to other management games. But maybe I'm the one doing it wrong. Also I wasn’t thinking much when I referenced “games that have a thread” - obviously I wouldn’t advocate “no factorio chat it has its own thread.” Just that the thrust of discussion here seems to be games that don’t have another home, firstly. I like that (because I find new niche games I like) but I’m not suggesting any change to discussion about games with their own thread at all, because as you said it’s more of a chatty thread about the genre.
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Dec 30, 2020 19:57
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Tenebrais posted:I guess from my view core to management games is the automation. If you have a successful game in progress and leave it alone it will run more or less indefinitely (barring any special events that will require your direct intervention) and your main engagement is in changing that system to produce more or meet objectives or whatever your broader goal happens to be.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:04
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ShootaBoy posted:I personally file Stardew, Graveyard Keeper etc, along with stuff like Zomboid and UnReal World as homesteading games, all about working to carve your own space out of nothing. Even though there's all the farming, I don't think of it as being at all like day, the actual Farming Simulator games. "homesteading game" is a good term for it, and where it intersects with the broader 'management' genre is in time management
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Dec 30, 2020 20:09
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Sidestep from the categorisation chat - can anyone recommend a good colony sim/base builder, maybe a city builder (fit it into whatever schema you so desire), where you start from "what is fire?" and just tech tree alllllllll the way to a space program? RimWorld almost fits, but doesn't if that makes sense, so maybe something like an extremely focused Civ? Or something adjacent anyway Also I just lost 3 drat days to that Waterworks game someone mentioned on itch, now I got all the acheivements I keep trying to get the sewers built in under 100 turns and I don't even know if that's theoretically possible
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Dec 30, 2020 20:14
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I think it's important that we discuss games (up to a point of course) that already have their own threads. Sometimes long time players of those games with threads lose touch with what it's like to just start in the game or to wonder if the game is for them. I think it's important to have a thread where someone can get different perspectives. When people come to this thread what are they looking for? When you the reader first came here, what were you looking for? Games in specific categories like city builders or railroad games? Or just a place to chat? It's not a huge deal, y'all. I want the OP to be welcoming (and am somewhat jealous of the 4x's OP, more extensive than ours  )
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Dec 30, 2020 20:28
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Sidestep from the categorisation chat - can anyone recommend a good colony sim/base builder, maybe a city builder (fit it into whatever schema you so desire), where you start from "what is fire?" and just tech tree alllllllll the way to a space program? RimWorld almost fits, but doesn't if that makes sense, so maybe something like an extremely focused Civ? Or something adjacent anyway Before We Leave has that abstracted into like 6 discreet phases over the course of a 40-60 hour playthrough. The steps you discribe is the early game where you go from "pip cops wood to make house" to sailing, to oil processing, to space ship. Then you got like 5 more planets after that. I'm not good with the spinning plates, fire and forget kinda colony management you can find with like multiple base rimworld mods or the new ONI dlc, so I need to stop caring about babying my automation if I am going to keep up with the fast paced world of sea monkey applications.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:40
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Sidestep from the categorisation chat - can anyone recommend a good colony sim/base builder, maybe a city builder (fit it into whatever schema you so desire), where you start from "what is fire?" and just tech tree alllllllll the way to a space program? RimWorld almost fits, but doesn't if that makes sense, so maybe something like an extremely focused Civ? Or something adjacent anyway Evolution of Ages: Settlement is like that (https://store.steampowered.com/app/704640) - if you can stomach the interface/graphics. It's got the depth though, and is really quite good. Probably my best purchase in the winter sale, especially considering the price. I bounced off it a year ago or so, but I'm glad I gave it another chance. Shame about the developer's health issues, which means the DLC has been on hold for a while now. I'm sure there are Rimworld mods that do something similar - and I'd like to know them then, because the lacklustre tech tree is my main qualm with Rimworld. There's also Orbi Universo, but it's less of a builder and more of a lever adjusting kind of game. It's strangely engrossing, actually. And it doesn't go to the space age (yet).
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Dec 30, 2020 20:50
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Sidestep from the categorisation chat - can anyone recommend a good colony sim/base builder, maybe a city builder (fit it into whatever schema you so desire), where you start from "what is fire?" and just tech tree alllllllll the way to a space program? RimWorld almost fits, but doesn't if that makes sense, so maybe something like an extremely focused Civ? Or something adjacent anyway Mayveena posted:I think it's important that we discuss games (up to a point of course) that already have their own threads. Sometimes long time players of those games with threads lose touch with what it's like to just start in the game or to wonder if the game is for them. I think it's important to have a thread where someone can get different perspectives. Given the difficulty in fitting names everyone agrees to thus far I probably wouldn't try to subsection it off at all. I'd start with a list and move all the titles in the list to be next to the game its most like so it still flows but doesn't need exact, arguable subgenres listed everywhere. You might be able to give obvious subgenres after doing this or you might not and I don't think it'd be a big loss if it did not.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:56
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Sending my spirit energy to the OP~
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Dec 30, 2020 21:19
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I played way too much W&R today, something extremely itch scratching about very slowly building out roads and buildings using your own materials that I was missing in more 'ploppable' games like C:S. I do wish that there was a ALWAYS HAVE A DUDE WORKING HERE button or something so I don't lose my entire population after a few people randomly stopped showing up to the heat generator in winter and whoops my entire population got cold and left
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Dec 31, 2020 02:21
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GOOD TIMES ON METH posted:I played way too much W&R today, something extremely itch scratching about very slowly building out roads and buildings using your own materials that I was missing in more 'ploppable' games like C:S. Personal cars or a single apartment block just barely within walking distance solve this well. Or, strangely, gondolas. They can’t be interrupted by traffic and have no loiter/wait time for workers to have to wait at a platform.
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Dec 31, 2020 02:39
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Been playing the free gnomoria game ingnomia again. https://store.steampowered.com/app/709240/Ingnomia It recently got a new ui and has multiple people contributing (it's open source) Really progressing nicely now, and ui is way easier to use. Anyone else playing?
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Dec 31, 2020 02:48
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Agean90 posted:When I think of management games I usually think of games where you place buildings/machines and then npcs do the actual busy work. Stardew valley wouldnt qualify since you do the actual work yourself instead designating at far plot and having some peon do it I’m currently remembering the old Win95 game Free Enterprise where you literally plopped machines down in a factory and told NPCs which position to work each day. You also had to hire administrative staff and plop cubicles down for them!
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Dec 31, 2020 03:22
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Luigi Thirty posted:I’m currently remembering the old Win95 game Free Enterprise where you literally plopped machines down in a factory and told NPCs which position to work each day. Why hello, this is the answer to a 24 year old question: did the game box of some sort of factory-game I remember seeing actually exist, or did I fabricate it entirely?
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Dec 31, 2020 04:00
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Anime Store Adventure posted:Personal cars or a single apartment block just barely within walking distance solve this well. Cool, thanks. Gondolas to commute for work sounds like a wacky goal that would be fun to shoot for
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Dec 31, 2020 04:10
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Can we be sure to include Goonfleet Logistics to the list of management games? Thanks.
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Dec 31, 2020 04:48
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totalnewbie posted:Can we be sure to include Goonfleet Logistics to the list of management games? Thanks. Sorry, we can only include games that I've heard of 
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Dec 31, 2020 05:01
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I think he's referring to Eve
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Dec 31, 2020 05:43
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Haha yes, sorry, I should have been more clear that I was making a stupid joke.
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Dec 31, 2020 06:22
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GOOD TIMES ON METH posted:Cool, thanks. Gondolas to commute for work sounds like a wacky goal that would be fun to shoot for They’re kind of niche and arguably their benefits don’t outweigh the footprint, other methods are more effective, etc etc. What’s funny, though, is you call it a “wacky goal” and since the last patch that added more sounds to things: whenever you click the gondola it plays a wacky cartoon slide whistle noise. It’s like the game knows it’s a joke.
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Dec 31, 2020 07:29
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Anime Store Adventure posted:They’re kind of niche and arguably their benefits don’t outweigh the footprint, other methods are more effective, etc etc. In my current game, there's a decent sized ridge separating low river flatlands from a higher plateau with resources and industry. The rail network loops around, though a major town, to supply the town and connect to a shipyard on the river, but it's a long, long distance. As such, the steel for the shipyard actually goes to a siding and storage on top the plateau, is shipped down by gondola to another storage, and then another shorter rail connection takes it to the shipyard. I am unreasonably proud of this silly solution.
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Dec 31, 2020 07:52
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Log082 posted:In my current game, there's a decent sized ridge separating low river flatlands from a higher plateau with resources and industry. The rail network loops around, though a major town, to supply the town and connect to a shipyard on the river, but it's a long, long distance. As such, the steel for the shipyard actually goes to a siding and storage on top the plateau, is shipped down by gondola to another storage, and then another shorter rail connection takes it to the shipyard. I am unreasonably proud of this silly solution. You should be! Every time I find a viable use for a gondola it feels like seeing a rainbow. Like I said I might be able to find an argument that there’s always a better way (specifically if you enable fires - then everything needs road access anyway) but sometimes they do just click. The game’s woopwoopWOOPWOOPWOOP slide whistle for them is still hilarious though.
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Dec 31, 2020 08:46
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SkyeAuroline posted:I own it and played it for a bit. Wasn't really fond of it at all, very shallow and its design roots show. Don't really regret spending money in it but I haven't found a reason to go back to it yet. If it’s been awhile since you played, they just released a massive update which added a bunch of additional mechanics/tech and a very revised campaign with a hex map overworld you slowly conquer. Also I’d second going for the steam version over the donation one — it’s definitely super expanded. I think it’s probably most fun coop.
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Dec 31, 2020 09:20
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I play with hardest everything on W&R but have fires turned off- no matter how connected I have everything and firestations I have, I still get fires in critical expensive infrastructure (usually oil tanks) that the firefighters just completely ignore. I somehow missed gondolas were even a thing in this game, gonna have to try that.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:05
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I got it as a gift and haven't started playing yet, and I'm now imagining "building Soviet Venice" and grinning. Can you dig canals? I'd be surprised if the answer is no but haven't looked into it closely.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:11
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SkyeAuroline posted:I got it as a gift and haven't started playing yet, and I'm now imagining "building Soviet Venice" and grinning. Can you dig canals? I'd be surprised if the answer is no but haven't looked into it closely. They're like ski slope gondolas, not boat gondolas.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:14
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PerniciousKnid posted:They're like ski slope gondolas, not boat gondolas. Rip. My dream stands. Maybe a mod one day.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:15
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SkyeAuroline posted:Rip. Well, you can use ferries in Cities in Motion. It's a useful mode of transport in certain circumstances.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:19
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First take on additions to the OP: (the OP will include links as to where to buy/obtain these games)quote:Overall high popularity management games All thoughts welcome!!!!
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Dec 31, 2020 16:19
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Minecraft isnt a management game, Terraria less so.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:21
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