For many years, I was frustrated that there has never been a real stab at a music industry simulation game. The only attempts maybe were “Rock Manager” in 2002 and “Rock Star Manager” in 2022, which both aren’t deep/engaging management simulations or made an effort to show the beautiful variety of the music industry and its history in any way.
On the other hand, one of my favorite games of all time is Lionhead’s The Movies (2005) - at the current time of writing basically “abandonware” because of Lionhead Studio’s closing in 2016 -, which managed to execute on this concept for the film industry in a fantastic way. So I asked myself through the years: why is there no “The Movies” for the music industry?
But it was “Game Dev Story” by Kairosoft (1997 on PC in Japan, released on iOS in 2010) that I played again in the Summer of 2022, when I felt like there might be a way that I could be able to program something like that myself.
When looking at games like ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley (2016) or Chris Sawyer’s Rollercoaster Tycoon (1999) - both also some favorites of mine -, you can’t but think, that these are kinda big animated excel sheets to play in (at least that’s how my friend Otto succinctly phrased it). This fact is also probably the reason why most management simulation games aren’t played by many people. You need to be wired in a certain way to enjoy Excel, I guess. But these two examples were successful with the masses AND they were developed by one person alone!
I felt like their success was based on a few factors
The “plot” or concept of these games is one that is connected to some positively regarded daydreamesque scenario, like building your own amusement park or living on a quaint, little-bit-magical farm - this is in contrast to some other simulation games, where you automate industry lines or drive tractors (not the daydream of so many people)
The artstyle and sound design/music is very inviting, cute and simple enough to fill in some gaps with your imagination - this is in contrast to some other simulation games that look complicated and hard to control (3D controls are still difficult to handle for a lot of casual gamers and most people don’t like a slew of numbers to understand & manage in convoluted menues)
The learning curve is not steep - this is in contrast to something like Football Manager, where you have to understand a lot about the industry beforehand to make the game be fun
With some time on my hands in 2023, I felt like I could try to make a game in the scope of the ones described above and maybe also make more people play a management simulation game at the end of it (as a music career is dreamt about by many, the art style can be cute and the music fun and the learning curve doesn’t need to be steep to produce music in a video game). But most of all, I just want to play this (kind of) game myself :)
Before I can though, I have to conceptualize, design, write and program it (and learn how this is done on the way). This blog shows this journey!
